Here’s a Christmas card photo from quite a long time ago. My mother made those brocade dresses — they had a raised gold pattern that I thought was so luxurious — and fur collars!
What I love noticing today, though, are my tights! LOOK at them!
Pattern and Outrage
cloth, justice, writing, and food
oh my! how sweet and dear this is. i remember tights like that! did they not have elastic in those days? the dresses are priceless as is your brother’s face!
do you also remember wearing a garter belt? and, my mother sometimes sent us to bed in those hard plastic curlers!
So precious! My mother made all of our dresses as well, many of which had hand smocking on them… incredible to me as I often could barely find the time to brush my teeth before noon when my girls were little!
My mother smocked a number of our dresses, too. And, like you, I found when my two boys were grown enough for me to catch my breath (ages 4 and 6, maybe?), I could NOT believe the amount of sewing my mother did when we were little!! I don’t ever remember her projects taking over a room, either, the way mine do, which meant she was doing a LOT of clean up and re-setting up. (Course, she was in her twenties with toddlers and I was in my forties — I suppose that accounts for SOME of the differences!)
Make that ages 8 and 10….
I love this. You and your brother have not changed a bit!!
do ya think?!! Billy can still be seen to drool on occasion, and I, even now after several decades of kind of sort of sometimes trying, am still a fashion plate!!
oh and yes, I remember garter belts and I remember being instrumental in educating my own mother about panty-hose.
Your mom was such a creative force – I would love to have seen her walking down the streets of Paris and/or heard her tell stories about it when she got home! She’s in our hearts and minds and fighting spirits.
My mother WAS a creative force, and even though I live with that legacy every single day (she was, as you know, also an amazing teacher, and gave each of her three kids a lot of confidence in their innate artistic abilities), I love to hear about it from people who knew her….
I would have liked to visit Paris with her, too — but wait, would it have devolved into yet another tense scene of me wanting some garment that would not flatter me and her knowing what would look great, and me hating her choice and hating, even more, her knowing better?!!! At least we would have been able to agree on food!