Fabric Week Continues: FONT!

In addition to giant polka dots, I'm also (slightly) obsessed with alphabet-print fabrics. This is one of my favorites, from Michael Miller. I'm really tempted to buy some more of this (I already have a GIANT circle skirt made from this fabric) but I fear I would then gradually buy more and more until ultimately I would never wear anything but black and white letters.

What do folks think of a Duro made with the above as the body and this Alexander Henry fabric below as the banding?



I'd be worried that I'd have to redraft the bands to make them exactly as wide as the numbers, but it might be worth it ...

Click on the images to buy yardage from the eBay seller, Fabric Connection. (If you want more than one yard read her description for instructions as to how to go about it.)

what the heck, let's just make this Fabric Week, okay?

Everyone okay with me just declaring this Fabric Week at A Dress A Day? Sarah sent me the link to this company, Harmony Art; they were a nominee for Co-op America's People's Choice award for the greenest companies -- and that's green as in "ecological", not the color -- and, well, I like this fabric. I like it a great deal. And it's intended for home furnishings (I have no fear of looking like a well-upholstered sofa, obviously) so it's 90" wide. Oooooh! So nice not to have to wiggle with the cutting layouts for a REALLY big skirt!

I'm not entirely sure what the scale of this pattern is, but, frankly, I don't care. If the flowers are as big as my head? Fine. Size of a quarter? Fine. Just sign me up when it becomes available ...

I also like this pattern:



Although I'm not a huge fan of purple. In fact, I'm not even a casual fan of purple. In fact, when purple comes on the radio, I change the station. (And yes, yes, I know about the "when I am an old lady" poem, and frankly, when I am an old lady I will still be wearing huge polka dots. I hope.)

Come back tomorrow for more fabric here during FABRIC WEEK! (See, doesn't it look more official in all-caps?)

gratuitous fabric posting/taunting

I just bought some of this (from Thai Silks). Was it on sale? Yes. Do I know what I'm going to do with it? No. Will it probably involve a midriff band? Yes.

Sometimes a piece of fabric will say "BUY ME" (in a kind of James Earl Jones, stentorian voice) and when I say "For what, pray tell?" it answers "That's for me to know and you to find out!", and then it giggles (while still sounding like James Earl Jones). And I have to say, when I ignore that fabric-voice, I always regret it. Because sometime soon after I run across the pattern that fabric was destined to be, and when I go back to find the fabric it's GONE. Whoosh! Vanished without a trace. Occasionally the store clerk will even deny all knowledge of said fabric. ("No, honey, we've never had that pattern here." [rolls eyes])

What does this fabric say to you? (Thai Silks also has it in "almond," too:



The almond didn't demand to be bought, though, so I left it on the (virtual) shelf.

Shopping in Paris (in 1907)

Have I mentioned just how much I love Google Book Search? I love GBS. A lot. Like, bake-them-all-cupcakes, write-them-mash-notes a lot. Not just because (or in spite of) I find about a book a week through them that I just *must* own, or because they're now letting you download PDFs of the older, out-of-copyright stuff (including old home sewing books, check it out!), but mostly because of serendipitous finds like this one.

Here's what Elizabeth Otis Williams has to say about shopping in Paris, before the Great War:

There are many good dressmakers in Paris, besides the large houses that all the world knows. The chief thing in ordering dresses at these places is to refuse to have them too much trimmed. They make such delightful elaborations with hand-made tucks, etc., and give such original and unexpected touches that one is tempted to let them err in making the trimmings and details too elaborate.

In the Reference List is given ... dressmakers who we know are satisfactory both as to fit and finish. All the addresses given are places we know personally or through friends. Some are cheap, some are moderate in price, and others are expensive, but all are reliable, and make things that are good for their price. We know of other dressmakers who make lovely things but fail to keep their engagements, or who are unsatisfactory in their dealings, making bills larger than the customer has been led to expect, or using poor materials for linings. We have avoided giving addresses of this class. At places which are not reliable the model shown is often charming, but the dress that is sent home is very badly finished, and lined with inferior material.

...

French hats are not all made for young people. They make very chic and dignified hats for older women. In England or in America a hat made for a middle-aged woman is often quite too "old ladyish," or else it has no character, and its appropriateness consists solely in the fact that it is not noticeable! In Paris a middle-aged lady can get a hat that is suited to her years and yet handsome and stylish; and as for hats for young people, they are bewildering in their variety and beauty.

Isn't this marvelous! And yet it's something that I'd probably never have run across if not for GBS. (I checked Bookfinder.com -- there are about five or six copies and they are in the $50 range, so this is not something I'd be likely to find anywhere, much less buy. According to WorldCat, twenty-six libraries have the 1907 editions, and two have the edition of 1911.)

