CW dresses

May 31, 2007 3 Replies

So there's a local Memorial Day parade. And one of the units was a local CW re-enacting group. Lots of soldiers, and four ladies in day dresses.



During the speechifying I stood near and studied their handiwork (or someone's).



Dress 1: on a silver-haired lady. French blue ground with light sprigs of ferns/leaves, these almost in a grey tone. She'd added a wear strip around the hem, which was a good 4" above the ground. Nice little sheer neck collar deal thing. Grey snood.



#2: a patriotic plaid, with ground. Cartridge pleats at the waist, following the stripes. Muslin collar, black snood.



#3: on a youthful redhead. Emerald green print with a lighter green design (toile-like). Muslin collar with tea-dyed crochet edging. Black snood.



#4: wow. Wide black & white stipes going vertical to about her knees, then a wide worked self-strip with diagonal chevrons. /\/\/\/\/\ Just cut on the bias, stitch together, keep making enough blocks to go all the way aorund the skirt. And a solid black band separating the worked trim from the straight skirt. (This could also have been a stealth growth tuck.) She had on a white blouse and a navy weskit which had lovely gold trimming on the neck edges, and working into discs for the rear "tail" trimmings. Dressed hair in a snood under a straw brimless hat.



Makes me want to log off, pedal home, and get out some stash!


--Karen D.



And if I had to pick a pattern used for the three dresses, it would be Simp 4551 with the pagoda sleeves (brown stripe on the pattern viewer).

They all sound smashing! I have a wedding dress to cut out, and 5m of stained linen to dye... (It's been boil washed and treated with Glo White clothes whitener to no avail, so I'm drying it off and heading for some machine dying! Not done this for over 20 years, so it'll be fun! :D )

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