Wot happened to July???

Photo1 is the front of Rhi's dress, the second pic is the back and the third pic shows a close up of the smocked area and the embroidered bullions roses.

This pic is the front of Scarletts dress, the second is the back of her dress and the 3 pic shows the back of her panties and the 4th the front of her panties.

Hewoo one and all

well wot did happen to July ???- mmmmmm I was ill with the current Flu bug doing the rounds of South Australia and laid low- and then Dad was admitted to hospital 3 weeks ago and is still there - he has a very nasty Staph Infection in his knee that he had a replacement knee operation on and its a very nasty and stubborn infection- he is on Intravenous antibiotics and will be even when he is up to coming home for at least 6 weeks so the Dr is saying at this stage. Anyway we will see I guess what the upshot of this will be later on- last week he went down for his second arthroscopy and washout and the orthopaedist is happier then he was after the first one and has said to DOD that its up to the Infection Control Dr now as to when he is happy to let DOD out of the Hospital- Its will be nice to get our lives back to a wee bit of normal living. Sad to say both Colin and I are starting to feel a bit worn out etc but hey he could b e home this week and then we may b e paying for that gggggg

In the meantime I haven't just been sitting here doing nothing - I have completed two little smocked outfits for a dear friends grandbabies. Rhi is now 4 years old and so I made her a sundress no sleeves but it does have a frill around the neckline and lots of backsmocking a wee bit of geometric smocking and then some of my favourite "grub" roses across the bottom of the smocked area. Its in a lovely summer weight poly/cotton and should be okay to wear even on the hottest of summer days - I am also hoping that both outfits fit gg. For the younger baby Scarlett who's about 12months old now - so I made her a dress and panties outfit- the smocking on this was just a geometric pattern - only a few rows on her dress and then there were some bullion daisies in various colours going across it- her panties were in the same material but had 3 rows of frill across the back of them and are (well I think they are) real cute gg Cos she is at the crawling/walking stage I made this up in a poly/cotton seersucker material so that should wash like a rag and shouldnt need to much ironing if any. I remember not wanting to iron much way back when the kids were younger and I am sure Em (the kids Mum) is no different.

well all I can hope for is that they fit the girls and that the girls and their Mum like them etc -I know their Gran does (- Hi ya darling.) I had such fun making them- yeah right bear!!! doesn't something always goes wrong for me - yup no different this time I had picked out this lovely material to make Scarlett's dress in and all went well until I removed the smocking threads and started to block the smocking- that's when bear realised she didn't have the smocking squared and to make matters worse- most times this wouldn't be a big problem) but this time the floral actually formed lines going across the material- oh and nocticeable - it sure was! wot to do wot to do- I was nearly in tears but I explained the problem to my darling man and he quietly asked wot do U want to do and I said begin again --go and get another piece of material and start over - the darling man piled me in the car and 10 minutes later the smiles had returned to my face. BUT sometimes things work out for the best (when all seems dark and gloomy ) I realised after doing the second dress up that I loved the material much more and also it wasn't as heavy (thick) as the first one and for a summer dress the second one would be much more to the liking of the wearer so maybe it was meant to be. Whatever alls well that ends well. Wot am I going to do with the first dress well I have tried to square it up etc and its in some shape and I will at some time in the dim future finish it off if only to show myself that I learnt a lesson that all floral's don't make good choices for smocking if they are not totally squared off in the beginning -seems to me I heard that before- maybe the lass who taught us to smock and showed us her example of what can go wrong gggg so I am not the only one to make this blunder I guess and I learnt a lot!! I hope I remember the lesson well and don't do THAT one again!

The patterns for both outfits came from the "Smocking and Embroidery" magazines published by Country Bumpkin right here in good old Adelaide, South Australia

lotsa love n hugs bear xoxoxoxoxox