Little Match Girl

Julie (of Damn Good Vintage sent me a link to this amazing dress ... I'm just showing you the fabric, because that's what I'm coveting. (It's listed by Capricorn Vintage, click on the image to check out the actual dress part of this dress.)

My list of "fabric I'm gonna make when I have a spare minute (and figure out how)" is getting really unmanageably long. I mean there's these matches, and then there's the little pies, and the robots of many descriptions, and then there's all the alphabet-y, font-y things I want to make, and the gingko ... and on and on. And I haven't gotten any further than buying this book on fabric design in Photoshop. (It looks good. I haven't read beyond the Introduction. Oh, and I found this mysterious plug-in, too, but at 600 Euros I'm not buying it any time soon.)

What fabric designs have you been searching for?

[Oh, and edited to add: the 2008 Bloggies award nominating ends this Friday ... if you enjoy this blog, might you consider nominating it? I have no idea what category suits best ... maybe "topical blog"? (Although "topical blog" sounds like some kind of blog ointment, for when your blog has a rash!)]

New Fabric

"Hmm," I bet many of you were thinking. "Erin hasn't posted about fabric for a while. Is she perhaps sewing from her stash, or even (gasp) on the fabric wagon?"

Well, of course, the answer to that is No, and No. Part of this is not my fault: fabric -enabler Heather sent me this awesome collection from South Africa:



I really love the border print:



That's crying out to be a skirt with patch pockets, right?

There was also a moment of indulgence recently that resulted in this:



I should have put something in the picture for scale. Say, something like MY HEAD, which is how big those roses are. Seriously. I really want to make a gorgeous evening dress out of this, something with brown velvet piping at the neck, and then I think: when do I have any good excuses to wear evening dresses? So maybe I'll make something very prim, a button-up shirtdress, very severe, so that I can have more chances to wear it. It's this gorgeous cotton sateen, just so heavy and silky ...

I also am still waiting on the postal-strike catchup to give me some more Liberty babycord. Sigh.

Oh, Fabric, Why Can't I Quit You?

Have you all visited alittlegoodness's Etsy site yet? I desperately need this fabric. (If by 'desperately', you mean 'after sewing up the 15 yards I desperately needed *last* week.')




Included in that 15 yards was a good chunk of this fabric, which I posted about yonks ago, and which is now back in stock at Fashion Fabrics Club:




I also bought (no pictures ... yet) a soft, heavy loden green fabric that is possibly a cotton/wool blend, some lightweight teal denim, and a really nice Liz Claiborne browny-gray ombre-ish stripe. Very somber; I'm thinking I'll try another version of the Why Not Plaid dress with that last fabric. You know, Real Soon Now.

I have come to a sort of détente with my fabric stash: I have an enormous amount of fabric, and yet never seem to have anything I can actually sew with. The fabric I want to sew with has to hit that sweet spot: it has to be something I want to wear, yet not so incredibly gorgeous that I am too cowed to cut into it. (Have you ever tried shopping for "good enough" fabric? It's very difficult.*) So my arrangement is this: I simply buy gorgeous fabric and then wait for OTHER gorgeous fabric to arrive and push slightly-less gorgeous fabrics down the ladder of gorgeousness until they are at a low enough rung to be cut into. Some fabrics, it is sad to say, fall rather rapidly; others have maintained an immunity to scissors and pins for years. The worst is when fabric goes from too-gorgeous to too-NOT-gorgeous and misses the scissor-able stage altogether.

*This may be a business model: a site that only sells mediocre-plus fabrics. "Perfect for semi-wearable muslins!" would be its tagline. Or maybe "Fabrics you'll be 'in like' with!"

Okay, finally, fabric shopping in Japan

Thanks to multiple recommendations and quite explicit directions, I made it to the legendary Tomato fabric store in Nippori Textile Town. That's the cotton floor, above.

I had a great time in Tokyo. There's something exhilarating about being completely on your own in a strange city where you don't speak a word, not one single word, of the language. All it needed was for me to be pursued by shadowy underworld figures out to kill me for it to be a major motion picture. (Although having the plot be "shadowy underworld figures try to stop Erin from buying fabric" probably wouldn't make it past the first script meeting.)

