MY first Mrs Sandby Cap was far too respectable. I needed another one.
I mean, no-one would go wooing a young maiden one morning in may in a cap like the one in the photograph below. She might flirt coyly around her lappets, but her virtue is clearly linen-clad – and that is like iron-clad and only slightly more elastic. No-one, if you follow my meaning, would be stealing this milk-maid’s cheese.
No indeed. Lappet caps are inherently silly, and I have made that my hill on which to gather.
So I did! And it must have been an awfully big hill, because there was a hell of a lot of gathering in it.
I recut the Good Wives Linens Mrs Sandby Cap pattern in white cotton voile, and then I gathered, and then I added lace, and then I gathered MORE, and only when it looked like a lacy nightmare in a boudoir, did i stop.
The tight u-bend around the lappet point took a few goes to get right. Adding the lace to the edge of the ruffle extended its depth juuust enough that the regular gathering ration wasn’t quite enough – the ruffle spread out and turned inward like a concave cup.
I ended up sacrificing the gathers in the flat butt of the lappet, but in the end i got the u-bend to lie flat. JUST.
And I gathered and I gathered,
until suddenly, well, golly gee – here’s an exuberant lappet cap hanging up to dry after the marking pen has been washed out! Gosh it looks pretty like that.
And at last – may I present- the milkmaid’s nightmare:
There is no universe in which this look has any dignity.
I look like a hydrangea bush.
I look like a pram in a paper-mâchié pantomime.
I look like a dissipated grandma sheep.
It is PERFECT.
