Little Pieces of Me

It must be the official (not to say in any way actual ) first day of Spring last week that made me have a bit of a tidy up of my closet. That or I was avoiding doing something else, which is when I usually find myself getting all organized. For example, at peak marking times I get the overwhelming urge to do things like alphabetize my sock drawer. All I did was re-group everything in the closet by length and then by colour which makes it much faster to find something to wear in the morning. (Really Gil? How exactly do you sort an all black winter wardrobe by colour?) As usual I found some items I hadn't worn for a while. Some were nice surprises, some were headed for the charity bag, others I still had hope for. One of these last items was this (cough) black H&M dress. When I really stopped to think about it, I realized I have only worn this dress once - about 4 years ago in LA. I'd needed something that could pass as a LBD for an alumni event, but seeing as I...

It was the best of times, it was the worst... no wait, it actually was the best of times in terms of sewing. This week I have been working to draft up a couple of properly fitting top patterns for woven fabric. The first one I did is a hip length tank with darts and neckline options and the second is a long tunic with slightly dropped shoulders, boat neck and deep side slits. I selected a grape coloured cotton linen blend from the recently reorganized stash for the muslins. Mostly I chose it because it was the right weight and I had a lot of it, likely 3 metres or more. And I remember paying very little for it at an end of season sale last year - or the year before! I figured I'd get two muslins and maybe one finished top out of it and wasting some of the fabric would not break my heart. Surprisingly (to me at least) I must have done a pretty good job on the pattern drafting because both the muslins were about 90% successful right off the sewing machine! The tank top just ...

I had decided that my next undertaking is to (finally) draft the perfect sleeveless tunic pattern for myself. You know, something that I could always go to when I had found a nice bit of linen, or to which I could easily add kimono sleeves, big pockets or inset side panels or that could turn into a dress if needed. It's something I've been meaning to do for ages, but never really got around to. For this, I knew I'd likely need to do a couple of muslins just to get everything right, so I turned to my trusty fabric cabinet. Surely I would find something potentially 'disposable' there that I could use for this job. And that was as far as I got ... Sidebar:  Like many art and craft oriented people I have a tendency to collect things.  I know people (and you do too) who have problems with pack-rattiness. People who keep everything and have so much stuff they don't know what to do with it.  Luckily, I don't fall into that category.  My collections are pr...