Anyway, if you have a moment (or are stuck in an airport, as I am at the moment) go browse a bit. I was also fascinated by the (very short) list of restaurants where a woman could dine alone ... not to mention this bit: "The marriage regulations are very strict, and foreigners contracting a marriage in France often think that they have done all that is necessary, and find afterwards that they have not." There's a novel in that sentence, all right!

A Perfect Storm

Okay, which one of you folks sent this link to me? It obviously worked, I bought this pattern (how could I not?) but I can't find your name in my email. Probably because searching on "pattern" "ebay" "midriff" returns about eleventy-billion results.

Of course, if I were trying to design a dress that included all my current fave elements (midriff band, contrast banding, kimono sleeves, full skirt) I would never have come up with anything as great at this.

My only question now (besides who to thank for pointing it out to me) is: what fabric? I kinda want something with a nap or a right-side/wrong-side contrast so I can make the banding only slightly different. (Although, knowing me, I'd cut it out the wrong way twice before figuring it out. I'm not good with "directional" fabric.) Ooh -- maybe stripes! That would be easy to keep straight. Okay, that's it. Stripes. Now, what colors? Suggestions gratefully appreciated.

And if you sent this link to me, step up and take your bow!

A (much more specific kind of) Dress A Day

Ann sent me a link to her blog, She Wears Shwe Shwe, where she posts pictures of women in South Africa wearing traditional shwe shwe fabric.

Needless to say, I love this project. Not just because I love the dresses and the gorgeous fabrics (I do) but also because Ann seems to be going about this in such a lovely and respectful way. She asks permission to photograph the wearers. She gets their mailing addresses so that she can send them a copy of the photo. She asks them questions about their dresses. Who made it? What design decisions did they make? What do they want to tell her about it? If she can (she's often driving when she spots women in shwe shwe) she offers the women rides.

There's a difference between photographic exploitation and photographic celebration, and I get a more celebratory feel from this site. I hope you do too.

This shwe shwe wearer is Rachel. She made this dress herself, out of two complementary prints. Look at the pockets!

All I want for Christmas ...

You know, I've never really gotten the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book before (that's both a literal and a figurative gotten). I'm much more of an Heifer International catalog kind of person. Who really needs a gold-plated Hummer or a week's holiday in an undersea hotel, when you could have a no-maintenance water buffalo, instead? (And I bet the sheets at the undersea hotel are clammy.) But Ann S. (thank you, Ann!) sent me a link to this NM holiday item, and now -- now I get it.

What is it? Well, I'll let the copywriters explain:

... the only archival record of the House of Fath. This museum-quality collection includes 26 volumes of original sketchbooks from 1948 through 1956, with more than 3,400 couture designs. The collection also includes three exquisite Fath haute couture dresses, each with its accompanying sketch. With this archive, the possibilities are monumental. Endow a wing of your favorite museum with a comprehensive overview of fashion history or launch your own research center to inspire the Faths of tomorrow.

How much, you ask? Only (only!) $3.5M. That's a three, a five, and five zeros (plus two more after the decimal point, for you sticklers out there). I'm sure I can pull that together if I remember to check under all the couch cushions.

TWENTY-SIX volumes of sketchbooks! 3400 designs! The only question would be, would you neither sleep nor eat until you'd looked at everything, or would you ration the books over some long-drawn-out period of time, so as to make it last longer?

(I'm not so sure about the "endow a wing of MY favorite museum" part, though. I mean, I'd be worried about the mustard getting on the clothes.)

But I do hope someone buys this and gives it to the Costume Institute at the Met, or to the Costume Museum in Bath, or to FIT, or some other place that will keep it safe and accessible to researchers, and who will mount an exhibit so that folks like us can check out every one of those 3400 designs (web site? please?).

Of course, being NM, it will probably be bought by some Texas oilman as a present for his spoiled teen daughter designer wanna-be. (He'll get the gold-plated Hummer for his wife.) But I'm not going to think about that now! I'm just going to go write a quick note to Santa.

McCardell. With bows on.

Now, y'all know just how much I love Claire McCardell, but even if I didn't already worship her, this dress would have made me an acolyte, even if being said acolyte involved wearing unflattering white robes and holding stinky candles through hours of chanting.

It's difficult to make bows seem sophisticated (of course, it helps to do them in black -- this dress in pink might cause tooth decay) but these are without even a whiff of the sub-deb set.

I'm also impressed by the shirring of the shoulder seam. So luxurious! It's from Dorothea's Closet Vintage and is rayon faille, near-mint, B36 (and fairly expensive at $625, but for McCardell, if you were looking to splurge, this would be the best combination of whimsy and wearability that you could find).

It's all workin' out.

