A Lavender Colored Autumn Sky

I crept into the sewing room and found some inspiration in a scrap of soft purple fabric and a Japanese Dress Pattern Book.  There is so much inspiration inside from all the sweet little girls, muted colors and wonderful pictures!  I love the line drawing for directions - if only it were in English!  

I seem to always run into a snare transferring the pattern from paper to fabric.  All the patterns come printed on a large sheet and it's a matter of tracing through Japanese characters and several sizes to find the pieces you need!  However, it's very worth the hassle and the directions are simple enough that, even if I don't cut things out exactly right, I can trim pieces to fit as I go.  (If anyone else has a trick to using these patterns I would love to know!)  

Here's a peak into the sewing room

It's far from perfect and I didn't iron it for the picture!  The pleat in front isn't quite right and I got impatient with the bias tape finish and improvised.  I love it for it's peasant simplicity.

 It would be darling over a white turtle neck.  I have a particular little girl in mind for this but I still have to see if it will fit!  I have no idea what size I wound up making, I just eye-balled it.

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun

To Autumn
-John Keats

Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun,

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round thatch-eaves run-

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flower for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abrad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reaped furrow, sound asleep,

Drowsed wit the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;

And sometimes like a gleaner thoud ost keep

Steady the thy laden head across a brook,

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring?  Aye, where are they?

Think not of them, thou has thy music too-

While barred clouds bloom the softy-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue.

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud-bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now, with treble soft,

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Happy first day of Autumn!