The Curious Case of Megan's Garter

Taylor and I were invited to a bridal shower last week. Taylor will be standing up as one of the bridesmaids. When I can, I try to make the bride a garter. I have been making bridal garters for about 30 years now. You'd think that I would have a better handle on them by now.

I suppose that part of my problem is the lace. The lace that is available in my town comes from Hobby Lobby, Joann's and Hancock Fabrics. Have you looked at this stuff lately? Very plasticky. I have a container of assorted laces. However, my bridal laces are dwindling. I was hoping to score some schiffli lace when I was at Mary Jo's in North Carolina. Unfortunately, they didn't have what I was looking for. What I want is about a 4 inch schiffli lace flounce. It can be flat trim lace. I can deal with that and gather it myself. I want my bridal garters to have a romantic, somewhat Victorian look to them. I don't want them to look like they were purchased in Vegas at a show girl convention. I'm lucky that I do have some nice 3 inch chantilly lace but I guess I still prefer schiffli. It is a delicate Swiss lace. Have I ever mentioned that I'm part Swiss? Maybe that is why I have an affinity to this lace.

There are two regions in the world that were powerhouses in lace manufacturing. One being St. Gallen, Switzerland where my mother's ancestors are from. The second area is Northern New Jersey. I can only guess that these textile areas have been affected by the economy and goods being produced in the Orient. I can remember over 20 years ago when the bridal gown companies started to use lace from the Orient. It was then called "Oriental" lace. The name sounded kind of exotic. I would think that that term isn't used any more. It's not exotic lace, at least not anymore. True beautiful laces come from the Swiss, the French, the English and America. I know that these laces are very expensive, but can I have a choice please? Oh my, it looks like I've hijacked my own post and gotten on my soap box. I better step down!

As Megan's shower was approaching, I was getting fearful that I would have to make a boring garter, at least by my definition of boring. I found a beautiful site for lace. What they had was perfect. However, it was located in Australia. That wasn't going to work. So here I sat, majorly worried that I wasn't going to find anything. Then I hit Ebay. I ended up scoring some 6 inch trim Schiffli lace. The lace is longer than I wanted but I thought I could work with it.

A couple of days before the shower, I dyed the lace and the silk ribbon in a tea bath. The tea dyeing only took about 30-60 seconds. So armed with all my laces and ribbons, I started to put the garter together the night before the shower. Usually what happens when I'm working with lace, I take out anything that will remotely work. So on my living room sofa, I had different ribbons and laces to audition. I wanted a little bit of color in the garter, not just a plain ivory. My goal was to use silk ribbon embroidery in a muted purple. The bridesmaid dresses are a dark purple but I didn't want to go that dark for the garter. So I was lucky enough to have a great purple in my ribbon stash. I snipped a little medallion off of some Venice lace that I had. This would be my base for the silk ribbon embroidery. I wish the medallion would have been a tad larger but it worked ok I guess.

This garter was constructed and designed similarly to past garters that I had made. The difference being the size of the lace. The flounce was a couple of inches wider than normal and I think the little lace "posy" was about an 1/2 to 1 inch wider than normal. So what resulted was an over-the-top, cupcake, kind of garter. Taylor didn't like the flounce. I didn't like the lace posy thing on the top. And Jeff, well, he is expanding his sense of fashion flair. He loved it. He didn't want me to touch it. Taylor wanted me to take off the ruffle. That wasn't going to happen. You see, I decided to opt for real silk ribbon. It is strong, yet delicate. The silk did not like going over the feed dogs. I knew that if I took this garter apart, the silk ribbon wouldn't look the same.

I decide to go to bed and think about the problem and how am I going to fix it. The next morning after a large pot of coffee, I decided I had no choice but to deconstruct the garter. So I started to clip the threads, one layer at a time. I then put the bows and silk ribbon embroidery back on. As I look at the photo from the cupcake version, it doesn't look too bad. But trust me, in real life, it was so over done.

Lessons learned. Too much of a good thing is usually not a good thing. The lace netting at the top of the trim should have been trimmed at least 1-2 inches. I probably won't make to many garters out of silk ribbon anymore. Yes, the ribbon has such a glorious feel to it. But once the ribbon is gathered and bunched up, can you really feel the difference? A polyester satin ribbon might be a better choice for the heavy treatment that it takes to put the garter together.

Paper Bodice Take One

This is the start of the bridal gown. I decided to work up the bodice in Swedish Tracing Paper. You can actually sew this paper together. I'm glad I did a mock up in paper, even before I started a muslin. I don't know if you can tell, but the princess seam lines do not lay over thebust apex. The arm holes are too small and I think the length of the bodice is not correct. So, I'm going to make another paper bodice. I'll move it up a size and see if I like how things lay. I also need to do a little more chiseling on the neckline. It is still a tad to high. Then we'll graduate to muslin.

Holy Vintage Batman!