Isn't this an interesting image? It's from the National Archives of Canada, and it's "Mrs. Ritchie, who here portrays Chess in a black costume with red and white checkered inserts, and a necklace and coronet made of chess pieces."

This dress comes to you because I was driving home from the airport late last night, and the iPod served up Travis Morrison's "Checkers and Chess", which has the lyrics:

Checkers and chess
I like your dress
Your dress likes me
It's all workin' out

At least, that's what *I* think the lyrics are. I could be mondegreening.

I think a Black Queen Chess Dress costume would be great for Halloween. Long black dress, pointy hat, forbidding expression, rapid yet stealthy movement at all times -- you're done! And you can be warm, instead of freezing to death in something like this:




I mean, sure, if you want to be the queen of the jungle, hey, knock yourself out -- just carry a sweater or something, okay? Do you have money for a cab? You know I worry about you.

And, shoes.

I know I managed to talk about this (at great length) before--the problem I've had with the Duro-dress shape is that it somehow demands new shoes for the new proportion. I had found summer shoes, but, if you hadn't noticed, summer has slipped away. It has already *snowed* here in Chicago!

The new shoes I found are the ones at left, which satisfy my stringent shoe requirements (not too high a heel, ankle strap, round toe) and have the added benefit of making a lovely resonant clomping sound if you really stomp. (I swear, I'm perpetually six years old.) Plus the platform wedge makes you a lot taller without the concomitant foot pain of "real" heels.

I also managed to track them down in brown. I was tempted by the red ones -- who isn't tempted by red ones? -- but I haven't managed to successfully wear red shoes since eighth grade. Buy them, yes. Manage to leave the house in them? No.

I have these perpetual dreams of becoming (at this late stage) one of those elegant minimalists; somebody who buys two of everything, one black and one brown (or red, or cream) and eases through life effortlessly coordinated, slippery as an eel. This, as you might imagine, remains only a dream. Every time I work towards this ideal (which in my head is occasionally called the "live like a stereotypical architect project"), perhaps by making five identical skirts in dull colors, I am distracted by something shiny and whoops, I'm off again in some wild print, leaving the poor dark-brown skirt moping in the closet.

The closest I ever get to that blissful minimalist state is by managing to sew a series of wild prints in a similar color family, so at least I can get by with a few pairs of monochrome tights and a couple of cardigans. And two pairs of shoes, one black, and one brown. If I'm lucky, and I don't get distracted by patterned tights and sweaters, this mostly works.

Does anyone here have the expert-recommended two- or three-color closet? How do you do it?

You Don't Have to Be Pretty

So the other day, folks in the comments were talking about leggings. I'm pretty agnostic about leggings, but the whole discussion (which centered on the fact that it can be *really* hard to look good in leggings) got me thinking about the pervasive idea that women owe it to onlookers to maintain a certain standard of decorativeness.

Now, this may seem strange from someone who writes about pretty dresses (mostly) every day, but: You Don't Have to Be Pretty. You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked "female".

I'm not saying that you SHOULDN'T be pretty if you want to. (You don't owe UN-prettiness to feminism, in other words.) Pretty is pleasant, and fun, and satisfying, and makes people smile, often even at you. But in the hierarchy of importance, pretty stands several rungs down from happy, is way below healthy, and if done as a penance, or an obligation, can be so far away from independent that you may have to squint really hard to see it in the haze.

But what does you-don't-have-to-be-pretty mean in practical, everyday terms? It means that you don't have to apologize for wearing things that are held to be "unflattering" or "unfashionable" -- especially if, in fact, they make you happy on some level deeper than just being pretty does. So what if your favorite color isn't a "good" color on you? So what if you are "too fat" (by some arbitrary measure) for a sleeveless top? If you are clean, are covered enough to avoid a citation for public indecency, and have bandaged any open wounds, you can wear any color or style you please, if it makes you happy.

I was going to make a handy prettiness decision tree, but pretty much the end of every branch was a bubble that said "tell complainers to go to hell" so it wasn't much of a tool.

Pretty, it's sad to say, can have a shelf life. It's so tied up with youth that, at some point (if you're lucky), you're going to have to graduate from pretty. Sometimes (as in the case with Diana Vreeland, above, you can go so far past pretty that you end up in stylish, or even striking (or the fashion-y term jolie laide) before you know it. But you won't get there if you think you have to follow all the signs that say "this way to Pretty." You get there by traveling the route you find most interesting. (And to hell with the naysayers who say "But that's not PRETTY"!)

Oooooh.

Laura sent me this -- thank you, Laura! I love the neckline, and I'm totally stealing the pockets-in-the-middle-of-the-skirt idea. So easy!

