A 1780s Portrait Dress for Annie

 Annie and I have been eyeing Sensibility's Portrait Dress for a while now (I've actually been eyeing it for years). 

I finally decided to make a wearable muslin of it in a thrifted yellow floral fabric.  We chose to fully line it with a white cotton sheet, and use the white cotton for the sleeve ruffles and the sash. 

I've made a few dresses in my day, but I was a little confused at times with this pattern.  I also made a few minor, yet sloppy, errors.  On the whole, however, I was very pleased with it! My favorite thing?  The fully-lined construction which hid all inside seams (except for the armscye). This makes it so comfortable! And it feels very *high quality* even though it's simply made from thrifted materials. 

Annie is ten and a half years old, but quite slim.  After measuring her, I cut out a size 8, but cut the skirt length to fit size 10. It was just right. 

My goal was to have the dress finished in time to wear to Williamsburg, for obvious reasons! It's as close to a colonial style as we could probably get.  She loved wearing this "around town." I wish I could show you her face--she's so sweet.  So happy! 

The dress fastens with hook-and-eyes, which set my teeth on edge sewing them.  Annie and I spent no small amount of time in Tarpley, Thompson, and Company (the clothing store in Colonial Williamsburg), obsessing over the details of dress construction.  We decided to make the Portrait Dress again, but this time: *make a shift to wear underneath *fasten with ribbon ties (the girls' dresses in the shop were fastened this way!)  *create an underskirt  *create slits in the side seams for pockets *sew pockets (back in the day, the pockets were independent of the dress--you just tie a band around your waist with your "pockets" hanging down, and reach through your dress to access them)

Don't look too closely--there's a bit of sloppy construction here.  And the sash turned out way too short! But no matter.  She's a happy girl. 

I am going to make another iteration of this dress using fabric that I have in my stash, and then we will cut into the 3 yards of reproduction fabric we purchased at the shop in Williamsburg. Annie chose it: blue and white floral.  We also purchased a long matching blue sash.  I will make the back ties out of the floral fabric, so they blend in with the dress, and the ruffles on the sleeves will also be out of the dress fabric.  Oh!  It will be a delight to behold. 

I love Annie at this age: so refreshingly confident in what she loves, so un-self-conscious in her enthusiasms, so dear.  

Many, many thanks to Jennie Chancey (the owner/designer of Sensibility patterns) for making beautiful historical sewing so accessible, and making my little Annie's vision come to life! Maybe her mother needs an Edwardian walking skirt.....

Summer Maelstrom

 The past few weeks have been a true whirlwind, and I'm only now taking the time to stop (for a few minutes!) and update my blog. So. Much. Has. Happened!

In early August, my father was diagnosed with colon cancer.  This was a blow.  His mother--my beloved Grandma Polly--died of colon cancer in 1997.  So of course there's a sort of familial fear.  But fortunately, thank God, thank God, it was found early. (My grandmother's was only found after it had spread to her liver and lungs.) He was quickly scheduled for surgery, and that happened at MUSC in Charleston last Friday. He was released from the hospital on Monday. To our great surprise, he was eating real foods less than 24 hours after colon removal and re-sectioning.  Excellent!  So far, he's doing great.  His surgeon is confident that he got all of the cancer, with clean margins, and now we await the pathology report.  If it comes back showing that the lymph nodes they removed are clear and clean, then he will not have to have chemotherapy, which would be the greatest blessing and would absolutely make my year.  Chemotherapy is so hard.  I just pray, pray, pray he can avoid it.  We are hopeful! We should know in another week or so. 

I finally decided to give away my antique upright piano, and mentioned it casually to my neighbor, who mentioned it to a few of her friends.  Well--one friend wanted it! (if you've ever tried to give away a piano, you know this is miraculous. No one wants pianos anymore, which is so sad!)  This is a beast of a piano: ivory keys, weighs more than anything you've ever moved (truly), just an incredible instrument that is something like 125 years old.  However, having two pianos in a house that is 1700 square feet seemed excessive.  This was my piano from infancy; after my Grandma Nina died, my grandfather really wanted Finn to have her piano, because we have such sweet memories of them "playing" on it together. Grandma's piano was moved down here several years ago and resides in our living room; the old piano resides in our basement/schoolroom, primarily because it cannot be moved up stairs! I always joked that it would convey with the house.  

In any case, I found a sweet Mennonite lady who wants it!  And we lined up to have it moved the night before my family was supposed to go on vacation. In order to get it out of our house, we literally had to move every stick of furniture in our basement (schoolroom, sewing area/laundry room) except the sectional sofa.  But that night we got our first rain in weeks, so we had to cancel the moving.  But there's no reason to move the furniture back into place, so it's all shuffled right now, waiting for the big move--which is supposed to happen this evening.  (I told her to send no less than six strong men.  " At least," my husband confirmed.) Suffice to say we've been doing schoolwork at the dining room table this week, and I cannot WAIT to get my basement back into order! 

