Tag: Spring 2024

Enjoying the End of Year Festivities

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This week was full of fun activities—the end of year film festival for Rachel, Nathaniel’s final middle school band concert, and the senior honors night for Renaissance.  It’s so much fun to see the culmination of everyone’s hard work at the end of the year, and, in Ren’s case, at the end of her K-12 school career.

Top priorities this week:

  • Graduation & recital clothing
  • Graduation quilt progress
  • Party decorations & ordering progress
  • Planting last of plants in garden
  • June’s hymns

Celebrate

Graduation party preparations are going well.  My credit card fraud department gave me a call this week to make sure my card hadn’t been stolen because I’m ordering large quantities of things from businesses that I don’t normally do business with, so that was a funny little moment.  We will have shelter from the weather and ways to keep the food warm.  Excellent party prepping.

I made a lot of progress on the signature quilt as well; all pieces have their top and bottom borders.  I’ve had a number of requests to mail blocks to people who will be unable to attend the party, and I need to get those out in the mail.  I ordered more of the white fabric because I think I’m going to have to either make a bigger quilt or incorporate some signatures blocks into the backing, which is an awesome “problem” to have.  It’s so nice that people want to share their good memories and well wishes with Renaissance.  She’s such a kind soul.

We went to a graduation party for Renaissance’s friend Riley on Saturday. We’re really there! Graduation things are happening! It was such a nice event; there were all sorts of band families there and lots of great people who are involved with the school in some fashion. Riley’s mother, Chrissy, has been involved with everything forever and wow, does that ever create a fantastic village for your kid when you do that. Good food, good friends, and the best picture wall I’ve ever seen done. It was lovely.

Gardening

I haven’t planted my remaining plants in the garden yet because budgetary constraints dictated that I wait until next week to purchase the planting containers and extra potting soil.  It’ll be fine.  Nathaniel is so pleased that we’re going to have raspberries and Rachel is really looking forward to her strawberries.  It makes me so happy to stoke their interests in gardening; it’s such a great hobby and skill to develop for their adult years.

It’s rained a lot this week, so the plants are well-watered and I haven’t been out to check on anything too much.  From my kitchen window it doesn’t look like the slugs have been getting to anything, so I’m optimistic that we got the majority of them killed whilst weeding over Memorial Day weekend.  Fingers crossed!

Community

I haven’t touched anything church music this week, which is OK because I always post a month’s hymns through the next month’s Fast Sunday, so we’re fine.  I’ll get June’s hymns finalized and posted during church on Sunday.

Highlights

Nathaniel’s concert was so great.  I am just so impressed with our music programs in our school district.  Proud to be a part of it all.  Nathaniel had a big part in one of the songs they played where it looked like his arms weren’t even connected to his body because he was drumming so fast.  So proud of him.

Renaissance participated in the elementary school walk through this week where the seniors go to their old elementary schools in their caps and gowns and parade about and talk to their old teachers, which I think is the cutest idea ever.  Since she didn’t attend elementary school here she decided to go to the elementary school where she volunteered and read to children last year, so some of the teachers knew her anyway.  It was even topped off with the PE parachute being brought out for the seniors to play with one last time.  Because honestly, gym parachute was peak elementary school enjoyment.  What a fun week for her.

At the Honors Award Ceremony Renaissance was awarded cords for a high GPA and having 50+ hours of community service, and she received her stole for National Honor Society.  A wonderful surprise that evening was the announcement that she’d been awarded two $1,000 scholarships from our community’s scholarship foundation!  Those scholarships will cover her expenses for her first quarter of pastry school!  We are so grateful for our community’s contribution to her post-high school education, and proud of her for doing all the work to earn those awards.

Renaissance will be playing her flute during Baccalaureate next week, and so she was flipping through our church’s hymn book and all the flute books for church and asking me if specific hymns were LDS-oriented only or if they were well-known in other denominations, and it was nice way to spend an hour together.  I was pressing quilt blocks and making my guesses and she was confirming with some internet research, and we learned a lot about different songs, some that I would have guessed were only known to the LDS church and then we’d find out that it’s been around since the 1600s and we’d laugh at our silliness.  I’ve missed doing church music stuff with my kids—I’m proud of their work in the school bands and choirs, but church music was where they started and I’ve always enjoyed doing that with them.  We figured out which hymns would be recognizable to people of other Christian faiths as well and she created her program from those choices.

Lowlights

I have a smattering of ant bites on my left wrist and hand from a Memorial Day gardening mishap and they have swelled up angry and red and they’ve itched and ached all week long.  I look like I have some sort of communicable disease. 

Rachel asked that her final film project NOT be shown at the film festival. She was heartbroken over how all it shook out. She loves making films, but this was a group project gone sour. Thankfully, her teacher respected her wishes and didn’t show the film.