This is from seller BootyVintage on etsy.com (obviously, I don't spend enough time on etsy, as I didn't realize people were selling patterns there now). The pattern is $20, plus shipping, but look at the size -- B39, hard to find!

I don't know if I'd piece the back the way it is in this pattern -- perhaps I wouldn't feel the need for a horizontal line running the full width of my rear end -- but it'd be easy enough to take out. Or keep, and add BACK pockets?

I'm slightly concerned about the woman in the print version in this illustration, though. Doesn't she look as if she is awaiting instructions from the mothership? One possibly helmed by Ming the Merciless? Oh, well, at least she's dressed appropriately for world domination. Can't take over a damn thing with no pockets!

Two skirts are better than one.

Isn't this a great dress? Wait -- it gets better:



It's convertible! Diane kindly re-sent me these images after I managed to lose them somehow in the charnel house that is my email inbox, sparked by the discussion of "day-to-evening" overskirts in yesterday's comments.

Oh, and check out the detail ...



So neat! So efficient! So ... button-y! Thanks, Diane!

[Sorry for the late posting; I'm now in Camden, Maine, where I'm talking at the Pop!Tech conference this weekend. If you want to see me pontificate about stuff that has *nothing whatsoever* to do with dresses, you can watch the whole conference live at live.poptech.org. You can even ask questions of the presenters through the site! Good times.]

Yet Another Midriff Variation

Thanks go to Nora, who sent this my way. Isn't it cute? (And it's also B34, and a BuyItNow at $6.50, or it was when I posted this.)

I love that the waist looks more than a bit like an old stand-up collar. And the welty pockets on the orange version (oh, how I love orange) are divine.

Whenever I think I've seen every possible vintage pattern, along comes another one to surprise and delight. Often in orange, with pockets.

Bitchy is NOT the New Black

I get a LOT of link requests. I mean, a LOT. And I do try to look at all of the sites, and I do have a list that I will get around to linking when I have five free minutes to edit that sidebar over there. But do you know who I *won't* be linking to? Any of those bitchy sites that exist just so people can make $1.53 in advertising revenue by dissing celebrities and what they're wearing.

Yeah, yeah, I know I link to Go Fug Yourself, but first, they're ACTUALLY FUNNY, and second, they, in the main, limit their criticism to clothes, shoes, jewelry (and, to a lesser extent, hair)--things the celebrities have (or should have) control over. I don't see them spending the bulk of their time ragging on people's bodies, and they go out of their way to compliment people when they can.

But some of the other sites (which I won't link to here; heaven forbid I send them any traffic) say things like "She's a horse!" or "And would you look at those hips, it's too wide for her age. It's like she gave birth already." WTF?

Some of these "critics" think that celebrities have signed up to be shredded by them. That "it's the price of fame." Yeah, well, who made you the collections agent for fame? Simple kindness towards a fellow human should preclude you from writing >90% of what is said on these sites. Do as you would be done by, and all that.

It's your right as a blogger to be as unfunny, cruel, and mercenary as you like. I can't stop you. But I won't link to you, and I won't read you, and I will hope against hope that you become reality-tv-style famous for just one day so that you can have the dubious pleasure of reading what carping and microhearted folks say about YOU and YOUR BODY on other blogs. Got it?

(Oh, and I'm not trying to imply that Elizabeth Taylor is bitchy -- I just wanted a gorgeous celebrity in a perfect dress to grace the page.)

A Sticky Situation

Did everybody see this on Yahoo News? Dee sent this link to me. It seems that a fairly-obsessive pastry chef in the Ukraine designed a pastry wedding gown for his bride, made of 1500 cream puffs and weighing twenty pounds.

What do you say to a guy that wants you to wear a dress made of pastry? "Oh, that's so sweet of you?"

"At first, it was even a little embarrassing," Viktoriya Shtefano said of the dress she wore to the couple's reception in August at Uzhhorod's 1,200-year-old castle. "Cameras, interviews, but after a couple of hours, I didn't even want to take it off."

Okay. She didn't want to remove a heavy, sticky, probably fly-covered (it was August, people) pastry dress? That's love. Or something equally insane.

Oh, well, at least her wedding dress didn't also serve as the wedding cake, which sounds like a scene from a Peter Greenaway movie.

The Royal Treatment

Several folks (including Dee, and Emily, and at least one other person whose email went missing during what I am fondly calling the Moving House Interregnum of 2006) kindly sent me links to this exhibit of Queen Elizabeth II's dresses. More than 80 dresses are on display, and a goodly number of those are featured on the exhibition's website, in that neato super-zoomo-vision where you can increase the magnification level until you can check the spin on individual electrons of the atoms of the fabric. (Click on the picture to visit the site.)

