Start with the iron at the bottom of the skirt, where the fabric can lie flat.  Make sure the fabric is flat under the iron (no creases), and push the iron point first toward the gathers. 

Keep the pointy tip of the iron pointing at the gathers, and iron slowly.  Make sure that the tip pushes excess folds away, rather than running over them. 

Use your left hand to lift the gathered seam slightly, to make room for the iron in the well of fabric.  When the pointy tip of the iron gets to the gathers, push lightly into the seam.  At no point should the fabric bunch up under the iron. 

Retreat and start again at the bottom. With each push of the iron, aim at a different spot on the gathered seam, working your way around the garment. 

Today, a brief needlelace tutorial!  This is a simple edging stitch, meaning you can use it to decorate your hems and other edges, even if you're not hard-core into lace-making! 

The stitch is called "shell stitch" in the Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Needlework, as well as in other sources.  However, several Victorian resources I've found online name it the "point de Venise", and Thérèse de Dillmont simply numbers her stitches (which is not memorable at all)!  As you may recall from my post about French Needlelaces, the nomenclature for lace is not consistent.  So "point de Venise" could mean Venetian needlelace in general as well as being a name for this particular stitch.  I'll stick with "shell stitch" for this tutorial, since the finished nubs look like wee shells. 

The next UFO checked off my list!  A friend whom I described this project to waxed poetic about it, trying to decide if it was a "melusine dress" or "ondine gown".  "Mermaid rag, haddock frock," I quipped back.  Though it's watery, fishy, and beautiful, there are no sprites or fairies on this garment, so "fish dress" is fine by me.  My poetry is in the dress, not the name. 

In 2003 I visited Scotland, and I wanted to buy some tartan souvenir, since the plaids are so beautiful.  Since I have no affiliation with any Scottish clan, I didn't feel right buying a clan tartan; luckily, there are non-clan tartans.  So I browsed through a very touristy shop, and one particular color combo caught my eye: almost equal parts blue and green, with thin orange and black stripes, and subtle gray easing from one stripe to another.  I looked at the tag, and read "New York City". 

Happy Easter!  Flowers are blooming all over Portland after a gray winter, and Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and our new life in Him! 

But here on my sewing blog, let's talk about skirts.  Last Easter, a friend said something scathing about Easter services at church, about women wearing skirts that don't hang right, with their slips slipping out the bottom.  I then went to church and saw exactly that!  See, most modern women grew up in jeans, and don't wear skirts often enough to know how to manage them.  This ignorance shows at weddings, when bridesmaids sit with their legs open, or at Easter services where nylon slips fall below the hem of the skirt, or in historical dramas when the actress fights with her costume.  (Keira Knightly, though otherwise a wonderful actress, is guilty of this.  She never alters her body mechanics to suit the costume; she's always stalking about, long-legged, whipping her skirts around her legs ungracefully.)

Here hangs a disappointing project from my early days of drafting patterns.  The problem is the bodice, which I listed among my failures in this post, but the jist of it is that the wrap top never hung right, and it looked worse after each washing, and was hard to iron.  Such a shame! 

Recently, as a project with fellow church members, I have been memorizing Romans chapter 8.  It's been a long time since I've done this kind of memory work, and I'm finding the process quite interesting.  Memorizing requires a kind of mental discipline that I used to have but which I've let grow weak as a result of my overuse of the Internet.  (I am aware of the irony of writing that on the Internet.)  It makes me think about memory in general...

As it relates to sewing, memory is necessarily kinesthetic: we don't learn stitches merely by looking at them or reciting the steps to make them; we learn them by hand.  Samplers, which are old fashioned showcases of a young woman's best sewing work in a wide variety of methods, were simultaneously displays of her needle expertise and reminders to herself of what she had in her repertoire... and when she, years later, looked at the sampler to remind herself of how a feather stitch was done, I imagine her hands remembered more than her eyes did!