1940s smocked child's dress

I come from a long line of creative women.

I want to share some of the textile treasures we hold in the family, through my blog.  Why?
Because they are objects of beauty and careful craftsmanship, currently stored away in cupboards and drawers.  They deserve to be more widely shared.  Further, I want to create a record for family members, and as a source of personal inspiration.

The first of these vintage textile treasures I want to share is a smocked dress, made for my mother, Wendy Williams, in circa 1942- 1945.

This dress is made from trabalco.  A fabric I had never heard of before.  It has the appearance of cotton.  I can find advertisements for trabalco fabric in womens periodicals from about 1919 - 1940 but no further information.  My mother has told me that trabalco was often used for childrens clothing in the war years when few floral cottons were available.  She remembers this dress as being well starched and somewhat scratchy to wear!

The dress was smocked by my grandmother Dinah Williams (nee Sloman) and sewn up by my great grandmother, Esme Sloman (nee Sommerville, b December 1886, d 1959).  My grandmother, who we called Gee, enjoyed smocking, tabestry and knitting.  I can recall her hand stitching, but never saw her sit at a sewing machine, and am not certain if she even owned one.  But she had little need to, since my great grandmother, known as Gargee, sewed clothes beautifully.

In this photo you can see my grandmother and three of her four children.  My mother is second from the left.  Both she had her sister are wearing smocked dresses, similar to the one featured in this post.

The dress would fit a little girl between about 3 and 6.  It has a chest size of 60 cm.  It is machine sewn with beautiful French seams at both sleeve and side seams.  It buttons down the back (8 green buttons, now faded), and is smocked front and back.  The dress has cream (now discoloured) collar and cuffs edged with blue blanket stitching.  It has a small hem, only 1cm, and shows no signs that the hem has been let down at any stage.  (It was common to make smocked dresses with big hems that could be let down so the child could continue to wear then as they grew).

The fabric on the outside of the dress is faded from the bright Kiwi sun.  But on the inside the colours are still bright.

I love the colours of this dress, picked up in the smocking, so bright and pretty.

The smocking is 10cm (4inches) deep, in 6 colours; dark navy, white, mid pink, yellow, green, mid blue.  There are 7 bands of smocking ranging from 1-6 rows of stitching in each band, using three stitches stem, cable and wave stitch, with a mirror image repeat from the 6 rows of blue wave stitch in the centre.

My favourite part of this dress is where it has been invisibly mended.  At some point the dress has had a deep rip, down the edge of the back placket, from between the 6th and 7th buttonhole almost to the hem of the dress.  My great grandmother has carefully repaired this rip, using herringbone stitch on the inside, and covering this on the outside, by a piece of fabric, perfectly aligned, appliquéd over the rip, making the mend almost invisible.  It speaks of such care and pride in the work and the importance of ensuring a wartime dress can continue to be worn.

This is the mend from the inside...

And this is what you can see on the outside...

The dress is too fragile now to be worn.

At some stage I want to use the colours, the squares of the gingham, and maybe the patterns of the smocking as inspiration for a quilt.  Perhaps a mini quilt?