This dress is a 1957 Norman Hartnell; some of the other dresses are even more elaborate, and have not-so-subtly coded messages. They have symbols embroidered on them (I knew of the thistle-Scotland connection but not the daffodil-Wales one) or are color-coordinated with the flag of Ethiopia, or whatnot. Me, I just want to make sure my cardigan matches my skirt -- Queen Elizabeth II has to make sure her dress matches AN ENTIRE COUNTRY. (Luckily, she has a large staff. And probably a stylist, although I'm sure they don't call the Queen's stylist a stylist. She's probably a lady in waiting to the chancellor of the wardrobe, or some such. And I'm doubly sure that person is not Rachel Zoe. Thank god. )

It's definitely worth checking out -- the dresses are quite nice, and it's refreshing to see lovely gowns made for someone of a, let's say, MATURE age and size. And her mother-of-the-bride dress (not the Queen Mother of the Bride Dress, that was a different one) for Princess Margaret's wedding is a gorgeous color.

Necessity gets a card from Invention round about May every year

Listen, I know it's October, and you're thinking about plaid. And corduroy. And probably velveteen. Lord knows I am. But Andrea sent me this lovely eyelet dress back when the weather was warm, and it promptly got lost in the bottomless pit that is my email inbox (Merlin Mann? I neeeeed your help!). That's not her fault, and besides, I wanted to show you how one little mistake can actually lead you to something better than what you set out to do. I'll let Andrea tell it:

I was seeing a lot of eyelet around this summer, and who doesn't love a shirtdress, right? So I put this one together, of course neglecting to modify the pattern for my bust because I'm antsy. Anyway, it was too small in the bust to close enough to overlap for proper buttonholes, so I did ribbon loops before I put the front edge facing in .. Then added ornamental buttons over the loops for an excessive button look that I think is kind of interesting and makes the meeting-at-center closure seem less, well, accidental? Then hook and eye closures to keep it closed at center. Thanks for looking at it ...

A lot of people I talk to about sewing seem to think that if you didn't follow the pattern exactly, you failed. If it doesn't look like the illustration on the envelope (despite the fact that those figures are deliberately not in proportion, to make the clothes look better), you failed. I say, if you have a dress you like, it doesn't matter if you made it exactly to spec or not. You won! You have a dress! Wear it with pride!

It took me YEARS to stop saying "Oh, I messed up this tiny bit on the hem here ..." to people who complimented something I made. (I still backslide and do it from time to time.) You know what? No one but you will notice. Also, it discourages people from trying to sew, if you start pointing out flaws that they didn't even see. "If she says SHE screwed up, what chance do I have?" they think. So don't do that! Say "I *decided* to change the buttons/add a zipper/applique on this flower" but don't add "because I made the buttonholes wrong/made it too small/accidentally cut into the fabric". It's not necessary. You made a dress! You won! Yay!

Just Be Honest With Yourself

Check out this dress on eBay -- it's a Suzy Perette with a pattern of squirrels and acorns. Yep, squirrels and acorns -- how perfect for fall, right? But I can't say it any better than the seller does:

Do not tell yourself that you are uninterested in a dress with a squirrel and acorn print because you are clearly not being honest with yourself.

Sing it, sister!

The dress is B38/W26, and it's about $22 right now (that last is subject to change; this is eBay we're talking about). Just admit that you want it. Be honest.

Thanks to Lisa for the link!

Hearts and Minds

Holly suggested this dress to me ... what dress, you ask? The dress made from this fabric, which is listed here, by the eBay seller Aphrodite Eternal. Which is a fitting name for someone selling a dress made of heart-emblazoned fabric, isn't it?

I love that the hearts are yellow (and also blue, not seen in photo above). If the hearts were red and pink, I probably would have yawned and never even clicked on the thumbnail photo ... I think that this desire for colors outside the traditional iconography maybe be a pervasive part of my psychological makeup. It goes with the blue flowers obsession and my constant search for marimba/xylophone covers of most of the major pop songs of the last four decades.

The dress itself is on the small side (W24) and fairly expensive (bidding started at US$99) but if neither of those things deter you, click on the picture and take a look.

An Open Letter to Mr. Mizrahi

Dear Isaac,

May I call you Isaac? (We did meet once ... and I still have that coat, if you still want to borrow it.)

I was thrilled when your editor, Erika, asked if I wanted to see a copy of your new magazine, Isaac's Style Book. Did I want to SEE it? Darn tootin'! I was even thrilled-er (don't worry, I can use words like that, I'm a professional) when I got it. In fact, I am having a hard time deciding what feature I liked best. Was it the "Hairography", where Linda Dresner deconstructed all of her previous hairstyles? Was it the essay where David Rakoff constructs (by hand, no less) a reasonable facsimile of a pair of Levis 501s? Or was it the pages of "swatches" of different pinks (everything from Mary Kay & her Cadillac to a Maira Kalman illustration)?