Anyway, despite having to take the slow train back to Narita late Monday night (I missed the last express), I managed to go everywhere I wanted *and* get back to the airport in time to make my flight to Taipei.

Here's what I bought:



And some more:



Whoops, almost forgot one piece:




(Boy, am I glad I packed the spare duffel bag!)

So, from the top down -- probably the most "Japanese" of the fabric I bought, the little birds and trees on heavy cotton. Heavier than quilting cotton, anyway. I deliberately didn't buy anything self-consciously Japanese: no kanji prints, no geishas, no "Engrish" writing. I wanted cute, but not "kawaii!", if that makes any sense. Also, as hard as it was to resist, I didn't buy anything Hello Kitty.

The gray dot is probably has a good bit of polyester in it, and it has a small flaw, but it was 100 yen/yard and the dots are really nice, not the bad printing I usually see in the US.

The autumn-leaf print is very heavy, almost upholstery weight, so I think that will be a skirt. It think it would be cute with an orange corduroy jacket and green tights in the fall ... although in 90+ degree Taipei, it is *very* difficult to think about fall!

The black and gray leaf print just *spoke* to me, which black fabric hardly ever does. And who am I not to listen when Japanese fabric wants to emigrate? I had to buy it.

The browny-greige wallpaper print has a really interesting texture, almost matelassé. And since I'm never afraid to look like a combination wallpaper/bedspread, I figured I had to have it. I thought it would make a nice structured dress -- something with stiff tailored details. We'll see ...

The stripe is a shirting stripe and it's green/gray on one half and yellow-gray on the other. I thought I was hallucinating when I pulled it out; I pulled out the green side and, then, clutching the bolt, only saw the yellow; I enjoyed a brief moment of panic while I wondered where the green fabric went! Do I have any idea how to sew this? No, I do not. But for 100 yen/yard, I figured it would come to me. Someday. I'll wait.

The last bit is the orange/yellow sunburst cotton. I'm betting I'll make that up first; If I work it right it'll be a perfect Indian-summer dress, the yellow changing to orange towards the fall, just like the falling leaves ...

Despite the notorious expensiveness of everything in Japan, I think I spent less than $125. Although I probably spent at least half that on train tickets ....

Here's a street-scene photo, just to help you get your bearings the next time you're in Tokyo:



Thanks again to all the folks who sent me recommendations and directions for my all-too-brief time in Tokyo ... I can't wait to go back!

Busy, Day Dress (or Busy-Day Dress)

Okay, so for the last day of this incarnation of fabric week, I thought I'd show something made up ... I bought this fabric on eBay, I'm pretty sure, a decision based solely on that color green. I love that shade of green.

Of course, as with all fabric I bought in 2006, it was supposed to be part of a Duro dress. I could never find anything to match that raisin-y brown, though, and I thought matching the pink or the green would be too Lilly Pulitzer. So it sat in my fabric closet (which is not of Tardis-like proportions, despite rampant speculation in the comments, but is pretty darn close) for a while.

Then I needed some fabric to "test" a new pattern -- this is in fact the bodice from one pattern and the skirt from another; I'd show the images but I can't find them, arrgh -- and thought of this stuff. The idea was the pattern would be SO BUSY that any bobbles in the construction wouldn't show.

Of course, I wasn't able to match the large medallions right on the bodice:



But the pockets turned out okay (they're curved!):



Despite the many flaws of this dress (the facings like to turn out, despite practically supergluing them down, and for some reason I got a bad spool of thread so the seams are weak and constantly need repair) it's actually incredibly wearable. The pockets are just the right size and the bodice is very comfortable (it's the same bodice as this dress). In fact, I'm thinking of making this again but in red with white polka dots ...

Fabric Week: Out of the Closet

I have found that one of the best ways to quell the desire to hit "Buy It Now" on an eBay fabric listing is to go upstairs and check out what's still patiently waiting for me in my fabric stash. Stuff like this, for instance:



That's supposed to be a big 50s shirtdress. Someday. For now, it's waiting patiently in a big pile (which is why it's so wrinkly).


