go dress, go!

Love it love it love this dress! Why? It looks good on everybody. And it's so chic and cute. And you can make it in any fabric at all and it would still look good. Bonus: high belts are back in style (or will be for about 2 more minutes).

I'm back from NY. We had a great day. I think we walked 65 blocks, and I'm not exaggerating. The best way to see the city is on foot, so that's what we did. My brother kept joking about me having a clipboard and a stop watch. 12:34: pause for two minutes before historical marker in Herald Square. 1:16: buy roasted chestnuts.

When you walk every street in lower Manhattan, you need quality sustinance. We we arrived in Chinatown, we got "mini-cakes" from a street vendor. We had lunch at John's Pizza on Bleeker- I am confident in proclaiming that it is the best pizza I've ever had. Photo is from the dining room at John's. There were snacks that afternoon after making it up to Midtown (coffee and cake), and then after walking all the way back down to the East Village, we went to a fantastic Italian restaurant called Supper. Since it was Sunday night we were able to get a table, and I ate the leftovers today for lunch. Yum.

I put a new section up on my website for items other than patterns, like my new Fabric Guides and Goodie Jars. I am excited about both things- go check them out.

Enjoy your Monday night, everyone, and..........wait...........hold on....what day is the Jack Bauer Show on? Oh man, it's tonight!!! Hunker down with some popcorn, 'cause somebody's going to get strangled!!!

Craft Kills

Would love to see the "Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting" exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design when I hit NYC tomorrow, but seeing as how I'm traveling in a pack, it's probably not going to happen. My travel-mates aren't nearly as interested in such things. Good thing they like bagels, cathedrals, historical markers, people watching and cocktails (not necessarily all together), because otherwise it would be a disaster!

Inspiration

Wow...look, this dress by Lela Rose is so similar to the Betsy Ross #002 Girlie Dress, only without the shoulder straps. Look how pretty is is.

PIRATE CHARMS!!!

Pirate charms and more await you at Les Feves de Clamecy, a company that makes charms for "King Cakes," served on Epiphany. I love little goodies like this. Great colors.

Vintage Pattern Lending Library

Wow, the Vintage Pattern Lending Library is awesome, awesome, awesome. Not only do they have patterns for all types of clothing, but they also have designs for embroidery, like this terrific Egyptian-style dress trimming. The illustration I have included here reminds me of the costumes in one of my very favorite movies, "42nd Street." I would make that "coatee" and wear it all the time!!

yet more on the sizing discussion

I saw this article today about how the Spanish government will be standardizing the clothing size system. Apparently, stores will be banned from using store displays featuring clothing smaller than a Euro 38 / US 8 (but whose 8? J. Crew's 8 or Bebe's 8?)

Stores that use size 4 clothes in window displays clearly are appealing to women's eyes- we want to see ourselves lookin' fine in those cute, tiny clothes. But do you really feel taken advantage of? Manipulated? You still go in and try the clothes on in your size before you buy them.

It is indeed disturbing when a store presents such unrealistic displays of clothing when most American women are much larger, but I doubt they are asserting that their displays represent the "average" American woman. They just know that their clothes look better on small dress forms. Just like clothes in magazines look more attractive to buyers on slender women. It's just a fact. I guess I don't feel that it's the government's job to regulate these issues- if Hollister wants to make a display with a size 2 model riding a dinosaur in nothing but a ski cap and Ugg boots, who cares? I'm not going to shop there, but that's my choice. I would rather shop at a store that presented a healthier concept of what beauty is- it's not just a size 4, but a size 14 as well. And usually that's not a national chain.

New vogue pattern

Oh wow, this is such a gorgeous dress. Yes, it looks ultra fancy in this pic, but could be calmed down a bit with a change of fabric. Could be suitable for fancy work situations. Or if you're the sort of person who likes to look like Ava Gardner all the time, then you could just make one for every day of the week. Complete info and tech sketch here.

dogs playing instruments

I've been busy as a bee updating/re-designing my website, trying to learn corporate jargon (don't ask), making polenta (mmmmmm), scheming, etc.

I wanted to update my previous post, wherein I said one of my favorite works of art was by Lee Bontecou. No no....this is.

but that's what i *do*

Well, since de-lurking seems to be going around, I guess I'll come out from behind the curtain for a second as well...but since my photo has always been at the upper right hand corner of this blog, I guess I don't have to post another one. You can see me here and here and here anyway.

So lesseeeeeeee here.....what can I reveal?

*I have a master's degree in Art History
*This is one of my favorite works of art. But photography is my real love.
*I won an essay contest in the 7th grade and was given an all-expenses paid trip to Germany by Mercedes-Benz, but they made me visit a whole bunch of truck factories while I was there. Consequently, I know a lot of random facts about Germany and German truck factories.
*I cannot resist toffee. Or coffee.
*I don't know how to make a buttonhole because my sewing machine is missing that attachment.
*I love bourbon.
*I took tap dancing lessons for almost 10 years.
*If I weren't making sewing patterns or selling art, I would want to study 20th century design. Or be a textile designer. Or maybe a restauranteur. Or a documentary filmmaker. Or a fashion critic. Or an author. Or saving the monkeys. (That one's for you, Leya)
*I grew up on a gravel road. The area was so rural (how rural was it?) that our address was a set of coordinates.
*I have a toothache


Well, I think that's good for now. Your turn!

why is every other post about shoes?

i am inspired by these shoes at Anthropologie. I have ben wanting to sew some kind of spat-like thing for some gray heels i have and might just get around to doing it this weekend. OR i could just buy these awesome shoes.

This fabric (or one of the other gazillion fabrics) on Ichiroya Flea Market would be really interesting to develop into a garment other than a kimono, don't you think?

By the way, be prepared to spend a lot of time on that site. There's 108 pages of fabric on there.

I've been busy here, going to funky bars with MB and Otis, playing Quizzo with my peeps, cutting my own hair ( tried it one other time when I was 4 and it was a bad idea then, too) and doing serious damage control in lots of areas in my life. I have neglected posting for those reasons. My charming Sewing-closet-under-stairs is still stuffed full of things that used to be in the living room, my machine is still broken, I am very distracted and can't be bothered to finish hand-sewing 3 projects that have been languishing on hooks for months. Oh well.

Happy weekending. See you at The Fire.

i just want to say one word to you: plastics.

So if you had told me a year ago that I would be visiting a business called "Everything Plastics," well.... ok fine, I guess it wouldn't be that far- fetched. But still.

I designed a display for the patterns, and it turned out really well. They look so much better all standing up and in their own little bins. It makes them look so... real? It's creeping me out. I have ACRYLIC DISPLAYS for my PRODUCTS that I sell IN STORES. Freaky!

nips n' stube are getting married. this is a picture of them on new years eve in chicago. don't they look lovely?