The "closet case" in which a woman (who was neither a socialite nor being urged to lose weight by a team of experts, thank god) got help finding just a couple of items (not an entirely new wardrobe, which, for anyone over the age of 18, is more like brainwashing than style help) is really excellent, with great photos. The "revamp" instructions are pretty decent, too (I have an issue with wardrobe-revamp instructions that encourage me to take one garment I don't like and make another one I wouldn't wear out of it: Flashdance-style t-shirts, anyone?). The atelier shots were gorgeous, too, but the literalist in me would have liked some captions. Who were all those people, and did the garments shown make it to production?

I'm also pleased that you'll be posting updates every week on your Notes page. And, that even though the magazine has limited distribution for now, people can get their own copies (for the price of mailing) here.

Erika tells me the next issue will be out in March/April. I'm looking forward to it!

Yours in the struggle,

Erin

As they (used to) say, You Knit What?

I know you all have been missing You Knit What??. Even though I don't knit, I miss it too. Which is why I'm posting this picture. The site in question (click on the picture if you need to visit it, and I use the word "need" very loosely here) sent me an email, telling me they had a sexy!! new!! site!! in about eight different colors.

Now, I don't want to hold bad email formatting choices against people. Some of my best friends had to be told (gently) that they were shouting (in all caps), at one point or another. But I should have taken it as a warning, because ... this ... this is an all-caps NO. This is an eight-colors NO.

Unless your Halloween costume is "toilet paper cozy", no. Unless you have a sexual fetish that involves pretending to be an afghan, no. I just don't understand this aesthetic. Bumblebee? Bumbleebee at Dollywood? Bumblebee at a "Gentlemen's Club" at Dollywood?

The website in question also advertises their patterns as "Fearless!!" Well, I'd say you'd have to be pretty damn fearless to wear this out in public. (Sorority hazers need look no further! I got your rush prank right here!) But I would like to introduce them to the concept of The Gift of Fear. Trust your gut, unless your gut says to knit this.

I don't know if this particular pattern was ever featured on You Knit What??, but I'm assuming it could have been. Possibly for a week straight.

The Princess and the Pea

Kirsten J. sent me the link to this dress, which is made out of a mattress, and modeled by the designer, Danielle Kelly. She calls this dress "Sleeping Beauty", but I think it would be a natural as a costume for some production of The Princess and the Pea, don't you?

I love it when people make dresses out of unusual materials. And I love it when other people find those dresses on the internets and send the links to me. Thanks, Kirsten!

... and the rest of the story ...

Remember the sad, sad tale of Hilary, who couldn't wear yellow (but loved it)? (If you don't, click that link and scroll down to the comments.)

Well, Hilary didn't give up! She found a way to have her yellow, and wear it too! And isn't it cute? I love (as you might imagine) the polka-dot bands. The *very same* polka-dot bands that keep the yellow Hilary likes from clashing with her skin (which doesn't like yellow).

Here's a photo of Hilary in the dress, but before she did the bottom band (all SIXTEEN FEET of it -- hemming a big skirt is not for the weak of purpose):



All I'm saying is, you can wear it if you really try ...

"Marilyn Monroe meets The Magic School Bus"

That's how Susan (DrSue on Pattern Review) described this dress. (If you don't know The Magic School Bus, ask any elementary-school student.)

You see, this is what I love about sewing. You want a purple lemur halter dress? You can GET a purple lemur halter dress. (First, catch your purple lemurs ... ) Can you imagine walking into Macy's (or even that bastion of customer service, Nordstrom's) and telling a saleslady you are looking for something in a purple lemur pattern? They'd be recounting that story in the break room for the next three YEARS. But if you can sew, you can have your purple lemur dress, no problem, and no raised-saleslady-eyebrows, either.

I would *especially* like to point out how DrSue arranged the arms of the lemurs to be part of the halterneck. Now, that's loving attention to detail! Ms. Frizzle would be so proud.

Special Bonus Post for the Carnival of Shopping

So, the blog Pocket Change is having a blog carnival. A carnival of ... shopping.

Now actually, I feel about shopping much like I feel about actual carnivals. I think it's going to be REALLY FUN, and then when I get to the top of the Ferris wheel (or the middle of the store) I pretty much just want to hurl. It's too crowded, it's too expensive, everything I see and hear makes me fear for the future of the human race, etc. etc.

