Items of the week...Doin' it Gunne Style

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and these dresses do just that-imitate. Gunne Sax by Jessica McClintock was an extremely popular line of dresses in the mid to late 70s. The style was imitated by other companies and by home seamstresses, as shown by these four dresses currently gracing our "Mid 70s to 80s" section. The hippie boho look is back...so get your Gunne on. Sort of.

Out of hybernation...Vintage thoughts on gardening

Spring is, well, springing up all around the Hatfeathers Vintage studio. The quince bush is in bloom, trees are budding, and the deer have done their annual beheading of the tulips that were planted long ago. There's still a threat of frost in our Midwest location, so the garden tasks are limited...or are they!?

I was inspired by this article from the National Gardening Association's Maggie Oster. She talks about the old idea of a "victory garden". In the WW2 era, the victory garden was simply a family's household garden, planted to extend the family's available foods in time of rationing, and to free the items from farmers for the war effort.
A victory garden could also help families with lots of mouths to feed and little to buy food with.
My husband told the tale of how his Grandmother put tomatoes in everything. A mother of 12 (yes, 12 single-birth babies!), she had to make the family budget stretch 'till it screamed for mercy. How else do you feed 14 on the income of a carpenter? You grow as much as you can in the summer, can it, and feed the family all year on what you grew in those few summer months.
I can guarantee the veggies she grew tasted far and away better than the anemic lettuce and pink gritty tomatoes from the super market.

So what can you be doing now to make your budget stretch? Here's some quick ideas:
1) Start building a garden bed. Clear off any size of yard that you can spare; pull up the sod (grass), amend it with compost, top soil, and shredded leaves. Till or spade-mix it in when the soil is dry enough to not clump, but moist enough to work with. Surround it with cedar or redwood timbers, rocks, plastic edging, or bricks, or just trench deeply around it and mulch heavily to keep grass at bay.

2) Not a square of Earth to spare? Get a few 5 gallon buckets, an old wash tub, or any type of vessel that will hold a foot deep or more of potting soil. You can use old latex (not oil) paint buckets, but you will need to make an extra effort to scrub out ALL the paint, and wash them thoroughly before using. Make sure there are some drainage holes, either by drilling or hammering a nail through the bottom. Fill with quality potting soil-not top soil, as it will turn solid as a rock in a container. I grew more and better tomatoes in 5 gallon buckets than I ever have in the ground. Go figure.
Just put them somewhere that gets a good amount of sun, but won't bake the pots, so on a patch of ground is great, on a slab of cement is less than ideal. If a cement slab is all you have, make sure to perch the buckets on some bricks, so air can flow underneath and cool the soil in the bucket.

3) Start a compost pile. Most city trash pick ups don't allow yard waste. A compost bin or pile is a great way to recycle your clippings and kitchen veggie waste. I highly recommend this site for learning about composting options. I have the one in Figure 3, and regularly harvest several wheelbarrow loads of wonderful black soil for my garden out of it. I also have NEVER had to burn leaves, and NEVER have veggie peels or scraps in my trash. We have 6 100 year old massive maple trees (and several smaller ones) on our lot, which make a lot of leaves in the fall. With my compost bin and mulching mower, I make light work out of fall foliage. My neighbor with 4 trees is still regularly burning leaves even in the spring, and clears the neighborhood of playing kids with the stench. (yes, I am on a soapbox, why?)

4) Install a rain barrel. Catching the water off your roof is a great way to recycle, or at least to keep your water bills down. There are oodles of commercial types available, and there's even a YouTube video on making your own. Rain water is loads better for plants, even if it's a week old, as it is not treated with the chemicals that municipal water supplies get. They don't have much for pressure, so watering far away isn't feasible, unless you like lugging buckets, but for filling the watering can to get to the potted plants around the house, or for the kitchen bed close by the barrel, gravity will give you plenty of help.