The five-year-old dishwasher developed a hole in one of its hoses and leaked all over the kitchen and ruined the wood floor we had installed just a few years ago from when the fridge developed a leak and ruined the wood floors.  This is bad for three reasons:  1) The floor is warped and absolutely ruined, 2) We’re hesitant to make another claim on our homeowner’s insurance and risk our rates going through the roof, and 3) Our family must handwash the dishes until the replacement dishwasher shows up next week, and a family of six creates a lot of dirty dishes.  It’s been a moderate source of stress.  One of my work arounds has been to have whoever is on dish duty to start working while I prepare dinner.  I like the results so much that I may keep this arrangement going in the future.  *silver linings*

Another week done and dusted! Oh, next week will see me on the verge of tears pretty much every day…I’m so proud of my girl, but so sad that her little childhood is ending. I have absolutely loved being a mama to these sweet people. I’m excited to see where adulthood will take them, but do I ever miss pigtails and brown paper bag puppets. There will be new cool things! I just don’t know what they are yet, and that’s ok.

The Beginning of Renaissance’s Graduation Signature Quilt

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I’m a huge believer in the power of a debriefing at the end of a project, event or era.  I think it’s monstrously constructive and therapeutic to take a minute to pause and reflect over the past [whatever] and feel all the feelings and think through the highlights, lowlights, and ways to improve in the future.  I love reading the wisdom of those who’ve been through it before me and I love celebrating the wins.

I also love the idea of heirlooms and traditions, and I’m hoping to solidly get some things established in that category with Renaissance’s graduation party.  I’ve been researching so many different ideas for her graduation party and one thing that popped up was having a signature quilt that people could sign for the graduate.  I had been thinking about a book of wisdom or index cards with words of wisdom or something like that, but the problem with those is that they get tucked away in a box and rarely seen ever again, and a signature quilt could be a tangible reminder of all the great things people have to say about you and what they hope for you, left out for memory jogging and having the potential to really become a part of your early adult years and memories.  And, really, HELLO—quilt.

So I started looking around for a possible pattern and stumbled across this post, which featured a quilt pattern that I’m mighty familiar with, seeing that I was one of the debut sewists for it when Fat Quarter Shop released the pattern back in 2020:  The Jelly Belly Bars quilt.  It’s an easy sew and it uses precuts, and that’s what I need right now.

I texted Ren and told her to choose a jelly roll from Fat Quarter Shop* and was not surprised at all when she decided to go with the Here Kitty, Kitty fabric collection by Stacey Iest Hsu*.  Renaissance and Quesnel have been joined at the armpit since Quesnel joined our family almost fourteen years ago, so cat fabric makes complete sense.  I’m pleased that she picked out something by Stacey Iest Hsu as well, as my kids’ childhoods have had many of her fabric collections and dolls hanging around in the background.  It’s a perfectly fitting choice for an end-of-childhood memory project for my girl.

My plan is to sew up the individual blocks and have a quilt block-signing table at her graduation party.  I’ve also extended the invitation to loved ones who will not be able to travel to her party to contribute a block to the quilt, whether I send them a Jolly Bar-sized (5×10-inches) piece of fabric or they cut fabric themselves.  It’s been a good reception thus far!

These next few weeks are going to be an absolute flurry of graduation activities and party preparation, but I’ll try to show updates on this quilt when I get the chance!

*Affiliate link: When you click an affiliate link in one of my posts and make a purchase from that vendor, I receive a small commission at no cost to you.

I Feel Graduation at my Back, Breathing down my Neck

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Alright friends, we are gearing up for the true craziness of graduation and end-of-school season.  I’m a little jealous of my Utah friends who are already done with their kids’ school year, just as I’m only really beginning to get going with the end of ours.  At least all the work is comprised of good things, right?  It’s busy, and busy isn’t a bad thing.

Cooking

This week’s meal plan:

  • Monday: Memorial Day BBQ
  • Tuesday: Orange Chicken bowls
  • Wednesday: Pork burritos
  • Thursday: Leftovers/Something easy
  • Friday: BBQ Chicken
  • Saturday: BBQ, etc.
  • Sunday: Warm Goat Cheese and Chicken Salad

Clothing

  • Just keep trying to get on top of the laundry
  • Tailor Rachel’s new church dresses, if I can find the time
  • Go through bag of boy clothes that I found in closet and see if they’ll fit Nathaniel
  • Rotate out cold weather wardrobes, if I can find the time
  • Make sure everyone has clothes for graduation
  • Check fit of Ren’s recital dress, make plans for tailoring if needed

Cleaning

  • Clean oven
  • Clean pantry
  • Clean toaster (Let’s be honest, this is the only one that has a shot at being completed this week!)

Caring

  • Try to do more drives with Emily, but the schedule is super tight this week
  • Caring will be accomplished simply by making sure everyone is fed and showing up to things on-time this week

Creativity

  • I’d like to be 25% done with Renaissance’s graduation quilt by the end of the week.
  • I need to start working on the bunting for her grad party decorations
  • I’m learning how to make graduation leis as well, and would like to finish three of them to hand out at graduation next week.

