Katherin's clothes and an organized fabric stash

Those of you who know me know that I can't resist fabric of any kind. I love the feel of it and how it looks and drapes as I work with it. Among the other things that I like to do is quilt. Some of the fabric in my quilt stash is at least 60 years old. I have small pieces from the 30's, 40's and 50's but the larger of the older pieces are from the 70's.  It is always interesting to look at the way that fabrics change through the decades. I have had my fabrics tucked away in a set of deep drawers that although they held lots of stash, they also hid what I had from view and from memory. As I was getting ready to start another quilt, I would have to go digging deep in the drawers and hope to find the fabric that I wanted. This week we were finally able to finish the shelves for the quilt fabric stash. Now all of the cottons are folded and placed in color sorted bins so that I can finally see what I have at a glance. Now the pattern books, bolts and bins are together.

 I have been working on this cross stitch sampler for a few weeks and have finally finished the stitching but now that it is stitched.... it is not quite finished. I think that the colors are a bit too bright and I want to tone them down. So.. I am going to coffee dye it to give it a more antique look and soften the tone of the pinks. It was created as a teaching piece with a very specific purpose in mind. All of the stitches in it are either types of cross stitch or backstitch. Sometime you just have to take that leap of faith and forget the hours of work and make that change. We shall have to see how it works out.






We over dyed the completed sampler today and I rather like how it turned out. The linen in a wonderful warm color and all of the threads took  on enough of the tint of the coffee so that they are a bit more mellow and blend better.













 Here is the panel of Katherin's skirt with the embroidery finished and half of the paillettes added. I started with just a few but just kept adding a few more until it looked like it should. Embroidery from the 17th century was packed rather tightly, not a lot of open space so that is the look that I tried for. This is the petticoat  that will be seen  because the dress is open in the front.

 This part is the stomacher.. such in interesting name but it is a separate panel that was pinned on the bodice to cover the stays or corset.  Now I just have to take courage in hand and cut them out and construct the parts of the dress. The dress will be a plain soft gold silk taffeta so the details of the embroidery will really be the focal point.