Leslie Models in Vogue Sewing

Regarding the summer dress:  James photographed Leslie in Ditmas Park and we submitted his photo.  Vogue Sewing has a page on which they will publish submissions by readers; some issues there are none, but when they do, its usually 3 or 4 projects by home sewers. 

The red dress Leslie wore to her Masters Graduation ceremony was one I made in my last year at Oregon when I took a home-ec sewing course just for kicks. Styles were short at that time so Leslie, being much taller than I, wore it with black leggings. I wore the bright red dress rather than a cap and gown so Mom and Dad could spot me among the hundreds of U of O bachelors candidates at Hayward Field.  My friend Nancy Bennet, another graduating architect that year, bought a white dress and did the same, because you were not required to do the cap and gown thing.  As far as I know, all of our other classmates in the architectural school wore caps and gowns.

Leslie used to play dress up in the red dress when she was little until the buttons started getting pulled off and I rescued it.  If course, I didn’t fix buttons until she wanted to wear the dress this past year.

Leslie bought her wedding sweater and I made the skirt; it is a simple circle skirt pattern.  I first made her a wild polyester print circle skirt to see if it would look good.  The second skirt was cream silk with a somewhat heavy polyester lace overlay and per Leslie’s request, I added silk covered buttons on the back which were just decorative.

On another subject - I reported to Tina that Billy played a gig last Saturday, 7 to 11 pm, with a band at a bistro in Hillsboro.  Their regular bass player was out and he filled in.  He’s played a little bass before (4-strings) even though he has been primarily a guitar player.  The band leader told him he’s known two really good bass players in his life and Billy is one of them.  I think its because Billy is so intuitive about music - they had several practices last week and he learned 50 songs for their four hour set. So his compensation was $30 and 2 beers - such will be the life of a struggling musician.

What is funny to me is how I used to struggle to learn ONE piano piece for Miss Bray’s recitals…and then I’d get stage fright and screw it up, badly.  The final recital I played in, I insisted on having my music.  Miss Bray pursed her lips and allowed me to have it.