The house of Nana

Some of you may know that my Nana passed away recently, and my Mum and her sisters have been taking to the unenviable task of cleaning out the house of someone who lived in the same place, and in much the same way, for 60 plus years. She never threw anything away, and many things are in original or fantastic condition.

Knowing my love of vintage, Mum selected some things I might like to have, and I will be using some of them for upcoming craft projects.

I love these old canisters, I will be finding something very useful to use them for, and the floral tablecloth might be refashioned into something else.

The pink plates I will use for Sunday breakfasts, as they have many memories attached to them of meals at Nanny's house sitting around her laminex table.

I adore these vintage towels, so my mind will be working overtime trying to think of something really special to do with them.

These awesome Irish linen tea towels are so vibrant. They are the subject of today's sewing adventure, blog post to follow.

One of her skirts.

And this was one of my Pa's tops. I'm wearing it today. Love it!

These were also my Pa's overalls which he wore every day. I got these when he died many years ago now, and still wear them occasionally. This was me last week. Still miss him after 19 years and feel a bit closer to him when I wear these.

How lucky I am to have such special memories of all of my grandparents, and it's a privilege to have some of Nan's things and let them see light again after so many years in a dark cupboard.

Do you have special items passed on from loved ones who are no longer around?

A pile of vintage linen

I'm a bit of a fan of vintage linen, especially floral sheets and pillowcases, so I'm always on the look out for it at op shops. My first project for this blog brings much of this collection together to make a beautiful little skirt for my daughter Juliet.

I started off with this pile. 3 pillowcases, 2 sheets and one doona cover.

I decided to make a shirt with both an over and underskirt, so my first step was to cut 8 panels to make the gores for the 2 skirt pieces. I used 4 different fabrics (sheets) for the underskirt and 2 different fabrics for the overskirt. The overskirt is a little bit fuller and shorter than the underskirt.

Here are all of my cut out jigsaw pieces.

All the panels were then sewn together, and I added some elastic gathering along the length of each panel on the overskirt, by sewing elastic lines along the length of the skirt that were about 1/4 shorter than the skirt fabric.

Here are the 2 skirts, with a little bit of lace and ric rac added to one seam.

And my completed skirt with a yolk (pillowcase) and simple elastic waistband. Of course I couldn't resist adding a great big reclaimed button.