Childhood Dresses

In between working on various Henry Moore inspired Journal Quilts, I've been sorting through some of my fabric stash, particularly the fabrics acquired from Jumble Sales and Charity shops mainly in the form of clothing , deciding whether to bin, keep , return to charity shop or pass on to other quilters. A quite productive activity when concentration and inspiration are in short supply due to a stinking cold.

Among the fabrics are several bits of old dresses or remnants with dress shaped holes in them. My mum made all my dresses and I learnt to appreciate fabrics at an early age ( and had strong opinions too - no spriggy florals )

The dress made from the blue daisy fabric was sleeveless with a long zipper down the front with a wonderful pendant style bobble pull on it. I wore it with red or yellow socks ( I could never keep white socks clean for more than 5 minutes - still have that problem with white clothes! )

The mustard fabric from the early 70's (can't you tell!) was made into a long sleeved winter dress worn with lacy tights and black patent shoes.

I've not used them for patchwork so far as particularly the mustard one doesn't really go with anything . Looking at it afresh after several years, I'm now thinking it might work well with some of my African fabrics, particularly with quilting and overpainting with acrylics. I'm sure I shall find further samples of even uglier retro fabrics - I feel a challenge coming on.