Spring Sewing

...You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy.

You visit the earth and water it;

you greatly enrich it;

the river of God is full of water;

you provide their grain,

for so you have prepared it.

You water its furrows abundantly,

settling its ridges,

softening it with showers,

and blessing its growth.

You crown the year with your bounty;

your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.

The pastures of the wilderness overflow,

the hills gird themselves with joy,

the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,

the valleys deck themselves with grain,

they shout and sing together for joy...

~from Psalm 65~

Winter's last moments - through the years.

March is a stormy month, a wrestle between winter and warmth here in the High Desert. Last year we had 70 degree weather for a bit, and the year before that we had snow. It's unpredictable!

We're still lookin' dry over here, but it's been raining and snowing quite a bit. In another month or two, it will look more like this!

I have done a rather small amount of clothes-making this year, hence my long absence on the blog. Handwork has made up the majority of my sewing, as I finish a quilt top I've been making for...two years? now. But with Spring coming, certain fabrics in my collection have called to me to be played with. 

Introducing my first Spring '25 project!

This simple paneled skirt was a lovely way to ease into spring sewing. It was finished in an evening and was delightfully uncomplicated!

Isn't that interesting fabric? My favorite thing about it is that it lends itself to so many blouses! Red, white, two shades of green, that lovely baby pink, yellow, orange...And yet it does not make you look like a walking rainbow.

My skirt has 8 panels, a simple waistband, and a short zipper in the back. I used my pinking shears to cut most of my panel-bottoms, so I only turned the hem over once when I hemmed the skirt. 

This is the first skirt I've made with pockets!! Definitely one of my favorite features of this skirt!

I have drawn some diagrams for the basics of a pieced skirt. Hopefully they will be useful!

Below are close-ups of a few of the sketches:

To make a fitted skirt like this, it's important to take a waist measurement. You then divide that number by how many sections you wish to have in your skirt. If you have a waist measurement of 30" and you plan to use 10 sections in your skirt, each should be 3" at the top - but don't forget the seam allowance! I like to allow myself 1/2" seam allowance, so I would add a whole 1" to the measurement and make each panel 4" wide. The bottom of your triangle-like shape can be as wide as you want! The wider it is, the more flared and swirly your skirt will be - fun, huh?

Sew your panels together into a skirt, right sides together of course. You can leave ~6" (or however long your zipper is) unsewn at the top of one of your seams to insert your zipper into. 

When you've finished sewing the seams, (but before you put your zipper in!) and are ready to make your waistband, measure it to your completed skirt top (+ seam allowance) and sew a "tube" of fabric that length - and however wide you want it. Mine is about 3/4" wide. 

If you want the inside of your skirt to look finished, you can follow this tutorial for a few different waistband options. I was not very particular about the inside of this skirt, especially since I used pinking shears to cut most of my pieces, so I attached my ironed "tube" as seen in the diagram above. I put right sides together and sewed it on, then folded it back to show a beautiful smooth waistband! Then I attached my zipper. 

There are many tutorials online for attaching zippers, so I will not kink up my brain trying to write on the subject. You know how zippers are.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading! 

I hope to be back soon with more spring sewing.

Miss Humphrey

Autumn Dresses

Happy Fall, everyone!! 

I'm loving the change in the air from summer to autumn!

 In the high desert there isn't much foliage that changes color in the autumn, but the light takes on a gentler hue and the air sweeping down the mountain is crisp and clean; something welcome after the smoke season.

Here was our view in early September:

No, this is not a volcano, much as it looked like one.

It's a thunderstorm perched above an active fire. Can you tell where one ends and the other begins? 

It's hard to see, but the location of the fire is right behind that pointy butte there.

Thankfully we escaped during some of the worst smoke and went north where it wasn't so bad.

But take a look now, in mid-September. I'm back home and lovin' the vivid colors, though it's a little hazy in the distance this morning. 

Alright, I will move onto something other than scenery. I know this is a sewing blog, but I enjoy sharing pictures of God's amazing world with you. I hope you enjoy looking at them.

I've sewn a couple of dresses for the start of the beautiful season.

The main fabric of the first is a beautiful, burgundy-brownish red. In more poetic words, it reminds me of an old-fashioned, faded, currant-wine colored print you'd see a woman wearing in the pioneer or Wild West days of the 1800s.

