Jen at MOMSPatterns is running a quick sale — 30% off any ONE order valid now until midnight, December 30, 2008 EST using coupon code 'secretsale'. AND Jen is happy to announce that she's now accepting most major credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Discover & American Express) for everyone's convenience!
I can't get over the ruffled collar on this dress. So gorgeous and elegant. Too bad the lady on the left is merely waiting for the beatings to recommence and that the lady on the right is one eye-roll away from anticipating, forty years ahead of schedule, the attitude of every teenager on every 1990s sitcom. (Although I would totally watch a sitcom where everyone dressed like this, gloves included …)
I'll try to announce the "winners" of the Bad/Good Christmas Present Contest tomorrow, so get your entries in. Although, frankly, one entry I got via email is so wonderfully horrible that it would take severed body parts to compete with it. Anyone get one of those this year?
A Dress A Day 
Not sure I could do the ruffled collar–though I love it–but I really love the subtlety of the ruching at the elbow on the green version. Of course, I automatically love anything in that color green, so I have to be careful.
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I love the ruffled collar…and the line of buttons down the dress on the left.
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I suspect the madam on the left would stare down an unruly teenagers and leave them wishing they wouldn’t have tangled with her. Feisty one, that!
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Love the dress! Want to hear the best and yet worst present this year? I have cruz’d Ebay and drooled over their selection of vintage machines. My want list is long and wonderful.Well my daughter opened her last present Sunday from my Brother. She opened the box pulling out a vintage singer sewing book, bobbins, needle and feet ohh the shear volume everything you could want. As every item was unwrapped and goose bumps came with every rip of tape I had a feeling it was coming. She slowly with an evil grin that only teens can give that smirk of ohh yeah mom I gotcha now look she ripped open the last big box. Packing corm spewed from the box like jumping beans and showered over the living room. The dogs jumped and barked and she laughed. I closed my eyes because I really did not want to see. I heard the squeal. It was like death bells ringing over a valley. I keep a silent prayer please dont let them have done this to me.In perfect mint condition a Singer 500 A; One of the machines in my top 5 list. It was like it stepped off the showroom floor right there in my living room. The green monster came over me and my daughter looked over at me and said Hey mom look what I got Now I dont have to use yours no more. I looked across at my Brother 3500 which was used and abused by said child through the holidays and wondered what did I do so bad this year!To have your dreams right there where you can smell it, taste it and think why give it to a 15 year old?I know this did nto make the contest but I had to share. Those with Kids maybe can understand.
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The woman on the left looks like her poor wrist is broken! Is creating the ruffled collar for this pattern so strenuous??I must admit, the version on the right strikes me as a bit uptight. It might be the combo of the high neck and the (box?) pleats, on top of what looks like heavy material.There’s a mousy housewife character in Dorothy Parker’s short story Glory in the Daytime that, if it were made in blue serge with a white ruffle, would wear this.
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totally unrelated, don’t you have another blog, more to do with words? My husband and I recently had dinner with a couple whose oldest daughter is in love with language and words and in fact put on her college dorm form that she would like a room mate who loved words. Made me think of you and I told the couple I would find out about your blog for her.Thanks!
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Ravenz Tarot, I think it would be perfectly appropriate for YOU to borrow your daughter’s machine as often as she borrowed yours!
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I bought the pattern. I think I deserve it because I raised 3 teenaged sons and I do so understand the look on her face. Yes, I know. I understand and I sympathize. It was the ruffled collar that reeled me in.Thanks Erin.
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Ravenz Tarot that’s awful! I’d hug ya if it made you feel better (and I don’t hug many people).I’m so sorry!
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Ravenz Tarot that’s awful! I’d hug ya if it made you feel better (and I don’t hug many people).I’m so sorry!
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Gah! I saw this pattern too late. Must mean that I don’t really karmically require that pattern in my life.A friend of mine had a pair of those wrap around pants. Believe it or not, they looked pretty darn cool on this woman. Still, I leave the patterns to others.
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Thanks sewducky! I mean its like giving a Kid just learning to drive a Vintage Car, They think its cool but they dont understand its value and how special it really is. The machine is sitting on floor of her room under a pile of clothes. I plan a search and rescue operation later tonight if her room is not cleaned by the time I get home. She will never even know its missing.
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Oh, Ravenz! OUCH! What a living NIGHTMARE! Try to point out the ways she thrashed yours, so at least she doesn’t do that to HERS…and you can still use it. Maybe some kind of devilish trade is in order?
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Ravenz – I thought it was going to end with your family was playing a trick on you and hte machine was really for you. Ask her her to trade you.
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no body parts here, just a bed of nails to go with the electric chair my daughter received for Halloween
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Ravenz – She’ll be gone to school all day most days. Just sneak in and usurp it!
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Ravenz Tarot:I agree with you about the vintage etc etc.Do you suppose your daughter would be at all interested in you trading your Brother for her machine plus a little something extra on top (cash? something else she wants that is sewing related?).Thinking back on my 15yo self, I might have bit that hook had it been dangled in front of me.Either way, I’d also hug you if you were here, and I also do not hug many people.
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Thanks everyone, I think alittle cash might be the trick or course i will have to take her and friends to the mall. I did pull up my big girl pants and told her it will have to be stored either in her closet or in the sewing shed. I reminded her the cost of taking the brother to get serviced and Its not fair that I am out my main machine. She raised a brow and gave me a look and asked me for the yards of black silk my brother had friend send me from japan. Then she reminds me i do have other machines and she would love to have my pfaff 130. NEVER!!!!Now i know why sharks eat thier young.The worst part is my mother could sew. She could look at somthing and come home and recreate it. I have recieved not one ounce of her gift. My daughter never touch a needle in her life picks up my sewing machine at age twelve with alittle help from MIL, sewed a formal pattern for a costume for a dance without breaking a sweat. Yes this why Sharks eat thier young.
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Ravenz Tarot, I BEG of you, do not give that greedy little shark your silk!!! She wrecks your machine, she gets your DREAM MACHINE, and now she wants YOUR FABRIC to sew with?That is what after-school jobs are for – and you’d better not let your grades drop, either, Missy. AFTER the cost of servicing the injured machine has been taken care of, of course.Sorry. That’s just eye-popping greed added to insult!I’d dangle whatever was necessary to get that machine where it belonged – to YOU. Except your brother’s silk!
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I am so loving this dress pattern!
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Perhaps you can pretend to be an evangelical fundamentalist, and state the new rule is you must approve all the patterns she sews? Decree that everything she picks is “too revealing”. Maybe she’ll move on to another hobby?
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