Back from the Family Road Trip...

 It had been over a year and a half...since Christmas 2019...since we had seen our Indiana family.  But, since everyone had been vaccinated, we decided to brave the wilds and head north for a few days.  Kids, spouses, girlfriends, the baby...everyone.

 

Whilst we were in the northern reaches  of the state, My Sweet  Babboo's older cousin Pat came by with an assortment of...things...she'd been cleaning out of her house, and some of those things were meant to come home with me.

Here's a teaser pic, because there's some cool stuff in there that I expect to get at LEAST two blog posts worth of content from, lol...

I know it's not good to leave it where it is, but currently there is no direct sunlight coming in so it will be ok until I can get a better storage for it.

I also came home with a number of crocheted pot holders, most of which were made by my grandmother:

 These were USED, as the scorch marks on several of them attest, lol   Not sure what I will do with them; I hate to risk further damage to them but maybe using them would be the best honor I could give them...

I have a bit of sewing from before the trip to report, and we are gearing up to do another era-hopping Christmas production; hopefully there will be a little more activity in these parts in the immediate future...

Now...what do I do with The Wonky Dress?

 

Well...here's ONE picture from the wedding...at this point, I'm starting to think that's all I'll have.  You can kinda see the 'Aunt Lena Farm Wife Frock' fit to the upper chest in this picture, but the thing that I want to call out is the little flower on my left shoulder.  I didn't think about the fragility of the fabric when the corsage was pinned on...but when I pulled the dress out of the laundry and saw all the picks and fuzzies I realized, oh, that was not a good thing.

Here's a close-up; if you click to enlarge you can see the damage done by just the abrasion from the leaf on the corsage.  Now, granted it's not so obvious ...you gotta be looking at the right spot to see it...but it is a sad mess.

And this was not cheap fabric...$15/ yard plus shipping made it about $75 in fabric alone.  I have to keep reminding myself that trying to purchase a rayon crepe ready-to-wear dress in the right colors would have been an even bigger frustration...

I am thinking about cutting it off just above the waist and making a skirt out of the bottom bit.  I still love the colors in it...and I would kinda like to remake the pattern in fabric cut on the correct grain, just to tweak it to fit...to prove I can, but also to have a nice dress to wear, lol.

Like I have nothing else to do.

I have a couple of items in the 'almost finished' queue; I'll have new sewing to talk about soon!