This fabric is pared with a floral-on-white fabric that narrowly misses coordinating, but works nicely in a dress in my opinion.

The other dress is just the opposite! I used the burgundy fabric as an accent for the flowers-on-white print.

Rather than fuss with darts for bodice shaping, I took in a little (tuck? knife pleat?) at the bottom of the bodice. It was a lot easier than figuring out darts, let me tell you!

I even managed to line it up with the pleat in the skirt.

This is the hem. I'm not used to embellishing my hems a lot, but I do like the effect of the lace trim above the ruffle. It makes it look more old-fashioned, in my opinion.

On to the white dress:

~Front~

~Back~

I did a yoked design for this dress. This is another instance where I didn't have to engineer darts, instead shaping the dress by gathering the bodice above the bust and attaching it to the front yoke.

Since we've been on the topic of autumn I might as well throw in another subject related to it. Decorating! My grandma took me to Hobby Lobby last month and I feasted my eyes on their aisles of autumn decor. Ooh, so beautiful...and some of it was quite irresistible...

...like these sweet light-up pumpkins. It's amazing how a little LED light or string of fairy lights in your décor piece transforms it to be something interesting, something you want to look at every time you enter the room. It also ups the cozy factor 100%!

I learned how to make the fabric pumpkins from my grandmother at Homeliving. Here's another of her pumpkin tutorials.

 

Hope you've enjoyed reading - if anyone out there is still following this sporadic blog. I hope, as always, to keep to a blogging schedule that is more sensible, but isn't that what I was hoping last post?

Until next time, onwards and upwards!

-Lillian

Prairie Tea pt 2: The Report

 Hello all,

Well, we did it. the 2nd annual Scripture Tea for the ladies at my congregation has happened!

The first time we did this tea, I was so overwhelmed/exhausted afterwards that I remember driving home afterwards and not being sure how it even went! But this time, I can positively say that it went well. The second time you do something it will always be better than the first, right?

Except that we were still 1/2 hour late getting the food out, even with help, just like '23. Oh well, no body cared, at least not enough to come into the kitchen and demand why we were taking so long :)

Two of my obliging brothers were kind enough to do some behind-the-scenes kitchen work for my mother and I, and we would have been sooo late if we hadn't had help!

The tea happened on Saturday, April 20th, but preparations happened weeks ahead of time. I chose a theme, collected recipes, and stashed one of our freezers with tea party food. What did it look like? Carbs from top to bottom. Eek!

My mom and I collected decor, which you can see here.

That Wednesday, we went to Bible class early and sorted out matching sets of forks and knives from the church's vault of donated silverware. Last time, we made the mistake of doing this the morning of the tea. Never again!

On Friday, we began the task of decorating. This took longer than it should have (always do this THURSDAY, Miss Humphrey. Don't kid yourself.) I also made the chicken salad up in the church kitchen and stowed it in the fridge overnight. I really like that we brought food to the church fridge/freezer throughout the week and didn't leave all the hauling for Saturday. 

The Party Favor Table

About Saturday...

Saturday began a bit late, and it was in the 10 o'clock hour when my mom and I pulled out of the driveway to purchase our fresh flowers for the tables. 

We got a few minutes down the road and realized that I forgot to load a mixer of any sort into our van. This was important because what are scones without whipped cream at a fancy tea party?

So we turned around and lumbered up the hill again. We got the hand mixer and something else we thought of, and then started once more for town, only to make it as far as a sharp turn at the bottom of the neighborhood this time. Our faithful, 18 year old van was making a very peculiar chafing sound when we took that curve. We live 25 miles from the town where the tea was being held, and, not knowing what sort of car trouble we were experiencing, two women like us were not going to risk landing ourselves in a cattle field in the middle of nowhere particular with a dysfunctional vehicle. Especially on the day of an all important tea party that we must get to!

So we turned around and went home, moved everything from the van to our other car, and started out for the LAST TIME, late but still optimistic.

We bought bedding plants at Bi-Mart and my mom trimmed the blooms she wanted for bouquets. Now the plants sit happily on our porch, furnishing us with a beautiful flower garden. If we had bought florist flowers, they would likely be on their way out with no hope of revival. Getting bedding plants served our purpose for the tea and will give us joy during the late spring as well!

