Photography by Santiago Vanegas

You would think that we would have stirred up some ghosts with this photo shoot.  Not really.  Mostly just stirred up dust.  But it was worth it to endure the 120 degree heat of the attic and all that dust to get these images.

These absolutely lovely gowns belong to my friend Anna.  I saw them for the first time when I was at Anna’s for one of her lunches for her “girls”.  I am so lucky to have a friend like her.  She is one of the best storytellers that I know and she has a way of elevating the simplest thing to something special.  So it was at one of Anna’s lunches that she pulled out a box and started to pass around these garments, explaining how most of them belonged to her grandmother and her mother.  The whole experience was so feminine and so nostalgic with all of us women sitting in a circle, eating chicken salad, sharing stories, and handling such beautiful, sentimental heirlooms.

I have to admit, I’m kind of obsessed with these gowns.  The pin tucks and the lace insertions, these are the elements that I want to be putting into the garments that I make.  One of the reasons that I started this blog is to hold myself accountable for my creativity.  It’s way too easy to let all the responsibilities of life completely take over.  With this post, I’m setting the intention to take the plunge into heirloom sewing and to figuring out different ways to use these techniques in modern garments.  I don’t fully understand why, but there are times when I am mentally blocked.  I guess I want to be good at it so much that I’m stuck.  I laugh at my kids when they get so worked up when they can’t do something successfully the first time they try it.  I tell them, “You silly goofballs, of course you can’t do it yet, you’ve never tried it before!”  I need to start taking my own advice.  Just start.  And know that I’m going to make mistakes along the way.  It’s going to be worth the effort.

Have a great week!