Gardening

  • Goodness, am I glad we did all that work over the weekend.  Good job, Memorial Day Weekend Brooke Family!
  • Need to plant the berries in containers
  • Need to plant corn and beans.  I might throw pumpkins into the same patch to test out the whole “Three Sisters” idea.  Kids are onboard to find out if it truly works.
  • Need to play front porch containers.
  • Lawn feeding

Celebrating

  • Renaissance will get a lot of opportunities to wear her graduation cap and gown throughout the next week.  I didn’t realize how many different things she was going to be doing in that getup.  I’ll have to stay on top of steaming/ironing the gown so it doesn’t look wrinkly.
  • I need to do a lot of ordering of supplies for the grad party.
  • Get creative work done now so I can free up time to work on food later.
  • Taskify food preparation
  • Submit rental orders
  • Respond to people who have offered to lend supplies
  • Get recital program squared away

Community

  • I’m about to have another calling in the next week or two, whenever they officially call me, and I’ll need to organize that.  I’m going to ease into that calling rather slowly because I am monstrously busy right now.  I should have told them I could launch into the calling following Ren’s grad party and to hold off until that date, but I wasn’t thinking at that moment.  Sigh.
  • I need to get June’s hymns squared away and posted
  • I have new ministering sisters and assignments and I need to make contact and figure all that out
  • Band Boosters follow-ups
  • Check on available water bottles for graduation

Top priorities this week:

  • Graduation & recital clothing
  • Graduation quilt progress
  • Party decorations & ordering progress
  • Planting last of plants in garden
  • June’s hymns

Alright, off I go to do all the things!  I wish you a productive week as well.

The Month of May Churns Away

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I cannot believe that it is still the month of May.  So much has been going this month that is seems like it’s been two months in one.  What a busy, fun time of year!

Top priorities this past week:

  • Get grad party invitations out
  • Get Christmas tree down
  • Garden
  • Cleaning
  • Laundry

Celebrate

Graduation party invitations are almost all mailed or delivered, yay!

The Christmas trees are officially dismantled and stored away until November.  For future reference, Future Cara, it only took an hour to take down the giant Christmas tree, so stop dragging your feet about it in the future.  And also, Future Cara, you are freakishly busy from January through May for the next four years, so take down the Christmas stuff before the New Year.  Just do yourself that favor.  Please.

Garden

It’s radish season!  I need to spend some quality time with my mandoline slicer in the next weeks.  We’ve not eaten a lot of radishes as a family, but boy howdy are my kids going to get some exposure in coming days!  I purposely planted a purple variety in the hopes that it will make Rachel happier about eating them.

One of my big plans for the Memorial Day weekend is to get the garden and yard cleaned up and we spent a big chunk of yesterday doing that.  There’s still so much work to do, but we got a lot of the worst of it done so I’m hoping that tomorrow’s work will see it through to the end of everything. 

There are so many signs of potential in the garden right now from the little bits of work that we’ve been doing up until now.  It’s so exciting to watch spring burst onto the scene.  I really, really love seasons and how everything changes and has signs about new parts of life on the horizon.  There’s so much excitement in nature!

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Cleaning

Prom preparation messes have been cleaned up.  I also ordered a storage box for fancy hair accessories so we can store them out of the way during most of the year and be able to find them easily when the next dance rolls around.  Ren and Rachel have amassed a beautiful collection of formal hair accessories over the years, and it’d be a shame to lose them.

Prom dress construction has almost been cleaned up.  I just need to clean up the leftover fabrics and I’m dreading opening the tote bins of apparel fabric and potentially finding out there’s no room for the prom dress scraps.  I’m making myself write that down because it’s such a silly reason to be avoiding a task, and hopefully, by writing it out and acknowledging how ridiculous it is, I’ll be extra motivated to just bite the bullet and get this rather simple task done.

My back was hurting a lot this week from overdoing it in my Tuesday workout, so I didn’t get a lot more cleaning done.  I traded off for getting a lot of office work and grad party planning done.

Clothing

I made a little bit of a dent in the looming folding pile.  It’s nice to reclaim the space that’s been storing the laundry bins of clean clothes .

Highlights

Nathaniel had his last Cross Country meet this week.  All season long he has consistently run his 2 miles in 15:55-16:05 minutes.  All season long.  After his last race he quickly logged on to the website that reports their times and a look of disbelief and then joyful surprise crossed his face:  Somehow, even after having to take a week off of practices due to being sick all last week, he shaved off an entire minute and finished his race with a time of 14:55!  He was a very happy boy for the rest of the evening.

Renaissance had her final band concert and it was such a great evening.  She had a solo in jazz band, the entire concert was fun and upbeat and sincerely impressive with the music each group was playing, and then we had a reception afterwards with cake and treats and a tear-inducing slideshow of the seniors throughout their band years.  I really, really love being a band mom and I’ve really enjoyed all these years of helping her make music with her friends.  It is incredibly sad that this part of her life is over.  I think the only thing that keeps me from being downright depressed about is seeing how excited she is to begin the next phase of her life and her pastry chef training.