You can easily plant spinach, radishes, and lettuces from seeds with little or no skill. Some other veggies require more thought for spacing and depth, but can be done. Every garden center around will soon have starts (pre-planted plants) of anything from tomatoes to cantaloupe, for you to put into your prepared beds or buckets. Even if you spend $3-$5 on a pack of plants, if you get 1 measly pound of veggies from it, you have made back your money. The opportunity to garden with your children is worth your time, as well. It is great to watch their eyes light up when they see the process in motion, and when they realize veggies don't start under fluorescent lights and cellophane. You might also be shocked by what they will try; my son, then age 6, ate the majority of our spinach crop last year, raw and right out of the washing bowl! We'll plant twice as much this year!

Enjoying some vintage music

I've been a bit distracted from my vintage duties the last week or so...life does that some times!
I wanted to share some great music, though. I heard this great singer, June Christy, on the AOL Radio music plugin that came with the AOL Instant Messenger doo-hickey. (tech term much?) I've really loved the Big Band & Swing category of the jazz section on there.
Anyway, in times of topsy turvy-ness, uncertainty, and bleak news, a bit of vintage-style lighthearted happiness is in order:


And my all time fave, and who I'd like to be when I grow up...if I can somehow transform into a perky, petite blond, Doris Day with the Les Brown Orchestra.

Items of the week...A Gaggle of Gloves

I'm working away at the massive pile of gloves that has grown in the studio. They are now organized (hooray!) and photographed (hooray!) and all but these need to be written up and listed (sigh...).
Buy a dress and gloves together...with no extra cost to ship the gloves! (hooray!)

Items of the week...My favorite prom dress so far

I've been in the vintage game for seven years now, so I've seen a lot of prom dresses, and each gives me just a little bit of giddy, girly glee. This one, though, well, gives me the full-on squeel-like-a-schoolgirl, dance-like-Snoopy, wave-my-arms-like-Kermit-the-Frog happiness.
The red is velvet, the white is flocked and glittered tulle, all over white taffeta. Yum. Add the strapless styling with angled wings off the bust, and the full skirt that can accommodate a mountain of crinolines. Wow.

Find this and other great vintage dresses at HatfeathersVintage.com in our Womenswear section.

Aprons...so much more than clothing

This commentary has made its way around the internet a few times. It was forwarded to me by my Grandpa, who no doubt remembers his Mother and Grandmothers wearing an apron. I, myself, cannot particularly remember either of my fore-mothers in an apron, but this does bring back memories of house dresses, home cooking, gathering in the garden, and Grandmotherly love. It was warm, soft, and smelled of fresh biscuits and rose scented perfume.
The vintage aprons in the images above are made from feed sack fabric from the 40s. It is soft, pretty, and unlike any fabric we have these days.

I don't think our kids know what an apron is.
Author unknown
The principal use of Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath, because she only had a few, it was easier to wash aprons than dresses and they used less material, but along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven.

It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.

From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven.

When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids.

And when the weather was cold, grandma wrapped it around her arms.

Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove.

Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron.

From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls.

In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees.

When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.

When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.

It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that 'old-time apron' that served so many purposes.

Send this to those who would know, and love, the story about Grandma's aprons. Or it can be a good history lesson for those that have no idea how the apron played a part in our lives.

REMEMBER:
Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool. Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw.

They would go crazy now trying to figure out how many germs were on that apron.
I don't think I ever caught anything from an apron ..... but Love !!

Find this and other vintage aprons at HatfeathersVintage.com in our Apron Shop.

Something Saucy From the Kitchen!

What's cookin' sweetheart?
This fun vintage apron has a little something extra! The well dressed lady embroidered on the front is wearing a fun vintage circle skirt, stitched to stand out from the apron. Lift it, and see that our fair lady is wearing delightful lace ruffled tap pants in a matching pattern! Surprise!! Find this and other vintage aprons at HatfeathersVintage.com in our Apron Shop.