Vintage kids clothes

 Something different today. Some vintage toddler clothes. Once upon a time I collected vintage clothes. Most of what I had, more or less fit me but has since been given away. These things were overlooked, because they weren't kept in the same place and I completely forgot I had them.

 I found these in a Salvation Army shop. They hung on the wall for weeks. Originally there were three little dresses and a coat and every time I went in, I admired them, but I never thought about buying them. That is until one day, one of the dresses was gone. I thought it was heartbreaking that these little dresses that looked like they'd been together for decades were being seperated, so I bought what was left, just to make sure they stayed together.

This first dress, is blue nylon with silver lace and soucatache trim. It's labelled as being Spinney brand, which I know nothing about but googling the name shows lots of clothing advertisements from the 60s and 70s. It's  size 20, assuming that's the chest measurement in inches, that's about a size 2 by my estimation. Somewhere I have a matching hair ribbon or sash. That sounds vague but it seems to thick and huge to be a hair ribbon for a two year old, so that doesn't make sense. But the dress has an attached sash, so another one makes no sense either.

It looks like something is missing from the bodice. Bows maybe? I like the idea of bluebirds there for some reason.

This second dress, with cute little embroidered toadstools, is labelled "Rio Frocks by Betta Bonnets". The grand sum of information I've been able to find out about this label is that Betta Bonnets was an Australian company, that ceased trading in 1978.

But this dress has a cute little matching bonnet.

And a patch of discolouration on the front that I wouldn't be brave enough to try to remove, even if I knew how.

Next is this gorgeous, cherry red coat.

I don't think the fur trim is real? Unless maybe it's from some kind of wild felt teddy bear? But I can't really say for certain. The back of my brain suggests it's Australian but I'm not even a hundred percent sure what that is so wouldn't bet on it.

This one is labelled J.Oshlack. I couldn't find any trace of that company at all.

But I have two favourite things about this coat. The first is the intricate labelling to create the right shape on the back. I can't imagine any company bothering with that these days.

The other thing is that the collars are separate! The actual coat looks like this

But then there are three extra collars. A matching cape collar. A soft, lacy knitted collar. And a weird little fur collar.

They can be worn in various combinations, or left off altogether. The red one clearly belongs to the coat. The coat has little buttons under it's collar to button it on.
The little, creamy, lace collar, really looks too perfect to be home made, but I prefer to think it was the handiwork of some clever, loving mother or grandmother.
The fur collar is clearly commercially produced. It's tagged "Made in Japan" and even has creepy, little animal heads attached.

To top it all off, there's a (filthy) nylon parasol.

That's all for now.

I survived!

Yay! We moved house this weekend and while it was incredibly stressful, I survived! Yay again.
There's still way too much unpacking to do, so t he stress isn't over yet but it's better.

The Giant Baby and I took a couple of quick walks today and even though I miss mountains already, where we are now is so flat, I feel like I could walk for twelve hours without complaining  . . . Not today though, since it was 38 degrees!*
By comparison, Lilydale, where we used to live is so steep there's stairs in the footpath on the Main Street at one point! Which meant even in Winter it was unpleasant to walk places.
One thing I will miss is this

That was taken from our old balcony. I'm going to miss being able to look out at the mountains. And I'm going to miss being that close to shops.

We had to drive through the Dandenong a million times to get here and I kept having two conflicting thoughts. "Wow! This is so beautiful!I wish I lived here!" On the one hand. But "Wow! This is so flammable! I am so glad I don't live here!" On the other.
I kept meaning to take some pictures of the scenery to share here but kept putting it off.

I did get this picture of some Queen Anne's Lace when we passed through Cockatoo.

And I got this impressive bruise when I accidentally hit myself with a 300m roll of cling wrap

Other than that, I am so exhausted that the best I can say is I survived.

*In the interest of honesty I have to admit that it was so hot that once we found the shops, we called the Giant Husband to come get us with the car because we were fried.

Update

 I don't really have anything doll or craft related to post about, right now. All that stuff has been packed away because we're moving in two weeks. To a bigger place with A DOLL ROOM AND A PANTRY! I'm very stressed and a little depressed about the move. The Giant Husband and I both grew up in this area, and we had never planned on leaving. But we've finally had to accept that the Yarra Valley is just too fashionable right now and if we actually wanted to buy a house here, it would cost three quarters of a million dollars for any house at all, much less a nice one. And frankly, anyone who'd be willing to lend us that much money, is not someone we should be borrowing from. We like our kneecaps too much.
 I'm also pretty excited about having a whole house. Especially the doll room and the pantry. I have this fantasy that having a bigger place means I won't have two kids and the Giant Husband hanging off me twenty four seven. But I know that's wishful thinking. We could live in Buckingham Palace and they'd still all find a reason to be within three feet of me, all the time.
 Tiny finally gets a bedroom that's larger than a closet. So I get the fun of decorating her room all over again. As well as planning stuff like new towels, a new dinner set, and that kind of stuff. And I'm getting a new computer desk, because my current one is so small that I can't fit my keyboard and mouse pad on it at the same time.

 Christmas was brutal. We have a habit of forgetting to tell the Giant Baby important things. For instance we told him he was getting a baby sister, but didn't think to tell him it meant I'd have to go to hospital for a couple of days. That's something he still holds a grudge about. At Christmas, everyone had told him that he would get Christmas presents. Nobody thought to tell him that everybody else would get presents too. This is his face when he discovered that the presents under Nanny's Christmas tree weren't all for him.

Then he hid in the kitchen to cry.

 Tiny got to wear one of the dresses that I made for her. I originally planned on making most of her clothes. But then we got a ridiculous amount of hand me downs. She ended up with SEVENTY FIVE onesies in size 0-3months! Which meant I could focus on making frivolous dresses like this one.

It's not a good picture but it's the best one I have. The front has a tucky-pleaty treatment that I found on a sundress on Pinterest and copied. But since Christmas day was hot, she actually spent most of the day in just her nappy anyway. (And her brother spent most of the day in his underwear in a kiddie pool.)

I know this post is kind of disjointed. It's been written over three days in two minute bursts. So I'm going to leave it here before it completely stops making sense.