We began school "lite" on Monday, since that's when Finn's online classes began.  But lo, the learning curve was real.  The software wasn't super-intuitive, and we had some tech issues on Monday.  I spent an hour on the phone with my husband, who was chatting with the tech support, before we got it all figured out.  Finn placed into French 2, and is brand new to the online class format, whereas his classmates all took French 1 last year and know what they are doing!  But we're learning quickly.  And his teacher told me he has a "beautiful accent," which is true.  :) We've had to learn how to find assignments, navigate the group v. moderator chat, change our keyboard settings to be able to use French shortcuts, and a myriad of other random things that were quite foreign to us, little homeschoolers who typically just read books.  But it is all sorting itself out, and I'm confident that Finn will do well.  He came out of his first Biology class yesterday beaming and thrilled.  "I LOVE THIS CLASS!!!!!" he enthused.  

He's also loving his history readings, and we began listening to A Tale of Two Cities together on Audible.  So we're off and running, and Spanish begins next week. 

Finally, my family enjoyed a very nice "just the four of us" vacation last week.  I'll post more on that soon! 

Add to this activities, the last bits of pool time, ordering new countertops, a job change for my sister (a wonderful change!), and multiple doctor and dental appointments, and whew. It has been a month! I'm thankful for the opportunities and the commitments, and try to always keep my heart focused on what matters most, and feel genuine gratitude for a full and healthy life.  Finn has four years left at home....I'm soaking it all in.  I know it will pass by in the blink of an eye. 

Fifth Grade for Annie

We began school this week--ow, my head hurts.  The learning curve for Finn's two online classes has been so steep!  Annie's schooling is so much more my speed! Here's what she's doing this year:

*Math: She uses Horizons. I love it for her! It's really perfect for us: colorful, spiral, easy to teach, and challenging enough without being overwhelming. 

*Language Arts: this year I decided to try to inject a bit of formality and use Learning Language Arts through Literature. I wanted something that would be, for lack of a better way to put it, "open and go," but still a gentle approach. So far I love, love, love it.  It's not full of nonsense busywork, it's based on quality literature, and it just fits us very well so far. I'll give another update after the first semester or so!

*History/Literature: Annie picked Early American History to study this year.  We chose Beautiful Feet Books, but I purchased the "old" version of their Early American history, which is quite different from the new version they just rolled out this year. I am not sure why they made these changes, because the "old" version has some great books! In any case, this week I got so busy with Finn's needs that Annie volunteered to read the books herself--I'd planned to read aloud to her.  That's going great!  The readings so far are perfectly-suited to her level and she's narrating very well after she reads.  I'm so thankful. 

*Handwriting: we continue to try to tame Annie's handwriting into legibility with A Reason for Handwriting ("transition" level, so she begins cursive this year).

*For science, I divided Jean-Henri Fabre's Storybook of Science into weekly assignments, and we are reading through that this year.  She will do a drawing narration in her science notebook (it's from Riverbend Press--I love their notebooks!) at least once a week. 

*She will do a simple geography workbook to practice map skills--it will probably only take about half the year. We won't even start this until sometime in September. 

*Annie is taking an upper elementary Spanish class for fun--same wonderful teachers Finn has.  

*Annie's best friend is homeschooling this year, so I'm hosting a three-hour "book club" for the girls once a week.  My vision is to do poetry, Shakespeare, and a book discussion together, then work on crochet/knitting, and then they can play.  Once a month or so I also hope to do some sort of seasonal activity, and I am going to ask each girl to bake something as a treat to bring once a month as well; I'll bake a treat on the weeks I don't assign someone baking. 

*We continue to do "morning time"together--a prayer, a hymn, Bible readings, read-aloud, Shakespeare, poetry, a bit of Plutarch, artist and composer studies, etc....but not all of it, every day! Just the first four every day, and then a bit longer on Fridays for Shakespeare, etc.  This may be my favorite part of homeschooling. :) 

*Annie and Finn are both doing a robotics club/competition this fall. 

*Annie has been accepted into a local ballet company, so ballet will consume a lot of time: two 2-hour classes per week, plus four hours of mandatory rehearsals on Saturdays.  And we live 35 minutes from the studio.  But although she's only 10, she is super-focused on ballet and I want to support her in this.  She has been obsessed with ballet since she saw "Swan Lake" as a toddler! This is her sixth year of classes, and she's an extremely hard worker.  I'm thankful that she has this opportunity, even though it does mean a lot of sacrifice and work (50 hours of parent volunteer time?  yes) on my part as well. 

*And finally, violin lessons!

Annie is our social, extroverted child, and I'm pleased that every day she will have *some* sort of social outlet: book club, ballet, Spanish, ballet again, robotics, ballet again.  (Finn is a bit more like me: happy to curl into a ball and read a book for days without talking.) Her actual schooling is very simple (math + a bit of language arts + reading lots of books), which is perfect for her and for me.  

So far this week she got all of her work done easily by noon, she spent several hours with one friend at the pool on Monday, then she spent several hours with other friends at the lake on Tuesday, attended hours of ballet and robotics, and has plowed through several novels.  I'd say Annie's fifth grade year is off to a great start.  

It is a joy to spend my time with my children, and such a privilege to homeschool them. I am so grateful for this life!