Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Lady in Yellow dress


When I read Leslie's blog today, I clicked on Carmi and saw all the buttons. The lady in yellow dress reminded me of Ruth. I don't know what her last name was, but in the summer my sisters and I would line on the front lawn of the Nugent house under those 200 year old pine trees and wait for Ruth to go to church. You can imagine how early we did this, since we then went to get dressed and went to church ourselves for 11 a.m. Even though my mother was a dressmaker we never got frilly dresses and everything was made so it could fit someone else when we grew. Ruth's mother obviously liked them, and Ruth wore them every Sunday. My favorite was the yellow one. Her hair would be all teased and everything. I always thought when I got so old that everyone would think I lost it I'd get myself one of those dresses and wear rumba panties with knee socks (another thing my mother did not do.) And lots of lace, and frills. Just like Baby Jane, from the movie. When we started to sew for ourselves we did some pretty things, but by then we were too old for frills and rumba panties and knee socks for that matter. We did make some pretty neat stuff though. My sister Donna had a really nice navy linen suit with a pink blouse and a "Virgin Pin" remember those. I only remember Alice making maternity pants, she was not a sewer. Although now that my mother is somewhat confused she gives Alice all her alterations. Barb was a great hemmer, she could do a hem like nobodies business (what ever that means). And Donna and Alice and Veronica had these pop tops that had three ruffles on the bottom, gingham if I remember correctly. I think I'm the only one that ended up sewing for a living. (Did I mention that I live in poverty). I have some lovely fabric though. I don't think my mother ever bought us any dresses everything was had sewn. I guess being a dressmaker it would be bad for business if your kids wore store bought clothes.To this day I have difficulty shopping for clothes. I have now set some criteria, I only sew wool, silk and linen and dress up clothing. As I don't go out much, I don't sew much. When I buy something I could have made, I hear my mother voice, "why couldn't you make that". If she only knew. All this talk of yellow dresses has made me think, I think I have a yellow dress started someplace. I know I must have fabric. Well I guess we know what I'm doing today. in the photo you'll see my mother made all our dresses, no frills, no knee sock. Donna, my cousin Kaz, Alice and Barb.

2 comments:

Leslie Jane Moran said...

RUMBA panties! That's so funny.

Anonymous said...

Hello Irenka
I see we are reliving a lot of memories. Ruth's last name was Henderson. Since I have a very good memory I can also tell you that the dress I had on was mauve and it was a hand me down from someone. It was nylon and hotter than hell and mom always made us wear a undershirt. I know that we liked to wear our socks to our knees, but mom would always roll them down (just like in our First Communion pictures). Oh yes, those dresses with all kinds of tucks (bottom, side and top), so as we grew the tucks got let out. Could you imagine me having this for my girls. Actually, the little dresses mom sewed for my girls also had those tucks.

Veronica, Donna and I would sew our baby doll dress or pop tops so we could go to the St. Nick's dances and be in style. We could not afford to buy new outfits for each dance since we had to save our babysitting money for entrance to the dance (25 or 35 cents). I would not have traded those days for anything.

Keep pulling out those memories and sharing with everyone.

Alusia

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