Most recent men's outfit

This is an outfit that I have been working on since the beginning of November.  The trowsers are made from a fabric called kearsy cloth.  It has warp threads of linen and weft threads of wool. It looks like the fabric that the confederate civil war reenactors wear.  The trowsers are a drop fall front. 

The shirt is made of raw linen.  It has been made made from a Martha McCain Simplicity pattern.  It has been mostly hand stitched.  If I could see the stitching from the outside, I hand stitched it.  The buttonholes have been done by hand as well.

The vest is made from a Past Patterns pattern called "A Single-Breasted Shawl Collar Waistcoat" It has been made from wool flannel with a raw linen lining and back fabric.  There are welt pockets and hand stitched buttonholes. 

I am now on to some easier things for a couple of weeks and then I will be starting a wedding dress for a girl in my ward who also happens to be a distant relative on the side of the family that has all the sewing genes.  (Thank you great great grandma  Elizabeth Hocquard Carlisle).

I've been hacked!

My comcast.net e-mails and facebook account have been hacked this morning.  I am not in England.  I don't even have a passport to get out of the country.  I apologize if this has jeopardized any of your accounts.

Gray Wool Dress

This dress has been a long time in the making.  It is made of bluish gray lightweight wool with a blue cotton lining.  The trim is dark pink taffeta.  The collar and cuffs are hand embroidered.  The time period is around 1850.

Finally! An update

Okay, I finally decided I needed to update things.  Here are the pictures of the authentic projects that I have been working on.  First is the Frock Coat that I finally finished this last spring.  Then the red dress was for the LDS Church Museum.  That took a lot longer than I anticipated and I learned many things.  I always do.  The last one is my most recent project.  I have made this dress many times.  Most people have ordered it in blue.  I really like the print this client picked.  I am currently working on a gray wool dress that will be trimmed with pink silk (yes, real silk)taffeta.  Then I have a project of a full set of men's clothing made from linen and wool. Linen shirt, wool vest and Kersey trousers  Kersey is a wool and linen mix.  Trek business is slow so it is a perfect time to work on these more challenging projects.

On a personal note, Mary has grown so much. She grew 3 inches over the summer and is now 4'11". She is in 4th grade and is doing well.  It has taken her a couple of months to figure out how to focus and get her work done during class and now, for the most part she doesn't have much homework.  This is her first year of having a man teacher.  She was a little leary at first but she loves Mr. Downs.  He is an older teacher.  My sister who is 2 years younger than me had him for 5th grade his second year of teaching.  At Back To School Night he addressed the first man teacher issue becuase he has had that problem every year.  He told the kids not to worry, "it is a bit like spending the day with Dad."  He has a dry sense of humor that Mary loves.  He told me at her last SEP conference that she is one of the few that really gets his jokes.  I had to explain that her dad had the same dry sense of humor that she has so she totally understands.

In July, I had a mile marker birthday and turned 50.  I was a little down about it for a bit.  The last hard birthday I had was 30.  Mary was born just weeks after I turned 40 so I was completely immersed in becoming a mother and so 40 went by without much hooplah.  Now I've had a few months of being 50, I'm okay with it.  My body is old and I'm not getting around very well.  My knees and hips have decided they are tired.  I am having a hard time losing weight because I can't exercise enough to get my heart rate really moving.  So I do what I can and let it go with that.  I walk with 2 canes and Mary is a big help.  I told her that we needed to get a screw driver and the "T" to turn off the sprinklers.  Well, by the time I got myself out the door she had turned off the sprinklers all by herself.  She was so excited.

My father passed away in August.  He only felt poorly for a couple of weeks before.  He didn't have the patience to be sick for very long.  I had a good 2 hour visit with him the morning that he died.  We didn't know that it was going to be that day.  He was up and around.  His hometeacher was over to mow the lawn and dad was out supervising the job.  He came in the house about 4:00, told Mom he couldn't breathe and then passed out and was gone.  He has had a bad heart for years so I was okay with his passing.  I know that he is doing what he needs to do.  He had been a temple officiator for 12 years.  In that time he did 11,000 names.  That was the thing that was most proud of.  Being able to complete the work for so many people.  Many if not all of them were family names.

Mom started feeling poorly about 3 weeks after Dad died.  At first we thought that her blood pressure medicine wasn't doing the job completely.  Turns out she has lymphoma.  She has now had her first round of chemo.  She will have two more treatments, three weeks apart, then they will run the tests again to see if the tumor has shrunk.

Well, there you have it. 

Start at the center

Since Thanksgiving, I have been working on a tailored 1830's frock coat.  I thought that it would only take me about 3 weeks.  And it might have but there have been some steps that I have had to psych myself up for.  It has been my first heavy tailoring project.  For the most part I have enjoyed it.  I have learned a lot.  My mom suggested a book that is long out of print.  I found an almost new copy at Amazon.com.  I have followed it step by step.  Yesterday I completed the hand worked buttonholes.  The collar has been on for a week or so.  But I haven't liked the way the upper collar went on.  I have tried different things to fix it.  It still hasn't looked quite right.

I woke up this morning with this thought in my head "I need to take off the collar and work from the the center back to the front on each side."  I have heard this sewing rule several times but it is always so natural just work from one side to the other.  So I took off the upper collar this morning.  As I was re-pinning the collar back on I was thinking about starting at the center.  Then I started getting all philosophical.  It is not just in sewing that it is best to start in the center and work toward the edges.  In life if you want to make a change, you have to start by changing your heart.  The center.  So that is my lesson for the day.  Start at the center.

