Out of My Mind - Smocking Easter finery rewarding experience

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

— Easter Sunday evokes many pleasant memories - new fashions, egg hunts, family gatherings.

Colors are bright - in nature and fashion.

Evidences of the budding spring abound. Jonquils and forsythia burst with yellow. Magnolia blossoms sans foliage emit a lovely fragrance.

Grape hyacinths dot the landscape with purple.

Redbuds offer a shadow of purple.

People are eager to shed the dark, heavy winter clothing for lighter spring and summer attire.

Easter is often the time for youngsters to wear new spring frocks for the first time this year.

Many, many Easters I was still hemming a dress in the wee hours of the morning, eager to help the girls don their new smocked dresses and put the pastel-colored hairbows in their hair that morning.

(Yes, now my grown daughters remember with chagrin the large grosgrain ribbon hairbows.)

I love to sew. For years I made my daughters’ dresses which were usually smocked and/or embroidered. I always had a little bag of handwork so no matter where I was, whether sitting in a doctor’s office or waiting inline somewhere, I would take out my handwork and begin smocking or embroidering.

My great-grandmother, MaMaw, said: “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” With six daughters ages 8 and younger, my hands were seldom idle.

For years, I spent the weeks preceding Easter designing and making Easter dresses and hair bows for my daughters.

My grandmother loved to sew. I remember her stories of going to a fashionable dress store during the Depression with her sketch book and drawing the current fashion, then returning home to design a pattern and make a dress for my mother.

Although she was an accomplished seamstress, she sent me to sewing lessons. I’ll never forget our maid walking me to the trolley stop to ride the mile or so to the house where I took sewing lessons.

Then, during a brief stay in Little Rock in 1987, I took English smocking lessons. The lady whotaught me said we’d soon become so adept that we could smock while watching television. I didn’t believe her, but she was right. Geometric smocking is repetitive and relatively easy. Picture smocking requires more attention.

So began my journey into English smocking and French heirloom handsewing. There was shadow embroidery and tatting, as well, to master.

Baby dresses were a joy to create.

After six girls, we had a boy. I smocked for him the first year of his life, but that did not continue for long.

One Easter Sunday, I had committed to prepare the breakfast for the church following the sunrise service. I had been shopping for Easter shoes the Saturday before only to return home, planning to hem some dresses, to find a daughter with a broken toe. A trip to the emergency room an hour north of us took most the remaining hours of the night, so there was no sleep and little time to hem the dresses. Tape can temporarily handle a portion of a hem on a little girl’s batiste dress.

Those Easter dresses were passed down year after year with me only having to make new ones for the eldest daughter. When the boys began to arrive, the dresses were carefully boxed away.

It doesn’t seem that many people sew anymore, but there’s something amazingly rewarding and fulfilling about handwork - about creating something.

A dear friend, who passed on at the age of 92, loved to sew. She had rooms full of fabric from many decades. She couldn’t bear to part with it. Another older friend, now in her 80s, spends more time making bobbin lace creations. I have a lovely linen handkerchief trimmed with her hand-made bobbin lace and a baby bonnet trimmed with tatting made by her.

The girls are all too old for smocked dresses. My grandson is not allowed to wear smocked outfits, so the smocking will have to wait for a granddaughter, and Easter outfits will be store-bought.

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Annette Beard is the managing editor of The Times of Northeast Benton County. A native of Louisiana, she moved to this area in 1980. She has nine children and one grandchild.

She can be reached at [email protected].

Opinion, Pages 4 on 03/31/2010