This, below, is also supposed to be a shirtdress. I have, as longtime readers of this blog will know, an almost pathological attachment to the color "hot dog mustard." (Good thing that there isn't that much hot-dog-mustard fabric made.) I bought this fabric in LA in January, I think:



This fabric was going to be the border of a Duro that I haven't made yet. Not sure if I will make it, and now there's only about three yards of this:


Same thing with this: parts of a Duro that has not yet come to be:



I bought this fabric because it's a nice heavy weight and I thought it would make a good skirt. I should probably work this up this weekend, as it's a good pattern for summer:



This I *can't wait* to sew -- I bought it at Joann's, of all places (nonUSians: JoAnn's is a giant chain store that lately has been more crafty than fabric-y). When I was having it cut (I bought everything left on the bolt, natch, about six yards) four people came up to me and asked me what I was going to make. "A *BIG* dress," I said. Of course, I am still trying to find the perfect "BIG DRESS" pattern for this. And deciding what to line it with. I want pale gray batiste, which I don't think exists (or at least, doesn't exist at a price I'm willing to pay, and I'm not going to dye white batiste, either).



This last is probably my favorite of everything pictured here. I just can't figure out what it should be. I bought it thinking "skirt!" but now I think it really wants to be a dress. I don't have enough for a full-skirted dress, and I'm worried about matching those strong horizontal lines across a narrow paneled skirt. I think I'll have to do a wiggle dress, but then there's the knotty question of pockets ... it's a nice sturdy fabric with good stretch, though, so if I just buckle down and DO IT, it will be amazingly wearable and summery ...



So that's what's hanging out in my fabric stash, clamoring to be made ... and keeping me from buying more fabric online!

Liberty: An Essential Part of Any Complete Fabric Week

This seems to be part of the new Liberty range for 2007; the auction for this colorway is over, but the seller, laluthan, has some in brown, still. (I've bought from her before; she's very nice!)

If I make it to the UK this year (hoping perhaps in September) I know what I'm buying. I only hope they have it in the twill as well as the lawn, so that I can make a nice heavy skirt out of it. And maybe a green colorway? Or an orange one? That would be perfect.

This one really reminds of my favorite Liberty print ever, the one with the stars and dots (I wish I remembered its name!) ...

Don't mind me; I'll just be over here daydreaming about Liberty prints.

Fabric Week Exclusive

Y'all remember Stephanie, right? I did an interview with her way back when?

Most of my interview was basically lusting over her fabrics, which she designs herself and uses for her scarves and handbags and pillows and whatnot.

Well, she has a few yards of her "larch pinecone" print left over, and she's selling them on Etsy. (Click the image above to go to the listing.) It's expensive, but it's worth it -- gorgeous, heavy silk, in a beautiful print. (And a matching handbag is available.)

What would you make with this fabric? It's so expensive that I think a full-skirted dress is out of the question ... and, although it's heavy silk, I think a cheongsam might be a little obvious. I think I'd make a little bolero jacket to wear over a narrow wiggle dress of heavy ivory silk, piped in that same red ... that would be a gorgeous second-wedding dress (although since I've not worn out my first wedding yet, I'd have to think of something else to wear it to!). Two yards would also make a great base for a Duro ...

As far as I know, Stephanie's only told A Dress A Day about this fabric, so consider this an exclusive (at least for the fifteen seconds or so it will take this post to be indexed)!

Good Intentions

I *absolutely* meant to post about the Etsy/Instructables contest, but the last few weeks have been pretty hectic, what the conferencing and the travel and the husband-gone-fishing-in-Canada-ness of it all. But right now I am looking at a week with very few conference calls in it, and only three or four deliverables, so isn't it good that they extended the deadline to July 16! That's a week from now, plenty of time for you all to enter and win a NEW SEWING MACHINE!

I also meant to post about the BurdaStyle contest ... they extended their deadline, too, to July 15. That's plenty of time to design, sew, and mail, right? Right?

I think there's some other stuff I was going to post about, as well. Maybe I will catch up this week, stranger things have happened.

Oh, and someone in the comments a few days back asked for another fabric week, and well, seller atticcon has listed a ton of vintage fabric, including the blue silk up above. Blue-gray *textured* silk. Mmmmmm. Perhaps my good "I'm not buying any fabric until I go to Japan" intention is going to take a workout this week.

Anything else I've forgotten? Leave a comment or email me ...

