Sunday Dress and Aprons
My mother had a small wardrobe–everyday house dresses covered with an apron initially followed by pants and a blouse also covered with an apron. Her Sunday wardrobe was white and black dresses–never pants to church. She sewed all of these garments including shirts for my brothers and my dresses until I revolted on her choice of colors, style, and fit and made my own.
My grandmother–her mother–passed on the frugality of the Great Depression to her (and to me). She saved all those scraps from her dresses, the shirts, aprons, and my garments wrapping them all up in little bundles and fastening them with a straight pin–or even more frugally–a piece of selvedge.
When Mom died after years of dealing with ovarian cancer, there was no question about who was going to deal with all the sewing materials she left behind. There were some selections meant for quilts–one set was used in a donation quilt and sewed by members of my quilting bee. But then there were all those little bundles.
I unrolled them, pressed them, and cut them into strips. There were some ready cut blue squares—leftover from another project and a length of the red plaid–I think it was taken apart from a skirt as there was a hem line I had to work around.
This is a glimpse of that project on the Gammill. It is already bound but I am adding hand stitching around the edges–Mom hand quilted all of her quilts.
Sylvia Weir Art 