I Love Easter; Really I Love Easter!

Easter was the one time of year that I was for sure getting a new pair of shoes and a new dress. My summer shoes for church was carefully picked out before Easter. I made sure that they were the latest style. Geeze, like my little county mind knew anything about style. I pretended that I did.
I can describe each dress I had for each year, even now after forty years. My grandmother made them on her Singer sewing machine. The machine was at one time a non-electric paddle, that had been converted into electric. She thought this was interesting to everyone and told everyone even if I am sure no one was as impressed as she wanted them to be about her sewing machine.
After the old house had burnt she prided herself in the replacements that she had made with little money. She always said she would replace the furniture a little at a time with new. The time that passed from moving into the rebuilt house until she died, I only remember a couple of new things she bought. Second hand to her was just fine when it came down to it. I feel the same way. That is just another thing I gathered from my grandmother. Looking at it this way; Buying something new becomes second hand after it is used or worn, right? Nothing stays new.
My dresses were made many times with material that someone had given to us, many times cut down from an adults dress or skirt and jacket set to fit me. This was not the case on Easter. I got to go to Wilson's Fabrics downtown and pick out new fabric. The shoes were shopped for on the same trip. The trip to town was not made often and we made a day of it. My shoes were always a chore for my grandmother. She and I most of the time did not agree on them. I for some reason liked want really she thought was too grown up for me, imagine that? I liked fancy with heels higher than young girls should wear.
There are several dresses that I consider my favorites. I can almost put them in order from year to year by knowing that I was slowly getting more in style, ha. I fondly remember the one made of cotton fabric. It had and off white background slattered with blackberries. The berries were purple, green and the color of rasberry, being from not ripe to purple ripe. The dress was long wasted with a short capped sleeve. The shoes were just as pretty. They were brown wedged healed and looked so good on my feet. This was one of the first years I was allowed to wear panty hose. I say allowed, it was one of the years that I could get out of the yard without already having big ole runs and holes in them. I learned at an early age that dark colored hose looked great with pink. I knew this because I had a pink dress once. This dress was not homemade. It was sent to me from my mama's sister in Wayne, Michigan. She sent one pink dress and a blue dress at Christmas that year. The pink was saved for my Easter Dress. The shoes chosen for that were black patton leather and had a bow that tied. I sat in the car that Easter watching my feet as I pretended to drive my daddy's car. I really thought I was grown up, with the hose and fancy black shoes. Grandmother always had a great sense of matching color. Green and pink together was a great pick she made for me one year. This was sixth grade. I had my picture made in this dress. It was that stiff polyester worn in the seventies. Grandmother loved that stuff. She said it would never ever wear out; she was right. She made a pink bow and tied it between a pointed collar. The extra to this dress was tacked at the points of the collar; a lace flower on each point that came from a nightgown. The great nightgowns that were in the boxes that my great-aunts brought to me from Orlando Florida.