Really not that much has changed since these early photos. All these years later, I still love gardening and I still love wearing dresses!
When I was little, my mom often sewed me the cutest handmade dresses. I vividly remember her cutting daisies out of cotton lace to make the appliqué for the little pink dress on the left in one of the above photos. Not long after that, she taught me how to sew. When I was four, I got a small but real working sewing machine for Christmas.
She continued to sew most of my clothes. I remember a trip to Toronto when she made us matching pale blue polyester pantsuits, yikes! Definitely not my favourite 😆
But my all-time favourite dress was a cream cotton one covered in bright orange carrots that she made for our trip to Disneyland. Here I am wearing it on a day trip to Tijuana, Mexico. I absolutely loved that dress. The year was 1975, and I was ten years old.
My mom had the most incredible wardrobe filled with vintage 1950s and '60s clothing. I still have an assortment of her most beautiful vintage dresses today. In my teens and 20s, I went through a phase where I took apart some of her gorgeous full-skirted 1950s dresses and made other outfits out of them, something I sometimes regret now!
Fast forward almost 50 years and not much has changed. I still sew. I still garden. And I still love to wear vintage-inspired dresses. One day, while choosing fabrics, I came across a beautiful carrot print, it’s the closest I’ve ever seen to the fabric of that original dress. Of course, I had to get some!
Here I am now at the New West Community Garden, wearing the Sookie - Veggie Vixen dress, a playful nod to that special carrot dress from my childhood.
I’ll never forget that trip with my mom so many years ago. I’ll certainly be thinking of her every time I wear this new carrot print dress in the garden.
I especially love seeing photos and hearing stories from other women wearing my vintage-inspired dresses, especially midsize and plus-size women who may never have had the chance to wear something like this before. It brings me so much joy to see others embracing this playful, nostalgic style.
XOX Cherry Velvet