I will post pictures of the frock coat when I finally get it finished.

The Last Few Months....

..have gone by and I think about updating and then I think, but nothing has really happened.  So here is a shot at nothing.

I had knee surgery in October.  Just a scope, but I found out that knee replacements are definitely in my future.  They want me to work with what I have until I can't stand the pain any more.  The good news is that I have more movement in my right knee than I have had in years.  One of my problems is that I can sit for hours, but I should get up and move around every hour for about 10 minutes.  I just forget until it has been 3 hours and then I am all stiff.  Getting old is highly overrated.

Mary was Dorothy for Halloween.  Of course I didn't get any pictures.  I am so bad at remembering to get out the camera.  I bought a small camera because I thought I would get it out more often.  Well it got lost at the family reunion.  So I only have the big Rebel camera of Earl's.  I have learned a few things about getting a good picture, but it is so big.  But I digress. Mary had a great time being Dorothy.  She helped me figure out how to make her costume.  That is a tradition that we have.  I have always made her costumes and she loves dressing up all year long so they are well used.

Yesterday we had Family Thanksgiving with Grandma Hymas.  One of the activities that was suggested was to make gingerbread cookies.  Mom used to make them every Christmas and we would decorate them, put them in baggies tied with a twist tie, then use the twist tie and a means to hang the cookies on the tree.  The grand kids love the gingerbread and we figured out last night that the last time we decorated cookies for Thanksgiving was years ago when we all went to my brother's house in St George.  That was before I met Earl, so it was at least 12 years ago.  Those who stayed and made cookies had a great time.  Each person cut and decorated a full tray of cookies to take home.  Mary had so much fun.  She loves creative things.

Mary is doing well at school.  She has discovered Beverly Cleary.  Specifically Ramona Quimby.  She has asked for the whole Cleary library for Christmas.  She has all the Ramona books, so I am working on the Henry Huggins and Ralph the mouse books. Reading has really clicked for her this year.  I am so happy.  I learned to love reading as a child.  For many years we did not have a TV in our home.  Reading filled the time that most kids spent watching TV.  I am really glad that Mary has learned that reading is an enjoyable way to pass the time especially since if you don't know how to read, the rest of life is more difficult.  I'm hoping that at some point, she will pick up math as well.  For right now she is content to figure out equations each time she encounters them.  It won't be that easy once she starts on multiplication.  I had a hard time with multiplication as well so I hope that she eventually gets it.  I did.  I'm still no whiz at math but I can do anything that doesn't require algebra.

Mary has joined a local swim team so she swims with the team 3 days a week.  She is in the non-competitive group for right now so she mostly is practicing strokes and working at swimming 100 yards at a time.  On the other 3 days, she goes with me and she plays in the water and swims while I walk in the water.  The physical therapist suggested that exercising in the water will really help my knees.  It really helps that Mary loves the water so I don't get a chance to rationalize any excuses for not going.

We have a dog named Ben and a cat that mostly gets called Stupid Cat.  I have discovered something the last few days about these two.  When we are around Ben tries really hard to get the cat who stays just out of his reach.  If Ben can get the cat, we usually have to take the cat away from him.  The cat doesn't usually have life threatening damage but I don't really want to have a dead cat on my hands.  When they don't know that someone is watching, they are friends.  For instance, this morning Ben was laying on the icy driveway.  The cat was rubbing up against him like cats do.  Ben was allowing it until he saw that I was watching. (at least 5 minutes).  Then he snapped at the cat.  They just make me laugh.  I'm sure that by the end of this cold winter, they might be sleeping in the same pen.

We survived the blizzard warning on Tuesday.  It was an adventure that, in the end, wasn't too bad.  It was cold and the wind blew around in circles.  The power didn't go out and I didn't have to drive it so all was good.  It has been in the single digits temperature wise but we are good.  We have some friends in the ward who ask every week if they can help me out with anything.  So Wednesday morning I called and asked if they could come shovel my driveway.  No hesitation at all.  They said "sure we can do that for you."  Now mind you, I was speaking to the teenage boys and not their parents. I have complete faith in the next generation.  There are enough of them  that are good that the world will be okay in their hands.

And Mary turns 9 years old

Mary will be nine in 2 more days.  This year to celebrate her birthday, she wanted to go to a hotel (one of her most favorite things to do) invite a couple of friends and have a sleep over.  She also wanted it to be in Salt Lake with Salt Lake friends.  She has been so excited for this.  We finally got to the hotel at 7:00 on Friday.  That was 4 hours later than what we wanted it to be.  She wanted to check in as soon as they would let us.  But of course, I had some work I had to get done.  We ran late but finally the fun started.  We went swimming, ate pizza, watched Grease, polished fingernails and toenails.  Some wanted to go to sleep.  Some wanted to stay up.  Finally at 3:00 everyone was sleeping.  Then we had to get up at 8:00 that turned into 9:00.  Ate free hotel breakfast, went swimming.  Got to friends soccor game late. They won while we were driving around looking for the field. Hung out with same two friends until afternoon.  Went to cousins house to play and visit some more. Left way late and got home even later Saturday night.  Skipped church because we were so tired.  Still not quite caught up on sleep. But we had a lot of fun!

I should have pictures.  I took a camera and forgot to take pictures.  Earl left me a great camera that I barely know how to use.  I bought a smaller camera that fits in my pocket.  It has been lost.  Haven't seen it since the family reunion.  I have a camera on my phone.  I forget that it is there.  I have no pictures.