Pink houndstooth inspiration!

Embed from Getty Images The ever-aspirational pink Chanel look! In this case, Penelope Cruz wears a dress, pink and white houndstooth tweed. This fabric from Exquisite Fabrics might just give me the look, and it's lighter weight and less bulky than a tweed. Am I in the mood for a dress? How about you?

INSPIRATION GARMENT, ETRO

If I had 100 million dollars, I would order all of my clothes from Etro.

I look at their pictures sometimes, for inspiration. 

I actually have some fabrics in these colors.

Do I need a dress with lace sleeves and lace overlay skirt? Probably not.

That probably should stop me. 

But, if I sew it, the occasion will come. 

Dress from Etro. https://www.etro.com/us-en/

The color blue

Those of us who work with color have probably been mystified or frustrated by colors in our imagination that just cannot be duplicated in life!

I used to see beautiful, vivid colors that might occur in nature but do not seem to replicable with dyes, paints, textiles, or other media.

Sometimes it's evident that color is elusive...just hover around the paint counter at your local Home Depot long enough and you'll hear frustrated customers who cannot find the right shade of white, or husbands and wives disagreeing whether a color is blue or green.

So when a "new" pigment is discovered and released for commercial use, its pretty exciting!
Crayola held a contest to name the vivid color, and the winner was "Bluetiful." (The scientific name for the pigment is YInMn). 

By Mas Subramanian - Mas Subramanian, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49854366

In my fabric life, there's a silk chiffon waiting for a beautiful creation...use code BLUE for 30% off your blue fabric purchase through 3/4.

Do see color or patterns as you fall asleep? There is a name for them: Phosphenes. They are thought to occur because of the natural electrical charges that occur from normal body/brain functions. While we are awake, the inputs to our eyes and brains just distract us from perceiving them!


Attributions:
The Metropolitan Museum
Wikipedia
The University of Oregon
ArtNet News
Exquisite Fabrics

2019 Oscars, the 91st Academy Awards

I hadn't watched the Oscars for years, and I missed the red carpet arrivals, but there was plenty to see during the awards portion! A nice little break from doing taxes.

This morning the stories were all about "pink" as the dominant color on the runway. That's okay, but what caught my eye are the fluid silver numbers!

As usual, Jennifer Lopez wore what many people would consider "the" dress, made with what looked like broken mirror pieces. The mirrored bits reflected the red carpet nicely too!
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Other silver dresses (I love silver) were worn to perfection by Brie Larson (and complimented by Samuel L. Jackson in classic form)... Embed from Getty Images


  ...America Ferrara...
  Embed from Getty Images


...Lily Aldridge...

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All images used by permission.

Threads magazine shares a lace top pattern!

This looks like a good idea to me.  A nice lace top would be good to wear to the Fourth of July with jeans.  (Where I am going, I don't know. Could be the Castleton Festival or maybe Graves' Mountain.  Or Ida Lee Park.  So many choices!)

This top takes a yard and a half of lace.  One hint in the directions says not to cut the front and back pieces separately, but to leave the pattern pieces joined at the shoulder.  There's an error in how that is expressed--that shoulder join is referred to as "the vertical seam."  In fact it would be a horizontal seam.  Glad I could clear that up for you before you get started!

Your finished top will be a little less than 27" in length in front and the same in back.

Ready, buy the lace, get the instructions, and go!

Sewing UFO's

In the world of sewing (and maybe other hobbies too) this means "Un-Finished Objects."  In the course of my past career, there were many times when I had to put away an in-progress project and it got forgotten or the seasonal usefulness of it had passed.  In other cases, maybe I was unable to solve an "issue" but was unwilling to throw away the project (I just love the fabric too much).   Then there are the alterations or ideas I had to change the garment to update it.  All in all, I have a space dedicated to "UFO's" now....It's hanging space about the width of a washer (because it's in the former upstairs laundry closet).  I'm a little bit proud that the whole closet is not filled.

Anyway, I retrieved a jacket in progress from the closet last night and started to study it.  I taped and did pad stitching on the hair canvas and a mock welt pocket way back then, but never turned the collar.

It was meant to have had awful rounded peaked lapels (Remember those--what was it, 1969 or something?  What was I thinking?) and the front is slightly cut-away.  The back is gathered into a sort of peplum.  I guess it's supposed to resemble one of Ralph Lauren's hacking jacket-like creations. It's no doubt too small, but my girth alteration is easy--just add onto the sides seams if I have some of the fabric in my stash (or lose weight)..

So I started to finish this thing.  First order of business was correcting "something" that was wrong with the cut of the upper collar and the way it joins the lapel.  Then I whacked away the beagle-ear shape of the lapel peak.  It's still a bit of a peak, but not so wacky.  Looks pretty good.

A remaining problem is that I don't have pattern pieces or envelope anymore and don't even recall how the pattern was supposed to look.  So making a lining is going to be trial and error.

So far, here's what it looks like:

FRONT

BACK

If you love beautiful classic woolens, zoom in on this.  It's a camel's hair and wool blend houndstooth with charcoal gray and camel.  The only way I can wear camel.  :)

*********

And here's another long-postponed project:  I had the pattern and fabric together and ready to go for ages, then discovered I didn't have enough fabric (I would have had enough for the contrast, must have interpreted the pattern envelope wrong).

This one was made with a rayon and silk woven check, paired with a tropical weight wool gab for the contrasting bands.  It was a very fun pattern to make!  It's a little short on me in the back, despite the fact that I made a muslin and adjusted the pattern.  But, I wore it with jeans the other day (black ones) was pretty happy with it.