Surgeon General's Warning

This is terrible, terrible fabric. Seriously, it's just plain wrong. Usually I'm a connoisseur of the wrong (remind me to make my favorite bologna-and-baby-spinach on whole wheat sandwich for you sometime), but this is just a step too far. I cannot imagine a wholesome use for this fabric. (Or an evil one that would be worth the trouble.) Exclusively-branded cigarette girl outfit? Insincere "I know you can quit" quilt project? Reupholstering your donk?

Allison sent me this link so that she would not have to be alone in her eBay amazement. (Which reminds me: didn't there used to be a great "weird stuff on eBay" blog?) Right now there's just one bidder, and the seller estimates there's at least ten, and maybe THIRTY, yards of this fabric. So I'm sure you can work something out, but you SHOULDN'T. Please. Making something from this fabric is sure to be hazardous to your health, and has been shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

The Polka-Dot Motherland

... is, as Mary Fran tells me, in Seville (that's Spain, not Ohio.) Turns out flamenco dancers need/wear/love polka dots. Another reason, as if you needed a reason to 1) go to Spain 2) take up the heartbreak and passion that is ... FLAMENCO! 3) wear polka dots.

I am in high-covetousness-gear right now. I want, in no particular order, the coffee-colored dots the third shelf down on the left; the multi-sized green on the bottom right (and oddly, that horrible dotless pea green right next to it——I always latch on to the runt of any litter); and the orange and chartreuse on the third shelf down in the middle.

So, if anyone's going to Spain ... in my head, of course, these are all lovely fine cottons, but I'm betting they're actually poly, so as to wear longer.

Also, I just found out I will have less than 24 hours in Tokyo in late July, probably Monday the 30th. Does anyone have fabric-store recs for Tokyo? Preferably near Narita airport?

Sorry I missed yesterday -- I don't know where the day went. Although I assume that the occasional postless day just adds to my general air of intrigue and mystery.

Gorgeous Ugly Fabric

Isn't this great ugly fabric? I mean, I think it's very attractive, in a charmingly grotesque way. I have no idea why the pattern designer thought only the letters a-e-g-i-s-v were needed (is it supposed to spell 'visage' and if so, why?) and I don't know why there's some kind of craquelure behind those letters, but I don't care. I like it. Which is why I now have four yards of it. (And it wasn't even on sale--I liked it that much!)

As you all know by now, I'm a huge fan of the unconventionally pretty, which is not to say, in so many words, the downright ugly. I like things to have a hard edge, sometimes, and to make you work to see how beautiful they are. The easy beauty of pink roses and sunsets is one thing; the difficult, ornery, belligerent beauty of rough concrete and sheets of rain is another.

This fabric wants to be a narrow 'secretary' dress with a round collar, midriff band, and contrast piping (and, thanks to Lydia, I actually HAVE this pattern right now) but I don't know when I'll get a chance to make it. I'm pretty overwhelmed with Actual Work at the moment. Making a new dress is starting to feel as far away as some of my other nebulous goals, like "lose fifteen pounds" and "answer all my email" and "live on Moon colony before I die," and having "make new dress" slip into that category is a bit depressing.

But, I'm sure things will lighten up around here eventually, says the woman who is traveling three out of the next four weeks ...

Offering a Bounty

Check out this dress, from Diane von Furstenberg (click on the link to visit the sale page at Bloomingdale's, where it's $325).

I'm not a huge fan of this style of dress, but the fabric ... I *REALLY* want this fabric. I really want about five yards of this fabric! I've been looking for ginkgo fabric forever.

So I'm offering a bounty. If you can tell me where the DVF sells her bolt-ends, and I am able to find this fabric off your clue, I will make you a circle skirt. Seriously. (And I *never* sew for other people, except very occasionally my sister.)

(Thanks also to everyone who commented on Saturday's puzzle dress! I had a great time at the tournament, but I fell short of my goal ... I wanted to finish as contestant 666, but I only managed to come in at 609. So about 55 fewer people than planned can now say "I beat a dictionary editor at crosswords!" Of course, there's always next year ... )

HOWTO: Buy Fabric

[Above: Fabric purchased on one day in July, 2006]

Margo left a comment recently asking me how I bought fabric. I thought replying just "Like a drunken sailor on shore leave, if drunken sailors bought fabric" probably wasn't helpful, so I thought I would lay out some rules for buying fabric that have served me well over the last few decades.

