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| The Miss Muffet Dress |
Another score from the Oakland Museum White Elephant Sale: a diminutive little cotton lawn dress with a host of problems. The collar and sleeves were unfinished and fraying, the back closure had never been added, and the sleeve openings were too small for the almost-three-year old I wanted to give this to. Otherwise the garment was cunningly stitched, clearly homemade, with hand-sewn embroidery at the collar. Why did the creator abandon this project part way through? Closer inspection revealed the answer: stains on the upper left back. I've used many stain-obscuring techniques in the past from
Mend Writing to
Spirals. I have never, however, used spiders.
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| Spiders concealing stains |
It turns out that once you start stitching spiders it's hard to stop.
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| Spider concealing nothing |
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| more spiders... |
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| and more spiders... |
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| and more spiders... |
Finally I had 12 spiders on what turned out to be a Little Miss Muffet Dress (poem follows). In the process I hemmed the collar and sleeves after creating a wider opening for the sleeves and added a back snap.
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| Miss Muffet front |
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| Miss Muffet back |
And a reminder of the words to the classic children's poem that is over 200 years old, dating back to 1804:
Little Miss Muffet
sat on a tuffet
eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider
that sat down beside her
and frightened Miss Muffet away.
One can only imagine how this poem will be played out when the dress is worn by a three-year-old.
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| ta da |
I once embellished a black velvet coat with a silver spider's web and a dangling spider, a garment passed down through friends and family for many years. Love your spider dress, guaranteed to be a favourite.
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