Emily and I went out for lunch on Thursday and had a great conversation about her future plans.  I don’t want to get my hopes up too much too early, but it feels like she’s starting to get to the end of working through some of the hang-ups that have been plaguing her for the past couple of years and is getting ready to surge forward into adulthood.  Sometimes you just need a little extra time to sort stuff out, right?  It’s scary to allow that time to take place, but we might be getting to the end of the tunnel.  At any rate, she seems to be less anxious about things, which is such a relief.  The high schoolers that were in the thick of it during COVID have really struggled with a lot of stuff ever since.  Perhaps normalcy is starting to catch back up with them finally?

On Wednesday, when my back was twinging the worst, I gave myself permission to go down a research rabbit hole, partly because I was in too much pain to think logically and partly in the hopes that doing crafty research would help me relax and send the message to my muscles that they could also relax.  I spent multiple hours tracking down as much information as I could about bead embroidery and beaded embellishments because I want to continue making formal dresses, but I’m finding that even if you make a gorgeous dress it often needs a little dose of embellishment to truly make it sing, and I think the skill of bead embroidery would be absolutely fantastic to fill that void.  I’m thinking about dedicating time over the next year to learning the skill so I can apply it to next year’s prom dresses.

Lowlights

  • Wednesday’s back pain.  Totally did it to myself because I was enjoying my workout on Tuesday and decided to go for far too long in it.  Consistency and moderation win the race, not frenzied extremes.  This is a battle I fight in my soul on a daily  basis.
  • I hit a flock of baby birds with my van as I was driving to work on Friday.  Not my best Disney Princess moment.

It was a really good week, despite the few setbacks. This really is a lovely time of year and I’m excited for what’s coming our way in the upcoming weeks! End of school year is exciting, exhausting, and fun.

Summer is just around the corner…

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Hello and happy new week to you!  I’ve got a rather normal week ahead of me, which is a very nice thing after all the stress of prom dress sewing, and I’m hoping to just get chores and laundry caught up.  There’s a few end-of-school-year events sprinkled throughout, but they mostly just require me to show up and watch; not a lot of work required on my part.

Cooking

This week’s meal plan:

  • Monday: Thai Spicy Chicken Enchiladas, Peas, Lemony Quinoa
  • Tuesday: Meatloaf, Lemon-roasted potatoes w/ oregano, Green Bean Salad w/ Mustard seeds, Herbs & Baby Chard
  • Wednesday: Spaghetti, Caesar, French bread/garlic bread
  • Thursday: Leftovers
  • Friday: Baked Potato Bar, Broccoli Slaw
  • Saturday: Warm Goat Cheese & Chicken Salad,
  • Sunday: Chicken Satay, Stir Fry Veggies, Rice

Clothing

  • Get the laundry under control, yet again.
  • Wardrobe rotation

Cleaning

I think I’m going to change my daily routine and put cleaning first thing because it’s not getting done very consistently when it’s scheduled later in my day.

Caring

  • The girls need haircuts before graduation.  I wonder if I’m up for cutting their hair myself?  It worked fine when they were younger…
  • Driving lessons

Creativity

  • Need to start working on Renaissance’s graduation quilt
  • Need to start working on a few decoration items for Ren’s graduation party

Gardening

  • Behind on planting seeds, so need to catch up on that
  • Need to assemble hanging baskets
  • Weeding, as always
  • Transfer tomato and pepper seedlings into larger pots because they’re not quite ready to go out yet, but they’re outgrowing the starting trays

Celebrating

  • Take down the last Christmas tree this weekend.  It’s a two-person job and Michael and I have not been home and well at the same time on a single weekend since before Christmas to do it.  This is, by far, the longest I’ve ever had a tree up and it’s driving me insane.
  • Finish up addressing and sending out Ren’s graduation party invitations

Community

  • Nathaniel’s last Cross Country meet is this week
  • Renaissance’s last band concert is this week

Top priorities this week:

  • Get grad party invitations out
  • Get Christmas tree down
  • Garden
  • Cleaning
  • Laundry

Alright, forward we go! I should be able to accomplish a lot this week, given that the forecast is pretty rainy and I’ll be forced to work inside the house most days.

Rhododendron Parade and Graduation Party Preparations

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Top priorities this past week:

  • Summer School Registration
  • Garden
  • Laundry
  • Cleaning
  • Graduation party planning

Caring

Oh my goodness, summer school registration is cutthroat in our district.  I arrived thirty minutes before the doors opened to the counseling center and the line was almost going out of the front door of the school.  I was successful in securing Nathaniel a spot in the classes he’ll take over the summer to open up the rest of his schedule to accommodate four years of band in high school.  Whew!

This week has felt like it’s been all about Nathaniel!  He came down with something Monday night and has spent the entire week just hanging out with a 103-104˚F fever.  I ended up taking him to the pediatrician on Wednesday because he was looking really awful, even for being sick, and they tested him for a ton of stuff.  All the rapid tests came back negative, so we’re waiting on cultures.  This has been a rough illness.  I made Michael stay home from work on Friday so someone could be with the boy while I was at work because I was worried about him. Thankfully, his fever broke on Friday and he was feeling a lot better, so he could join the marching band in their last parade of the year on Saturday.

