On Easter Dresses: or, Why Do We Tear Each Other Down When We Could Build Each Other Up Instead?

When I was a very young mom, with no car and few social skills, all the women I knew were either single college students or the wives of my only-just-former college professors and had busy schedules and a million children. As a result, I was alone, a lot. My husband had two jobs and was trying to finish college himself, so he had only so much to give me, and my baby was All Things Miraculous, but even she couldn't talk in full sentences until she was 18 months old, plus she is an introvert. She didn't like even mamma getting all up in her space.

So I learned how to sew.

It was an uphill road. Being the clever person that I am, I assumed I knew better than the pattern designers, mostly because I didn't acknowledge things like grain lines, and my early efforts were mostly Lessons Learned The Hard Way, and not actual usable pieces of clothing. But because I was lonely, bored and desperate, I kept at it. I probably learned twenty or so lessons The Hard Way before I produced a single thing I could use or wear.

One of the things I have continually dedicated myself to over the years is the creation of Easter Dresses. I love Easter, and all the things it promises. I didn't have the budget to make it more special than Christmas in the same manner as Christmas, so I had to get creative (my specialty!) and one of the ways was to make matching dresses for all the girls, beginning with my first and myself. (I stopped making dresses for myself after two, though.)

Easter Skirts

As my skills developed, the dresses got nicer and nicer. My adorable three little girls all had completely different coloring - a blond with grey eyes, a redhead and all that that entails, and a dark brunette with alabaster skin. My approach was to find the same print in different colors, and make dresses from the same pattern. In later years, when they started to have vastly differing tastes in clothing, I went exactly the other way, and started choosing a color palette, and making them totally different styles of dress. But I kept it up, year after year, even if it meant doing everything during Holy Week. It is a project that means a lot to me.

Well, one year my ever-expanding repertoire of skillz reached the stage of including smocking, thanks to one of my crafting gurus - Maureen, who also helped teach me to quilt and has inspired me in so many other ways. I was pregnant and feeling sick during Lent, so I spent many hours curled up in my chair, hand-smocking some muslin panels. It's probably the earliest I ever started on dresses, and it took a lot of time, but the results were deeply satisfying, and I dressed them in t heir smocked dresses whenever I had an excuse.

One day I took them to the library, because our wonderful dear children's librarian had asked me specifically to show her my Easter Dresses. In we filed, splendidly arrayed in smocked dresses and little white gloves and straw hats with matching ribbons. (Hey, when you go to that much trouble, you take it all the way, right?) It was Story Time Day, so a lot of other moms were there, and one said to me "Please don't tell me you smocked those dresses by hand." So proud of myself, I told her that I did.

She said "I hate you."




Looking back on it, I know why she said it, and she meant to be funny, I'm sure. She was tired, she had that difficult blend of older children that keep you running and tiny babies that keep you up at night, and she is also a woman that loves beautiful things - she grows a lovely garden in the spring - and not enough time to fulfill that love. She didn't know what I gave up to make those dresses, because it's not like I go around showing people pictures of my mountain of laundry or the unswept kitchen or the uncategorized piles of papers and books... I sacrificed to make this a priority. I knew she didn't mean it. But wow, did it hurt. In fact, I'm sure she's forgotten the incident completely. (Hey, it might be you!)




The Thing is, just as we don't see those background sacrifices, that different ordering of priorities, we also don't see what kind of power our words can have. I carried that "I hate you" around for a long time in my heart, believing that I must have done something wrong, that my creative drive was somehow blameworthy because of the things I let go. I often lock myself into a place where I'm "not allowed" to make anything or buy anything until I've done X amount of housework. It never works. In fact, one time I actually got my entire house clean AT THE SAME TIME but still didn't sew because of the guilt block. Every time I sat down to make something, I felt badly. That "I hate you" became the Voice of Bob. He was right on top of that one. Alongside "You never finish what you start," it's one of my most deeply rooted Bobisms.


I'm working on it, though. I'm learning to let myself be, to recognize what people mean when they say things like that. And I'm trying to be very, very careful about what I say when I wish I could do what someone else can do.

My beautiful Audrey, recycling dresses from
last year. This year, I actually DIDN'T MAKE ANY,
and my lovely Helen wore this dress.

Knitting Bulletin

We interrupt this project to bring you breaking news… literally. Turns out those polished wood needles I love so much are really easy for a 4 year old to snap, especially in the lace-knitting sizes. So I had to put my lace shawl on hold temporarily. The good news is that a dear lady is having her first baby, and her baby shower was a week after the day my needles broke, so I had another fun thing to focus on: a Rainbow Baby Sweater!

Everyone needs a little more rainbow in
their life, right?

This project partly owes its existence to the incisive mind of my friend Dom, one of the most artistic people I know, who rightly perceived the heart of my quandary: I had a vision, and realizing it required extra fiddly work that might not turn out. In typical me fashion, I was paralyzed by my options and wasted a lot of time asking people who were not me what I would do if I were them. Turns out that information is not relevant to anything. Ever. But Dom saw right through my question. It was not really “what should I do?” but rather “what do I want to do?” Why spend more money and waaaaaay more time making something when I could just buy something adorable? Because I wanted to make something unique, something I was inspired to make. There would be no point if I didn’t make the thing I wanted to make.

It didn't line up perfectly - turns out that
an increase in width of a single stitch can
make a difference in the end.

The thing I wanted to make is a newborn-sized cardigan made from a beautiful self-striping merino sock yarn I’ve had for a while. I say self-striping, but the “stripe” is actually a gradual color-wash gradient fading through the whole rainbow. This is a problem because the back, being twice as wide as either side of the front, would go through the color changes twice as fast, and throw off the balance of the thing. And while I wasn’t going to worry about matching the front to the back, I wanted a consistent texture. Also, the front needed symmetry for sure, so it seemed like the best thing was to work each side from a different ball (same dye lot, of course), matching the spot in the color change on each so that it was the same on both sides. As for the back, I decided to work the back in two halves the same way, and seam it down the middle.

It doesn't look like a half-finished
sweater, it looks like a huge mess.

Look at all those stringy-things!

Look at those gaping holes! (That's
what God made loose ends for.)

Somewhere my moss-stitch border got
mixed up - so I just cut my losses and
 cast off early

This sweater had so many lessons to teach me. I couldn’t decide what to title this post, because I had so many good thoughts to put down. It was about fudging and faking (adapting the pattern, knitting on after miscounting rows, etc), but also about doing things the Right Way (christening my sweater blocking kit – that was fun!). It was about the process of making something, in particular the way that mistakes have a way of blending in, and the way loose ends have of tying together more issues than just themselves when you finish them off. And it was about color and fun.

I’m posting a catalogue of the mistakes I made on this sweater, because sometimes it’s important to acknowledge the imperfections of a thing before you can put those imperfections in perspective. And after you’ve looked at all the errors, check out the final picture: They Don’t Show At All.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Lace Stole (I bought new needles).