A cape for Mother

As a little girl I would sit and sew.  I would cut and sew by hand clothes for my dolls.  My mother, my Grandmother and my great grandmother all sewed.  I remember them making baby clothes for my brother before he was born.  They would make pretty little dresses for me as well.  Some that I remember best were the ones that my great Aunt Warren smocked.

When I was old enough I learned to use the sewing machine and made clothes for myself and even some for my mother.  Christmas I would find scraps and put together aprons without patterns.  I made some clothes for my boys when they were very young.

Recently my sewing machine has set unused.  I had used it only for repairs.

My mother who is now 93 is not as nimble as she once was. Her range of motion has become limited from lack of use or maybe atrophy.  Helping her into coats for the winter has become more and more difficult.  My daughter  in  law, Melissa and I decided that a cape would do the trick.  I had a wool one that was too heavy for her and another that was not warm enough, so we put our heads together to figure out what we could do.

Drawing from my past experience of fabricating doll clothes and aprons without a pattern, we came up with a plan.  We purchased two throws one a flat weave and the other a fuzzy white throw.  I ended up sewing these together.  After doing so I realized it would have been smarter to sew the neck opening first,  then turn it and after that sew the two together.  But I did it backwards, so I had to figure out what to do with the neck opening.  I started to bind it with the smoother fabric but this did not work out as nice as I would have liked.  I cut out additional fabric, sewing it together with my machine.  Then reversing it to make a neat finish.  I pinned this getting out my needle and thread, I whipped around the edge of the new lining making it look finished.  As I was doing this I thought about little Leigh years ago making up clothes for her dolls as the grown Leigh was making up a good warm wrap for her Mother.  Little Leigh would have thought that was nice.  Now to take the warm Shawl to Mother and try it out.  It is Blue with white fuzzy interior and trim.  Mother's favorite color and I must say not bad looking.  With her beautiful blue eyes she looked beautiful.  You could see her lovely spirit shining though.