Gardening

I put in a huge day in the garden on Monday and cleared the weeds out of two big areas of the garden.  This made my back extremely unhappy for a few days, but it was worth it.  I also planted a few of my started seeds—zucchini, summer squash, slicing cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, cilantro and a lot of marigolds—and direct sowed some bush green beans, more cabbage than we’ll ever need, zinnias, cosmos and some more sunflowers that the slugs already ate.  Clearing out weeds helped me find a number of slugs so I could send them to their eternal torment of an afterlife.

It’s so fun to see things coming up and blooming!  The peas are doing well, the nasturtiums are definitely coming along, and the radishes and lettuces are starting to gain some steam.  The carrots are slow starting and slugs keep getting my sunflower sprouts, so I’m keeping an eye on those crops.

Clothing

Some laundry has been done, but not the amount needed to truly make a difference.  I did wash Rachel’s choir dress, so it’s ready for whenever she needs it. 

Cleaning

I did a good job on getting the kitchen reset and the girls have been doing a pretty good job at maintaining it.

All my birthday stuff is cleaned up.

Celebrating

I took it a little easier on a few days this week just to make sure I fully recovered from the stress of the prom dress crunches.

I’ve addressed and mailed about half of Renaissance’s graduation party invitations.  I really hope people remember to RSVP.  It’s so nerve-wracking to depend on RSVPs.  I once received zero RSVPs for one of my kids’ birthday parties, so I made plans to do something else so my child didn’t have to wait around at home for no one to show up.  I left a note on our door that said we’d received zero RSVPs and so we had made other plans, and came home to wrapped gifts left on our doorstep.  I know I was in the right with my actions, but I still feel terrible about it.  It’s not hard to RSVP, DO IT.  I even made it super simple and put a QR code on the invite.  I am still terrified that I’ll get three RSVPs and then eighty people will show up.  I think this will be a situation where I will definitely have to phone around two weeks before the party and nail down the RSVPs myself because food-wise I could be in a lot of trouble if I don’t have a definite head count.  People just always make you feel so pushy and high-strung when you do that, but what else should they expect?  Ugh, this is one of my soapbox topics.  Just RSVP, people.  The same day you get the invitation.  We all have our calendars on our phones, so we already know whether we’re available or not.  Yes or no, I don’t care; I just need to know how many people I need to feed.  RSVPs save the sanity of the hostess.  Be kind to the hostess.

I’ve almost got the menu planned out; I just need to check in Ren to see how involved she wants to be with food prep so I can decide on the desserts.  When you have an aspiring pastry chef in your family, their involvement greatly influences what you offer for desserts at a gathering.

Decoration plans are good and supplies should be arriving soon.  I need to come up with some activities as well, mostly to keep people’s younger children occupied.  Space might be at a premium, though, so judicious planning is needed.

Community

I don’t like to publish where my kids are going to be ahead of time because that seems unsafe, so another thing we had on our plates this past week was the Rhododendron Parade. It’s quite the drive from where we are and we invite our middle school’s eighth graders to also participate so they can see what all the fun is about in the hopes that they’ll continue with band in high school, which meant, for the only time ever, Nathaniel marched in a parade in the same band as Renaissance.

In years past the eighth graders have also gotten to wear a high school marching band uniform, but the decision was made in the days leading up to parade that we were going to stop doing that this year, so my hopes of a picture of Nathaniel and Renaissance in matching uniforms together was dashed. Sigh. Our little school district is growing rapidly and it costs $22 to dry clean each used uniform at the end of the year, which hasn’t been that big of an expense in years past, but we had forty eighth graders this year, which would have added $880 to the bill and that’s a pretty big expense for such a small amount of wear.

Luckily, though, we decided to open up the “Band Gear” store to the eighth graders ahead of their freshman year so they can have band swag before the football games start in the autumn, and we were able to deliver their new band gear to them at the rehearsal prior to the parade, so many of them were wearing those items, my son included. Adorable.

I really enjoy being involved with our band program and am so thankful that the booster president approached me at tip-off two years ago to see if I’d be interested in helping out. It’s been a great way for our family to spend time together and serve together. It’s sad to see Renaissance’s band days come to an end, but we still have four more years of Nathaniel in band! And I’ll be dragging our family along for the ride the entire time because I was elected to be the band booster president this next school year. Get ready for even more band booster craziness, y’all!

We have a big end-of-the-school-year BBQ at a nearby park after the parade, and I was able to get some really photos of the kids and even one of Michael while we were there:

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It was a good and busy week, thankfully, and I hope to keep pushing forward and getting everything put back together in the house.  There’s so many good things coming up in the weeks ahead! What an exciting phase of life! See you next week!

Rachel’s Vintage Purple Prom Dress (Vogue 2001)

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When Rachel picked the Vogue 2001 pattern for her prom dress, I was elated! I love me a vintage pattern, and thankfully, so does she. I wasn’t sure she’d actually go through with the idea when push came to shove, so I was incredibly pleased that she was committed to some vintage glamour for her first prom.

