The Great Tablecloths to Togs Caper

I believe I own most of the vintage and antique linen damask tablecloths in Southwestern Ontario! There are always several in every boxlot of antique linens I purchase, it seems there may have been a law at one time that no one could set up housekeeping unless they owned one.
I'm not sure where exactly the idea came from...Veronica and I had planned on doing some needle felting and she was going to try her hand at lampworking. But somehow or other, we found ourselves turning over the mountains of linen, gleefully buying fabric dye and plunging into the delights of constructing clothing without patterns!

Part of the linen mountain:
Dye packets and lovely pastel dryer lint!

Pure linen damask dyed in meltingly lovely colors:

Dusting off one of the sewing machines. Since this was an impromptu sewing session, I realized to my chagrin that I had 2 sewing machines, dozens of spools of thread, and ONE bobbin. This slowed us down a little but we persevered!

Veronica starting her skirt, I was cutting out my pink dress using a favorite old dress as a guide. We had to work on projects of the same color at the same time so we could share the machine!

Ancient sewing machines are best...solid metal, sews like a champ, heavy as a tank!

Pinning the free form tucks onto he skirt:

Snipping tuck threads!

Work in progress just outside our atelier!

Of course Valentine was on hand to assist. You can tell just how thrilled she was with her chic ruffle.

Dinner break

Posing carefully as there were about 100 pins on the dress holding the tucks!

Voila! Pintucked dress, with wrap kimono jacket.

Veronica's pink tucked skirt

Veronica's green top. She did not like it!

The ecru shawl with drawn thread work from the original hem,and torn ruffles. I made pants to match this but they need to have the waist re-designed. They made me look like a sack of potatoes!

Veronica's pants were MUCH more sucessful! Aren't they great? They were made of unused linen pique, probably towel fabric from around 1920.

Mother of pearl buttons on the tiesWe had soooo much fun!

And some day we will do it again!