Now, I've already done my bit for trying to make finding one's size a bit easier, but if I could only convince retailers of a few key things:

First: KISS. That's right, "keep it simple, stupid." If I wanted a cardigan that looked like I let my six-year-old loose with a Bedazzler, well, I have a six-year-old, and it's still legal to own a Bedazzler in Illinois. (Until I finish lobbying my elected representatives, that is.) If you think that if you offer me a plain sweater, and I buy it, that I won't buy another one the next season/year/week whatever, you're wrong. Offer something simple in another color, or another sleeve length, next year/month/or maybe even week and I will happily pony up my dough, but I *won't* buy something with all sorts of design vomit on it. I just won't. It seems to me that a lot of designers are just trying to look busy ... and what they make looks busy, too.

Second: Why can't I find a decent handbag for under one gazillion dollars? Either it's covered with nonessential metal dangly bits and huge logos (see KISS, above), or it doesn't have pockets that will fit my Treo and/or iPod (Dammit Jim, I'm a girl, not a technophobe!), or the straps are secretly designed by the Secret Massage Therapists and Chiropractors' Cabal to drive more business to their offices. Lately I've been buying cotton bags from Target or even ... diaper bags. Sometimes I carry more than a lipstick, two tissues, and a golf pencil. So step it up, and help me carry all my gadgets and maybe even a book, without throwing my back out, mortgaging my house, or being your Fall 2006 advertising campaign.

Third: Don't force your salespeople to be jerks. I don't want to deal with someone who has to ask me three times if I want a store charge card or live in fear of being fired. I don't want to be put in the position of either giving up some personal information or knowing that your clerk will be reprimanded for not making their weekly quota of Identity Theft Database Filler. Don't make them push crap, bait and switch, or sell "warranties" that guarantee only that I will be $80 poorer. If you pay good wages & have good benefits then good people will work for you, they will sell, and you will make money. If you don't, then you have to pull these stupid shenanigans. And if you do these things, I won't shop at your store, and you won't make any money, anyway.

Dream World Request: Won't somebody make a search engine that lets me search by Pantone color? I know you can search on Etsy.com by spinning bubbles color, but I really, really want to do this other places, too. I don't care if I have to pay Pantone $20/year for a license, or a Firefox plug-in, or whatever. Just let me match colors on the Internet. Please. And relatedly, if you sell online, use tags! Use keywords! Use (I know this is a stretch) XML! Your "juliette's saturday sweater" should somewhere, somehow, say cardigan. Or else how am I going to find it when I'm searching for cardigans?

Whew. I bet they're sorry they asked. Rant over ... FOR NOW. They're going to do this carnival every two weeks!

Daffy-down-dilly, or, The Lady of Shalott

When Holly at Lucitebox sent me the link to her first pictures of this marvel, I think I probably voiced an expletive. Maybe even two. I mean -- really! It's GREEN VELVET, fabric of the god(desse)s. With lace sleeves. From the 1930s. In perfect condition (okay, it's missing ONE BUTTON). This dress is poetry, isn't it? Velvet poetry. Click on the picture to see all of Holly's great close-ups ... the sleeves, especially, are not to be missed.

But that's not my favorite thing about it -- my favorite thing is the label. Check this out:




Negligee SECTION! Not even DEPARTMENT -- SECTION. I love the idea of the Negligee Section workers, in their hard hats and chiffon robes, clocking in. Trooping silently into the Negligee mines. Going to a meeting and hearing the five-year Negligee Section production plan. Electing a Negligee Section Section Leader.

Oh, Marshall Field's, we miss you already. Give the lady what she wants! From the Negligee Section!

"Chicago Style" means something other than how you like your pizza

This is Kit LaCroix, in a Kit LaCroix dress. A Kit LaCroix dress that I really, really like. But wait -- it gets better. The dress is a wool/cashmere blend flannel and the green banding is Irish linen. It has seventeen green snaps down the front and a skinny belt with an ivy leaf motif buckle; and it was part of Kit's Chicago Gen Art Fresh Faces in Fashion collection.

I just like how poised, powerful, and womanly this dress is. It's not a tiny wispy slipdress that might as well be a nightgown and that has the moral authority of a wet Kleenex; no, this is a dress you could run a board meeting in, or order a mob hit in, or design a superconducting supercollider in (okay, for that last, maybe if you found a lab coat that would fit over it). This is a Dress, dammit, and you better respect, yo! If you were wearing this, people wouldn't just open the door for you, they'd remove it from its hinges, if necessary. You could quell insubordination with a cocked hip and a millimeter's worth of raised eyebrow -- if it even got that far.

Good work, Kit! I think we'll be seeing even more great stuff from you in future!

so many dresses, they're coming out of the walls

Many many thanks to Mary Beth (her superhero name is The Sewist) who sent me a link to this great wallpaper. I love trompe l'oeil. I love dresses (duh). So of course I love trompe l'oeil dress wallpaper. What's not to love?