Pattern

Vogue #2001, only released from the archives this spring. It’s a reprint of a 1941 pattern, and the first time she pointed it out to me I squinted at it because it really looked like a 1930s top smashed up with a 1950s skirt. I actually said, “That top and that skirt don’t go together, what is going on here?!” And then I saw the 1941 publication date and immediately thought about World War 2 fabric rationing and how this pattern did not fit into that idea whatsoever. But then my husband and I figured out that Pearl Harbor happened in December 1941, so American patterns were not adopting a “war rationing” mindset until 1942, probably. I wonder how many women purchased the pattern with the intent to make it and then couldn’t make it because of rationing?

Fabric

Rachel picked out a lavender satin taffeta and a lilac organza from JoAnn Fabric. We needed 11 yards of both because the main eater of yardage in this pattern is the skirt, which is ginormous AND cut double. The pattern doesn’t have instructions for two layers of skirt, but it’s what we wanted to do, so I overcast the waistline of them together and then treated it as one skirt.

Notions

  • Thread: Good ol’ Coats & Clark Dual Duty All Purpose #3440. I bought two out of caution, even though I never use the second spool, but I did actually need the second spool on this dress.
  • Zipper: The last lilac-colored invisible zipper in my weird assortment of cast-offs that I ordered from Amazon years ago.
  • Horsehair Braid: The solid main fabric skirt has a 3-inch horsehair braid in its hem. The circumference of each skirt is 528 inches, so I used almost fifteen yards of horsehair braid. The pattern called for 4-inch horsehair braid, but I had purchased the 3-inch braid years ago on Amazon for a “just in case” moment, and decided to go with that.

Time Spent

I DID actually keep track of how much time I worked on this! I wasn’t able to get to working on this dress until a week before the dance, so I made the decision to “live update” my progress to my friends on Facebook—at the end of every hour of working on the dress I’d snap a picture and type out what I’d accomplished as a comment to that day’s Facebook post about the dress construction. I knew that the public accountability would help me stay focused and have a shot at sewing this up in a week. Little did I know, my Facebook friends started cheering me on and leaving me uplifting comments as well, which really buoyed my spirits as I toiled away in my craft room. I will absolutely use this method of social pressure to help me finish big projects in the future!

  • Muslin: I wasn’t tracking hours while working on the muslin, so I estimate it took about five hours.
  • Sewing: 39 hours, according to my Facebook posts.
  • Total: ~44 hours

Highlights

  • The fact that Rachel picked out a vintage pattern just made me so happy!
  • The Facebook live updates and the cheering from friends made this so much more enjoyable to construct.
  • I did French seams on as much of this as I could and the seams are just so beautiful inside this dress.
  • I was able to do that whole dart rotation maneuver and transfer some annoying fullness in the upper arm and shoulder area into the bust gathers. I did a new thing and it totally worked!
  • The narrow hemming of the sheer layer is, by far, the best job I’ve ever done on narrow hemming. I enjoyed that step.
  • I did cheater gathering with a length of yarn for each quadrant of skirt and it worked beautifully. Highly recommended.

Lowlights

  • The side seams of the skirts are too short, despite having measured the skirt on her to the ground, so her petticoat showed a little bit. No idea how this happened. Very annoyed.
  • Kimono sleeves are stupid. That is all.
  • Holy skirts, Batman! Cutting out the skirt sections was a logistical concern. No matter where I went in my house there wasn’t enough room to lay it out in one run so I had to shift the fabric and pattern for each skirt to continue marking it. That brought some challenges, but I got through it.
  • I bought a hooped petticoat to go underneath this and even had Rachel try it all on with the hooped petticoat, but she hated how it felt to have the skirts held away from her legs and refused to wear it. Which was too bad because I think the skirt was more impressive with the hooped petticoat beneath it. She ended up going with a tulle petticoat and a flounced petticoat over the tulle to smooth things out.

I really love this dress and I’m so glad I had the opportunity to make it for my girl. We bought a book that showed how to do 1940s makeup and hair so she could go with the complete 1940s vibe. She did her makeup beautifully, and I am not known for my hairstyling skills so the hair was a little less than hoped for, but whatever, it worked…enough.

Renaissance informed me that Rachel’s dress was a star of the show the entire night. Girls were coming up to her over and over again to exclaim how much they loved her dress and how it was like a fairytale princess gown and how much they wished they had one like it. Now that I know how much work goes into constructing those precious princess ballgown skirts, I get why they’re not offered in your typical off-the-rack dance dresses. Whew! I’m glad she got to feel special at the dress in her dress! Who knows, the trauma may wear off just enough by next year for me to consider making another one for her…

Links to all posts about Rachel’s Vintage Purple Prom Dress

Renaissance’s Celestial Purple Prom Dress (McCall’s 7091)

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Alright, as promised, a debriefing on Renaissance’s prom dress:

Pattern

McCall’s #7091, discontinued but available online as a PDF file.