From there everything went relatively smoothly. Picking out flowers on that warm morning soothed our yet-to-be-breakfasted minds and made me feel better. We then went to the church building and dived into panic mode, chomping on leftover pizza from the night before for our breakfast-turned brunch while we worked and making tea to keep us going until we could drink tea with everyone else. Are we tea addicts? Oh, not a chance! We can stop anytime.

The rest of the morning was not terribly interesting. We tried to keep the panic factor down to some extent while whipping cream, filling tarts, making sandwiches and slicing things. By the time we were heating things up and early birds were coming, there was no use in keeping the panic down. It was survival mode.

By 3, I think we had the first batch of food out. I say first batch because, while I made enough for 40 servings of at least most of my food selections, I figured that we just needed to get ~20 servings out in the tea party room, because there shouldn't be more than that many guests, and I could whip up the rest of the sandwiches, etc. while they ate their first servings. 

As it turns out, only 15 of the 20+ guests who signed up showed up, which was not a problem. To the contrary, I made, as usual, Way Too Much Food, and didn't have to spend the tea party making more sandwiches in the kitchen, which was nice. My mother did a wonderful job on tea service and the ladies enjoyed talking amongst themselves and eating, and consuming tea. I actually didn't drink tea, opting for lemonade instead. I have a funny tendency to skip the tea when I make one of these parties, which I am the first to admit is strange.

Some of the food that was lucky enough to get its picture taken. On the table to the left, a bit of the dessert is to be observed. 

Perhaps this menu will help your imagination with the food, since I am lacking a lot of photos. For the sweets course, we had small plates of roulade cake with berries and cream, a plate of thumbprint cookies, and cream cheese chocolate tarts with strawberry slices in their tops.

After our tea, we had a rich Scripture sharing time. We went around the room and shared passages we had picked out, and the edification was wonderful. 

We had some wonderful help cleaning up, and before 7 pm we were driving home. It was a blessed, stressful good day! 

We came home and ate leftovers until we were feeling unwell from all the rich, 80% cream-and-butter food. Now we still have some scones, cookies and lemon posset to finish, but all in all these are not such bad trials to face.

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey

Prairie Tea

 Hello readers,

I want to thank you for continuing to visit my blog, even though my posting has become sporadic at times. I really appreciate your visits!

I am putting on Afternoon Tea for the ladies at my congregation near the end of this month. The theme is Prairie, and my mother and I had fun gathering old-fashioned and old-fashioned-looking items from our stashes for some of the décor. 

We both love the pioneer look, and the tarnished and worn style is "in," so we were in luck. Out came the faded and well-used quilts, the poor McGuffey's 5th reader who has been handled by five children in my family and looks none the better for it (but lots more prairie-ish!) and the ruffled dress and eyelet-trimmed petticoat from my closet. 

(Note: We bought this reprint brand new and now it looks like an authentic antique!)

A trunk, obviously being packed for a young schoolteacher who is migrating West, but who still clings to a bit of feminine refinement in spite of her destination being rough and dusty. The trunk and the dress form below will likely fill a corner of the room. 

This is a jumper I sewed awhile back, embellished with a blouse my mother made, fine lace and satiny-trim, and a prized possession from back when I put on my sunbonnet and made my brother "walk to school" with me so I could be like Laura and Mary:

my very own cameo pin.

This is the invitation, and the base for some of our colors and themes. That being said, since patchwork and calico are quite prairie, I have departed from my base colors...a lot...to use any fabric that looks soft and pretty and old fashioned and suits our purposes. 

I plan to overlap the smaller pieces and put them down the middle of the table for a table runner. I was also thinking of loosely braiding some larger yardages together and running them over the table runner. It will add another dimension to the table decorations and capture another side of the prairie look.

 For the party favor location, I'd like to take some wood slats and lay them across a side table, and add a bunting to the front of the table or a quilt angled across the top. The party favors can be arranged on top. Speaking of party favors, we haven't completely hashed out what the little "thank you" bags or boxes will hold (we haven't figured out whether they are bags or boxes either, haha) but I know I want them to hold a white-chocolate-orange-cream scone in them and a tea bag among other things.

 

Speaking of scones and tea...

So far, I have cut the scones out, and they will live happily in the freezer until we are ready to bake them the day of the tea. I also made the strawberry orange thumbprint cookies and am working on the lemon roulade. I am using a lot of recipes/ideas from Tea Time magazines - my favorite inspiration for affairs of tea and dainties.

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey

From Prairie Visions: The Life And Times Of Solomon Butcher