Dear Friend Paula!

Thank you for accepting my invitation! I look forward to conversing with thee in the future. I have my husband Timothy to thank for helping me join this site and could never have done it without him!!!! I am very dumb when it comes to technology !So he has been tutoring me on the computer. I am very happy to have you for my friend! :):) 

Blessings to thee today!

Hilda

Thank thee for accepting our invitation. Hope and trust that thee hast a blessed night and morning. Peace be with thee and thy household.

Timothy

Thank you so much for your friendship, Paula.  I love the way you dress 'plain'  with such character and grace. 

Thank you for the welcome!! It's such a blessing to be surrounded by like minded people.

Leslie Rodgers wrote: "No matter what we wear it's not what we "are", it's how we are choosing to present ourselves."

The sociologist Erving Goffman coined the term "presentation of self", and argued that people engage in "impression management", based on the notion that human interaction can be understand by analogy with the stage play. He wrote a book entitled *The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life*, a fascinating piece of work.

There is one in town that I am starting to attend but it is Liberal and I would prefer Conservative.

Paula, I don't know what you were like as a kid or a teen, but if my dear departed Mama had been told I would grow up to be a woman who liked tidiness and order she never would have believed it. For me it was definitely a long time coming.
When I can make things around me orderly it is calming, though, and I love calm.

In telling me the different types of 'sort of plain' dress in your meeting you have reminded me that even the Quakers here are after all living in Bloomington, a peculiarly liberal college town.
No one on the street here has ever seemed to be bothered by what I wear, other than the occasional person stopping me to say "I like your dress, where did you get it?"
Our town had the usual skinny girls in leggings and tiny t- shirts here and itty bitty sun dresses. We have young men in low-hanging pants, but we also have a fair collection of business suits, jeans of every imaginable style, women in veils of all types and men in kilts.
Perhaps if I get brave enough to try Meeting for Worship I won't raise too many eyebrows?

My father used to talk to me about the kind of image we project. We are the only creatures on the planet who can choose how we look to each other, and who evaluate each other based on our appearance.
Because of that, all clothing is a form of costume. No matter what we wear it's not what we "are", it's how we are choosing to present ourselves.
I think this gives us a great opportunity.

Opportunity for what? I'm still working on figuring that out.
To change ourselves, become more humble, become less obsessive, less greedy?
To change the world?

I started fads in high school. I was an outsider, not popular and not interested in being popular, but I was watched. If I did something, like sew bells on the knees of my bell-bottoms, within a few days other people would be doing the same. Humans are very imitative creatures.

I think with more people taking up plain dress we can send a subtle message to the world around us, a message that our clothes don't have to be made far, far away, they don't have to be expensive, they don't have to show off our riches> We don't need new clothes weekly, we don't need to have full walk-in closets.
We can live with less, be happy with less, serve the world with less.

The Maha dress is lovely, and really does look comfortable. I can't quite figure out how it is put together, but it looks complicated to make.

Re: Sewing
I think that's how I look at clothes in general, my first thought is "could I make that?" Comes from years of sewing....I made a dreadful shift dress at age 10 when an auntie taught me and a cousin to sew. Perhaps I should say tried to teach, bless her. We were not ready learners.....
I really started sewing in high school though, because I couldn't find the kind of things I wanted to wear. It was the '70's, and I am not really a mini-skirt/hot pants kind of girl, haha. I mostly made full length dresses. I like being able to bend over without astonishing innocent bystanders, and I do love ths swish of a long skirt.

What I DON"T do is complicated sewing. I don't do tailoring, or anything fancy, and I will go a long, long way to avoid putting in a zipper. I am far, far too lazy to do anything that frustrating if it can be avoided.
When I first started to learn to sew I found it intimidating. I think I saw it as a long progression...starting at a hemmed tablecloth and progressing through fitted sleeves and bound buttonholes to finally culminate in a beaded bridal gown with a twelve foot train.
It didn't occur to me back then that a person could do just as I have done, which is learn sufficient skill to make the simple things I want and leave the fancy, elaborate and tedious work to people who are so inclined.

thank you! i will.

Welcome Paula,

Glad to see another seeker.
Looking forward to your involvement.
I hope you find both wisdom and joy.

Warmest Regards.

Paula, I read Magdalena too! She makes me smile!

Last week as I was buying some cloth to make a summer weight dress my #1 daughter said, "You dress to draw attention to yourself."
I didn't argue, and she didn't say it in a mean way, just as an observation. She was dressed in her usual style....tight fitting maternity tank top that accentuates her belly, reveals a generous amount of cleavage, and also shows off the tattoos on both her upper arms.
I dress to draw attention to myself? teeheeheee!!!!

In 2007 I began to think I should dress in some form of 'plain'
clothing.

I knew very little about Quakers, hadn't been to a meeting for worship for years and didn't know any personally. None of the Quakers I had ever met were dressing Plain, I didn't know Plain Quakers existed. But for some reason and seemingly out of nowhere I got this idea that I should make a wardrobe of simple dresses and aprons and wear them.
I was a textiles student at the university here at that time, and I proposed this to my department head as an ongoing art project, I would create the clothes, wear them for a year, and document the whole process as part of my BFA project. He loved the idea, I spent a summer making dresses and journaling the project, and I wore the clothes exclusively for 5 months.
Then I met a great guy, thought I couldn't woo him in a frumpy blue dress and apron, and put the clothes away to dress 'normal'.
Then I ran out of financial aid and dropped out of college, moved to the country with the boyfriend, and brought out the plain dresses which are very practical for farming, an apron will hole a lot of baby chicks.

Then I began to feel I should dress plain, period, not just sometimes.


I've also been thinking for quite some time about driving into town on First Day mornings for Meeting for Worship.....but if I went the way I normally dress I'm afraid they'd think I was a crackpot.....and if I dressed 'regular' for them I'd feel like I was not being honest. A dilemma.

I didn't know you could "friend" someone on QuakerQuaker. See? You've taught me something useful already. I am happy to be your friend!