Caution: It’s a batch of three downloads with up to sixty pages in each download that you have to tape together. An A0 printing option is NOT available. It took me four hours to tape the one hundred and twenty-seven pages together.

Materials

Dupioni Silk in colorway “Comet Tail” (5 yards), Shantung Silk in colorway “Nolana” (4 yards), and Batiste Silk/Cotton in colorway “Apparition” (2 yards). All three were purchased from Silk Baron.

Working with silk is a lovely experience. I opted to do all of my cutting of the fabrics with a pinked rotary blade in order to cut down on fraying, and that was an excellent choice.

I will not use the Batiste Silk/Cotton as a lining in the future because it has too loose of a weave and stretched and grew like crazy inside the dress, causing the neckline to sag more and more as Renaissance wore it. It’s a beautiful fabric and I want to make more things from it in the future, but it’s not well-suited to give structure to a garment.

Notions

  • Thread: Aurifil 50 weight #2780 when piecing “Comet Tail,” Superior Threads’ Pima 50 weight #8035 when piecing “Nolana,” and I used Coats & Clark Dual Duty XP All Purpose #3510 for piecing the “Apparition” gray lining. Ren used an invisible monofilament thread (that she hasn’t put back so I can’t tell you for certain who makes it) for securing the rhinestone appliques.
  • Zipper: I used a light purple invisible zipper from my zipper drawer, still leftover from the ill-advised purchase of the “scrap bag” of invisible zippers that really only included colors that I’ll rarely ever use. I used blue Sharpie on the zipper pull to camouflage it against the Comet Tail silk.
  • Rhinestones: We bought two rhinestone appliques “Devine Pair Applique LA-11” from Planet Rhinestone on Etsy, and a loose pack of various sizes of rhinestones from Amazon.

I originally planned to use silk thread for sewing this all up, but read online that it was a bad idea and that silk thread should really only be used for embroidery and the like. So I went with cotton.

Renaissance spent all of her free time in the week leading up Church Prom attaching the appliques, and Emily, Ren, and I spent a frenzied two hours on the day of Church Prom gluing the loose gems to the dress with Beacon Gem-Tac adhesive and toothpicks.

Time Spent

  • Assembling the pattern: 4 hours
  • Sewing the dress: My memory is fuzzy on this, but I feel like it was five weeks’ worth of sewing a few hours a day. My estimate is forty hours of work? All those princess seams took a long time to assemble, and I handstitched the contrast skirt’s hem.
  • Rhinestone application: Renaissance estimates that it took at least ten hours to sew the two appliques onto the dress. It was her first time doing something like that. And then three of us worked for two hours together to glue the loose rhinestones on, so 3 x 2 = 6 hours.
  • Total: ~60 hours of work

Highlights

  • First time working with silk and it was awesome! I ended up phoning Silk Baron to get advice on whether or not to wash the fabric before sewing and whoever answered the phone was incredibly friendly and took their time in explaining the situations where it would be ok and why this was not one of those situations because the dye and the shot weave would lose their coolness factors.
  • There is only one pucker in all of those princess seams! I really learned how to ease fabric with this dress. I’m a fabric-easing machine now. The trick is to cut the notches before you pin.
  • The lighter purple contrast skirt was assembled using French seams, which was the first time I’d done them and they turned out great.
  • Watching Renaissance work on sewing the rhinestone appliques to her dress while watching “The Simpsons.”
  • Working with Emily & Renaissance to glue the gemstones onto the dress. I always like family group projects.

Lowlights

  • Taping the pattern together. Seriously, McCall’s, you need to offer an A0 printing option. A lot of sewing happens on a deadline and having to spend four hours upfront taping paper together is brutal.
  • Owing to my background as a quilter, I default to a shorter stitch length when I’m nervous about a seam. It turns out that this is not the correct default when sewing clothing. My choice to go with a shorter stitch length on the two skirt hemlines resulted in bunchy edge finishes, which no one really noticed except myself. The swoopy hem could have laid down so much nicer if I’d realized that. I did redo the hem on the lowest part of the swoop because it had to be trimmed, but didn’t have time to do the upper portion.
  • I also wonder if I should have used a thin horsehair braid on the swoopy hem in order to make it stand out more? When the silk was fresh the swoop skirt stood out in beautiful rounded columns, but by the time it was finished it had gotten limp and didn’t do that anymore.
  • The lining grew a lot and the neckline sagged more and more as she wore it.

Lowlights aside, I am monstrously pleased with this dress! It had twenty-nine separate pieces to assemble because it was a twelve panel princess seam dress, and I made it work! It was beautiful plain and it was beautiful with the rhinestone embellishments. It makes a beautiful swishing noise when she’s moving in it. It’s just a beautiful dress and she loved it and I’d totally do it all over again.

Note: She is wearing a crinoline with the dress to help the skirt stand out more. I think it was this one. Or it could have been this one. I bought both and each girl wore one of them and I can’t remember who had which one.

