Clothing Care

Some of you are going to jump right to "crazy" but hear me out. I am making this Knitted Babe. A Babe has to have some clothes. I am not a sewster, but thought about cloth that I might have in The Stash. I have some. And, I remembered keeping some scraps of vintage cloth just in case I would have to mend a vintage quilt (yeah, right) or something. So, I moved a chair over to the counter, climbed up and drug a vintage picnic basket down off the kitchen cupboard and whalah. I located my stash of scraps. Now thinking, I do not even remember what kind of stuff is IN this picnic basket; however, we'll see.

The first piece on top is quite large. So, I took it out to find additional pieces in the bottom. I put the whole pile of fabric into the kitchen sink, started running luke-warm water and went to find the best mild, gentle fabric soap that I have. For those of you who keep up with my underwear life, you know that I just invested in an accoutrement of uplifting bras and had to purchase special soap, too.

So, now for the crazy part. The large piece that I washed was this dress. I soooo do not know why it did not make its way directly into the trash upon acquisition.

Here's the NOT crazy part. I think I valued the care that was taken to elongate the life of this dress. I think this is the vision that made me keep the tattered piece--I can see a woman, of cookie-and-bar-baking fame, wearing it, wiping flour on the pocket areas. She rode her bike along a gravel road (cookies in a tin in the bike basket) to church to sell her cookies at the bake sale. So many of the stitches in this dress and its patches are done by hand. This woman knew how to darn a sock. She probably milked a cow in her day. If you asked her for a bobby pin, she would go upstairs to the little jar she kept them in to retrieve one. She still uses them.

So, not so crazy about the dress?

I am sure that I aquired the dress pre- digitally. I now value the ability to give this dress its due. I can take pictures, upload them, and put them up to share.

I'm still keeping the dress. Crazy.