The Dissipated Grandma Sheep (Another Lappet Cap)

My first Mrs Sandby cap was far too respectable. 

 

I mean, no-one would go wooing a young maiden one morning in may in a cap like that. 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. I recut the Mrs Sandby cap 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.