Links to all posts about Renaissance’s Prom Dress

The Eye of the Senior Year Storm

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It’s been a couple of weeks since I wrote up a beginning of the week homemaking post! The amount of time that is needed to make ballgowns is surprising, even to me. With that being said, home management fell by the wayside in order to free up time to sew, so I’ll be swinging the scales back towards cleanliness and order for the next couple of weeks, and then it will be time to start prepping for Renaissance’s high school graduation festivities!

Cooking

This week’s meal plan:

  • Monday: Tacos
  • Tuesday: CP Picadillo Tostadas, Lemony Quinoa Salad with Radishes, Avocado & Basil, Veggie Slaw
  • Wednesday: Rhubarb-glazed Pork, Crushed Red Potatoes, Spring Beans, Peas & Zucchini Ribbons, Rice Pilaf
  • Thursday: IP BBQ Shredded Chicken Burgers, Broccoli Slaw, Lemon-roasted potatoes with oregano
  • Friday: Spaghetti, Normandy Vegetables, Caesar Salad, French Bread
  • Saturday: Barbecue
  • Sunday: Thai Spicy Chicken Enchiladas, Peas, Green Bean Salad with Mustard Seeds, Herbs & Baby Chard

Clothing

  • Laundry will be a priority this week, along with folding and putting away everything (It’s pretty bad in here)
  • Wardrobe rotation from cold weather clothes to warm weather clothes
  • Wash Rachel’s choir dress
  • Nathaniel needs new clothes, especially for church

Cleaning

*silent screaming* There’s so much to do that I can’t even pick a place to start. I might just work on whatever the Tody app tells me is the most overdue and work forward from there. Oh! I do want to spend some time cleaning up the prom dress sewing leftovers, just for the sake of closure. Feels like that’d be a nice thing to do.

Caring

  • Get Nathaniel signed up for summer school so he can free up space in his regular school year schedule
  • Driving practice with Emily & Rachel
  • Help the girls start looking for summer jobs
  • Replace batteries in smoke detectors
  • Make checkup appointments for everyone
  • Create FHE schedule
  • The girls need haircuts
  • Decide if Nathaniel is going to YM camp

Creativity

I will be taking a break for at least a week, if not two. The craft room definitely needs a good cleaning and decluttering, but that might have to wait until after graduation festivities.

Gardening

  • Direct sow 4th Week of April seeds:
    • Cosmos
    • Sunflower: Autumn Beauty
    • Impatiens
    • Zinnia
    • Cucumber
    • Summer Squash
    • Viola
  • Direct sow 1st Week of May seeds:
    • Alyssum
    • Marigolds
    • Sunflower: Jua Maya
    • Cabbage
    • Green Beans (Bush)
    • Lettuce
  • Direct sow 2nd Week of May seeds:
    • Zucchini
    • Sunflower: Sunshine
    • Melons
    • Carrots
  • Plant petunias
  • Assemble hanging baskets
  • Research lawn feeding and weed killing and make a plan
  • WEEDING
  • Ramp up slug killing endeavors because the little demons are eating everything

Celebrating

  • Breathe a sigh of relief that prom season is over, clean up the mess, and engage in some well-deserved recovery activities
  • Clean up the errant Christmas items that I’ve noticed but told myself to ignore while working on the prom dresses
  • Do a wrapping paper/gift bag bin purge
  • Renaissance’s Graduation Party:
    • Address & mail out invitations
    • Check that everyone has appropriate clothing
    • Decide decorations
    • Decide menu
    • Decide activities
    • Decide party favors
    • Purchase serving items

Community

  • Church:
    • Check in with this week’s upcoming special musical number
    • Check sacrament meeting topics for June and pick hymns
    • Enter hymns into Gospel Library app
    • Set up/confirm special musical numbers for June
    • Check in with newly-assigned ministering companions
    • Reach out to newly-assigned ministering sisters
    • Taskify ministering reminders
  • Band Parent Committee:
    • Prepare agenda for meeting, print
    • Print mailing list signup flyers
    • Parade logistics

Top priorities this week:

  • Summer School Registration
  • Garden
  • Laundry
  • Cleaning
  • Graduation party planning

Hopefully I’ll get the blog posts written for each of the prom dresses, too. The weather is going to be really great this week, so I’m looking forward to spending time outdoors after so many weeks toiling away in the craft room. Happy homemaking to you all!

Church Spring Formal 2024

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I did manage to finish Rachel’s dress in time—11:30 that morning, to be exact—and Renaissance was able to finish adding bling to her dress—at 3:00pm that day, after a two hour gem-gluing session with Emily, herself and me—so all the dress dreams became a reality for the Church Spring Formal. I threw their hair into some updos, fretted over shoes and petticoats, and we were on our way! Their dates looked great, and I think everyone had a good time. We had dinner at my granny and aunt’s house because it was near the dance and we knew that Granny would love to see the dresses. It was a nice evening.

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And now, I think I’m going to take a little break from my sewing machine…it’s been a wild two months of non-stop sewing! I’m so pleased with how they turned out and so glad that my girls liked them. Happy memories.