My husband and his aunt Arlene had traveled back to Nebraska. Jeff had called and said that he needed to stretch so they stopped at a large antique mall in Des Moines. His first call was to say that there was a Victorian blouse. This was an interesting coversation between Jeff and I. I'm asking Jeff about lace and fabric content. I didn't want a reproduction. He eventually put it back but called me a few minutes later. He said he stumbled upon some vintage patterns. I think he did pretty good. There are many patterns that do not have the copyright date on them. You can get a feel for the age by the envelope size, the pattern company, the coloring of the pattern front, etc. He brought home 26 patterns. There were a few from 1945. He knew that I really didn't want any 1960's, I'm kind of picky on those. But he brought home some children's patterns from the 60's. I was ok with those choices. I can work with those. Some of the patterns he bought are Hollywood, Advance, DuBarry and Sears & Robuck. These companies aren't in business anymore. Hollywood patterns ceased to exist after WWII. DuBarry was sold exclusively at Woolworths and stopped production around 1947. If you've never seen a vintage pattern, they look a bit different than what we are used to today. There are no seam lines, no dart lines, no markings or printing period. What they do have is little holes punched where the markings should go.

What I really need to do is to purchase some archival plastic bags to store these puppies in. Big hugs to Jeff and Arlene for such a great score.

Today, Jeff was getting tired of being in the office. Poor guy. All winter long he's at his desk from sun up to way late in the evening. He wanted to go to one of the antique malls nearby. Today, I found the booth that I have previously purchased from. The booth had all items 30% off. The buttons that I bought certainly were cheaper than had I gone Joann's or Hancocks. I picked up two packages of leather buttons for $2.40 each.

Floral Class, Week 2

This week in class we worked on a parallel garden arrangement. This is an arrangement that is really only meant to be seen from one side. You would typically see this type of arrangement on an alter or at a funeral home. Since it's only seen from one side, you would be wasting money putting flowers on both sides of the arrangement.

What the instructor does for each arrangement is to write the "recipe" of the arrangement on the board. We go to the back of the room and pick out the "ingredients". Now, all we know is that we need three tulips or two fuji's, etc. At this point, we don't know what the arrangement will look like. There is usually at least three colors of each flower. We take that we think will work together. I wanted to do a red and yellow arrangement. He then shows us how we need to make our arrangement. You can see that the same colors are on the same side of the arrangement. Sometimes that gives you a striking look but I don't think it worked for this arrangement. It wasn't an intentional thing, just how his recipe and my color choices worked out. You can see that Whitney's arrangement is different because of her color choices.

Our second arrangement of the evening was a candle centerpiece. Whitney picked out white mums and I picked yellow. The white mums were larger but fewer of them on the stems than the yellow. Whitney's arrangement looks more balanced. Mine is very crowded. My flowers were smaller but there were quite a few more on the stems. The German in me wasn't going to throw them away so I kept adding them into my arrangement. Obviously, Whitney scored higher on her project. My arrangement is very crowded.

Quilt Retreat March 2010

It was retreat time once again. I think this was one of my most productive retreats ever. Lately I haven't been happy with my free motion quilting. My friend Pat had found these little silicon washers that you put under the bobbin. Apparently, machines with a drop-in bobbin have more issues than the vertical bobbin. Well, I used the Magic Bobbin along with my new spring foot and I finally had success. I was able to finally finish cowboy quilt #2. Hooray! I also started to machine quilt Lauren's Christmas quilt. I had to wait until I got up to camp so I could use the large space to pin her quilt.

In addition to quilting, I made a few items for Jacqi's new shop. I worked on a little pair of boys cargo pants. I made three pair of little girls ruffled pants. I also bartered for fabric. I know, like I don't already have enough. I walked by Gretchen as she was cutting some fabric and thought it would be a fun piece to make a little outfit out of. So we struck up a deal. I made her little 3 year old a twirl skirt and I got to keep the rest of the fabric. The fabric is tie-dyed with multicolored thread running thru it.

I also finished up my mug rug for this retreat. I still don't have the binding on the mug rug from last time. That mug rug is also too large. I may have to trim it down.

I thought I had taken a picture with more shop samples but I didn't see it on my camera. Several of us had worked on samples for Jacqi. There were so cute items made out of really cool prints. I can't wait to see how they are all displayed in the store.

Floral Design Class Week 1

Whitney and I decided to take a six week floral design class. We are thinking that we can do the wedding flowers ourselves. So we are doing lots of research in addition to the class. If for some reason we feel that we won't get the desired results, then we will turn to a florist. Our family is pretty crafty so between my girls and my sisters, I think we can pull it off.

Each week we will be making two arrangements. That will include corsages, hand-tied bridal bouquet, a funeral arrangement, etc. Yes the class covers just about everything.

Week one, we designed an arrangement for a vase and an arrangement with an oasis.

We're Talking Turkey Today

A couple of weeks ago, we had someone over at the house to look at the floors. While we were talking, the flooring guy made a statement about the wildlife that we had. I thought he was just making a general comment but turned around and all these turkeys were in our back yard. I'm like "Excuse me, but I have to go get my camera". I went out onto the back deck and started clicking away. Jeff was upset that I went outside. He said that the big Tom's were just starting to walk in the yard and I scared them away.