This is kind of a sucky picture, so click on it to go to the artist's website. Her name is Deborah Bowness and she does all sorts of clever wallpapers, not just dresses. She also has trompe l'oeil (are you now also suspecting that I love not just the thing signified by the word trompe l'oeil, but the word itself?) book wallpaper, but I don't actually need that:

Prim, proper, perfect, pained

I am really liking buttoned-up, very prim, demure-to-the-point-of-invisibility dresses lately. I'm pretty sure it's because it's fall. Fall always makes me think of library dresses; dresses that just want to be left alone with a book. Spring is for windy-day daffodil dresses, and summer for picnic dresses, and winter for soft, heavy, trailing dresses that cover your feet as you sit by the fire, but fall is for book-dresses.

So I like this one (which is only $6.99 from StellaBlue on eBay, and B33). Even if it looks as if the poor woman modeling it has just seen her one true love impaled by a piece of rebar, and is deploring the mess it made. I don't know why she doesn't look happy, in a dress like that, but she doesn't. The one on the right also looks as if she's challenging you to a quick-draw contest, but unfortunately she left her holster at home.

If I made this it would be in gray with black piping and buttons. Or maybe a nice deep maroon. But it's not my size, so I'm not making it. But you could ...

The Dress A Day Review of Books (nb: very little actual dress content)

I was going to sew today. Really, I was. I had plans, I had a pattern, I had fabric washed. I even had a new box of pins. I also had this book, and poof! Just like that, the hours slipped away. Okay, the hours *skipped* away. Punctuated by barks of laughter, the kind where you have to find someone, anyone, who will just HOLD STILL while you are reading bits out loud to them. (My six-year-old son: "Mama, can't you see I am trying to play SUPER MARIO here?") It's that kind of book.

In fact, it's another kind of book, a book that's much rarer. A *real* book. What I mean by a real book is a book that has real people in it -- they don't have to be actual, living or once-living people (although this book, being non-fiction, has that kind of real people), but they do have to be people who behave in real ways. (They can't, for example, decide that the best way to deal with being locked in a house with a serial killer is to go wandering around in the dark, alone.) They can be people who do smart things for stupid reasons and stupid things for smart reasons, but they never, ever do things for the reason that, if they DON'T do them, the writer all of a sudden has no book, and has to start over from the beginning.

This book is very real, and very far from what I like to call a "book-shaped object." You've all seen book-shaped objects. They're things like celebrity "biographies" and (some, not all) puzzle books, and (often) insta-books "about" current events that had to be printed on the editor's own DeskJet to make their bookstore in-stock date. The only reason those things are "books" is that they haven't figured out a way to package that stuff in spray bottles or as melt-on-your-tongue strips yet. (Personally, I think Super Spray-On Sudoku is going to be a huge best-seller, once they work out the kinks.) This book, despite being "about" the TV show (Jeopardy, in case you didn't get it from the cover shot up there) isn't one of those. It's real all the way through. And it isn't really "about" being on Jeopardy: it's about finding the meaningful in the everyday, and allowing yourself to be happy.

And I loved it. I loved it in that "I'm gonna talk about this book for months" kind of way (other holders of this award include Moving Violations, Municipal Bondage and Bound to Please, all available at finer bookstores near you). The combination of word-based hilarity (Bob Harris is a recovering comedian and tv screenwriter), random factoids (hey, I'm an ex-College Bowler), and deep human feeling (the entire book) is outstanding. It's like one of those fusion flavors (like chili pepper and chocolate) that shouldn't work, but does. If someone had told me that today, instead of sewing, I'd be reading an incredibly moving, deeply personal, highly inspiring book on winning (and, sometimes losing spectacularly) on Jeopardy, I would have answered "What is 'you're pulling my leg (try the other one, it's got bells on)'." And Alex Trebek would have said "Ooooh. I'm sorry, Erin. The correct answer is "What is 'lead me to it!'""

So, to sum up: this is a book about family, winning, losing, acceptance, happiness, singing, Cleveland, small easily-frightened mammals, Camaros, autoimmune diseases, and Jabberwocky, and how all those things fit together, and how unsurprising it is that they all fit together. And it is totally worth not sewing for.

[And to drive home the "everything's connected" theme today, there's a Jane in this book. And that Jane is this Jane, who I once was able to sweet-talk into writing an introduction to this book and who linked here the other day, to my extreme gratification and surprise. And Jane, I have to say, is one of the top-ten funnest people alive, and quite possibly one of the funnest of all time. If (for some reason) you had to have all your skin slowly buffed off with industrial-grade low-grit sandpaper, but you were talking with Jane at the time, you would still regard it as one of the best days of your life. Which makes it no big surprise that someone Jane likes would write a book as good as this.]