1. You never have enough fabric. If you tell yourself "I have enough fabric," you jinx yourself and will immediately need more fabric (except now that you've angered the fabric gods, everything will be horribly polyester and $15/yard). You ALWAYS need more fabric.

2. If offered an opportunity to shop for fabric, take it. You never know when you're going to need more fabric (oh, wait -- yes you do know, and the answer is "all the time" -- remember rule one: "You always need more fabric"?). So take advantage of every opportunity to shop for fabric.

3. If it is $1/yard and not aggressively hideous, buy three yards. If it's $1/yard and acceptable, buy five yards. If it's $1/yard and, if the fabric were a man [or woman] you would agree to meet him [or her] for coffee (but not a dinner date) buy ten yards. Any liking over that requires a fifteen- to twenty-yard purchase.

4. The basic unit of fabric purchase is four yards of 45" or three of 60" wide. Any less than that and you won't be able to get a fullish skirt out of it. If it has a large repeat (the amount of space it takes to repeat the pattern) or is a border print, or has stripes, or really, anything out of the ordinary, buy five yards. Don't bother carrying yardage for specific patterns with you: if you do buy exactly enough for a particular pattern, you will then cut out one piece wrong and when you go back out to buy more it will be all gone.

5. If you really, really, really love it, buy it right then. Otherwise it will sell out in less than 24 hours. (The corollary to this rule is that fabric you hate will clot the tables and racks at the fabric store until the place goes out of business or burns to the ground.)

6. If the fabric is too expensive to buy at least two yards, or is less than 40" wide, you can still buy it, but only as an objet d'art. You will never make a garment out of it. As long as you accept this up front, you'll be fine. (I have a one-yard piece of Matisse-print "Jazz" silk that I just pick up and look at every once in a while. It was $10/yard when that was astronomically expensive for me.)

6a. If you regularly wear halter tops rule 6 does not apply to you. But you will be making a LOT of halter tops. (Note: conversion from non-halter-top-wearing to halter-top-wearing just to use up your stash is not recommended.)

7. The proper ratio of prints to solids in your fabric purchasing is 10:1. The rationale for this is that good prints are fleeting but solids are always available. In fact, you should never actually have any black fabric in your stash. That is because keeping black fabric in your stash means you won't have a reason to go to the fabric store when you need black fabric, which would contravene rule 2.

8. If you make theatrical costumes, or participate in historical reenactments, or have ever thought "Someday I am going to make the Kinsale Cloak" you may only buy velvet in 20-yard increments.

9. Always make time to buy fabric when traveling. Global Economy, Schmobal Economy. They got different stuff there, wherever "there" is. Pack an extra bag, if you have to.

10. If you think, while looking at fabric, "I'd have no place to wear this, even IF I made it into anything," close your eyes and envision yourself in tears of rage and disappointment, having been invited at the last minute [but with enough time to sew something] to JUST the perfect place to wear something made of that fabric. The most horrible thing in the world is regret: protect yourself from it by buying fabric. And besides, how dumb will you feel when you're freezing to death in the coming nuclear winter/ecological catastrophe, if you don't buy five yards of that wool now?

11. Fabric bought online doesn't "count" against any self-imposed quotas (quotas which violate rules 1 and 2 anyway). Fabric purchased on eBay DOUBLE doesn't count.

Further thoughts: if you have small children, raise them in the belief that the fabric store is the best place in the world to go, ahead of Disney and Chuck E. Cheese. Resort to bribery if necessary. (Also teach them the "one finger rule": they can touch ANYTHING in the store that adults are allowed to touch, if they do so with only one finger. [Check that the finger is clean!] First violation is a warning. Second violation, they must clasp their hands on top of their head for the remainder of the visit.)

Know to the minute how long it takes you to get to each fabric store in your area. This will allow you to plan quick anonymous stops between other errands.

It is better to go to the fabric store without a particular fabric in mind. When the buyer is ready, the true fabric will appear.

So Margo, I hope this helps you, but I'm afraid I cannot be held liable for the size of the stash that will come from following any of these rules. Obey at your own risk.