Yesterday's Score--Wow!

Good morning, my little chickadees~~I've got a vat o' quinoa cooking on the stove and a load of stuff in the wash and so thought it was a perfect time to show you what I got yesterday. Because: yay, me! I remembered to take Before Photos of everything. Aren't you proud of me? Never mind: I'm proud enough of me for both of us.

I was going to call this "Yesterday's Booty" but quickly realized that was just asking for unwanted visitors. So we'll call it this, instead, and I'll show you what I got.

First off, the pieces from BJ's. Here's the one I love and am going to buy (she makes me bring stuff home overnight before I can buy it because of my little problem of getting all excited by The Hunt & The Find, and I buy stuff and bring it home and never wear it and then, finally, months later, take it back and re-consign it. No fun for me, no fun for her (there's the paperwork involved), no fun for anyone. So we do it this way.

 I was really disappointed because it didn't seem to have pockets, but it turns out it has seam pockets (oh, ho, ho, ho--that made me happy, that little wordplay there. Pathetic but true.). See?

I love this jacket--100% cotton, already lightly sequined (meaning: begging for more sequins and beads), very flattering on--it looks better on me than it does on Ricë, and I don't know why--there's something about it when you put it on over jeans and move around in it--I guess the sparkliness or something. Anyway, I fell in love with it, never mind that I need another colorful jacket like I need a hole in my head. Good grief, do I have a lot of coats and jackets. I justify this by pointing out that I'm always cold.

Then there are these that were given to me. This is 100% silk, a sort of vest, almost a shawl. 

Trish wants to see what I'll do with it. I'm thinking appliqué, but then, just now, I thought: what about hand-stitched reverse appliqué, a la Alabama Chanin, only in silk instead of jersey? I don't know--I think raw edges would help bring it down a notch or two--I don't like things that are too precious, too frou-frou, too perfect. They may look lovely, but you know you're not going to wear them. Oh, well, you might if you had That Kind of Life--the opera, Dinners Out, stuff like that. For me, clothing that's too precious is just going to hang in the closet until I give it away. So I'm thinking about this one.

Then there's this, which may be hopeless. This was given to me to see what I can do with it. 

We are *so* not impressed with the designers. There were several of these. Silk, still with the tags. They didn't sell and were brought in and didn't sell at BJ's, either. So I'm supposed to see what I can do to it. I thought it would be just a matter of taking out the elastic--who THINKS of these things, putting this big hunk of thick, stiff elastic under the bust? It's just totally hideous on--when something makes even me look fat and bovine, you know something's wrong. Plus that zipper is unnecessary--I didn't even know it was there until after I had the dress on. So I thought I'd rip out the elastic and remove the zipper--it's too heavy and makes that side sag--but it turns out that the dress is actually three separate pieces: the bodice, that channel with elastic in it, and the skirt--all totally separate. I don't know if I'm up to it or not--it's a lot of work for something I would probably never wear (never fear: I have no plans to wear something like this as a dress--I am not one of those old women who, just because they're thin, think that means they can dress like a 20-year-old. Or a 30-year-old. I know some of those women, and I am not among their numbers. No, I would wear it, probably over a tank, as a tunic over cropped jeans. But the color doesn't grab me. I may do it, though, just because it's a challenge: I love trying to take something that was a horrible design and remake it into something that works. You know I do. I love those kinds of challenges.

Then there's this, which is a another challenge--given to me to salvage.

It, too, was brand new and still had tags in it. It's a new-to-me blend of jute and rayon, and it says it has to be dry-cleaned. Forget that: I dry-clean only things like really dressy clothes that hang clean-but-unworn in the closet for some imagined formal occasion: I have a couple long skirts that I've never worn but could if I went somewhere totally dressy, somewhere I can't even imagine wanting to go. Anyway--so this is a cool vest. It's asymmetrical, and while it isn't the kind of thing I would usually wear (vests are kind of fussy to me), it looks good on--widens the shoulders and hips, nips at the waist. Looks vaguely steam--punkish or something. And, of course, its real draw: it's a total challenge. It's in the washer now--I'm to report back about laundering [Note: it came through fine. All the structure is gone--it was very starched and sharp-cornered, and that's gone. But that's good--I didn't like that and can restore some of the structure (sans stiffness) with stitching.] I've become sort of the Fabric Expert over at the shop, which you would think would be a joke, but I'm doing a lot of research and learning a ton of stuff about modal and tencel and, now, jute. There's not a lot of good information online about jute--one site said you couldn't dry it in the dryer, and another said you could. Apparently it's only recently being used for clothing--by itself, it's made into burlap and stuff like that: thick, stiff, not much for wearing on your body. Rayon softens it up. We'll see--they're both fibers that weaken when wet, so the vest may fall apart in the wash like the rayon velvet blazer I ruined a while back. If so, too bad. If not, I'm going to dye it in golden yellow and chartreuse and see if I can get a better green.

OK--it's in the dryer now on very, very low. I'll check it often (I hope) to make sure it doesn't out-shrink the cotton lining. If all goes well, I'll dye it--today's my last dyeing day, I think: severe water restrictions start tomorrow, and although dyeing doesn't use nearly as much as oh, say, a swimming pool (the newspaper says people are putting in pools because they're not allowed to water their lawns, which makes SO much sense to me, as I'm sure it does to you, too. Living in Midland is a series of revelations. Did you know we know have tent cities? I didn't know that, either, but apparently it was on the news. I remember back in the 80s when we had them (oil boom + housing shortage) but hadn't seen any this time around. Back then I was working at animal control and so heard about the problems (no place to keep your pet that you brought with you thinking you'd have, you know, an actual house or apartment) regularly), it still uses more than I want to use when the price of water is going to triple this year.

[I know. You're reading this and going, "Huh?" A boom so big people are living in tents and cramming five people into a motel room plus running out of water at an alarming rate, all at the same time. Yep. That's what's going on here in the West Texas desert.]

Then in addition to these pieces, I got two fabulous Flax tops from my friend Miss Julia. I love these--even more because she's worn them and her sister has worn them, and they're soft and well-loved, and now I get to play with them. There's this top:

 Large side pockets:

 Check out the detail on the back of the neckline with the collar--she said her sister re-made it, she thinks. I love this~~

and then my favorite piece of all:

 I love the petal skirt/thing. Just love it. The slits are up to the waist, so it would be worn over jeans and a tank, most likely, rather than as a tunic.

I adore this. The only drawback is that it has a green undertone, so the only color it can go, really, is chartreuse, and I already have a chartreuse tunic. It's completely different style, though, so that's OK. I'd like to go for purple, I think, but I don't know that that would work. It would if I got it really dark, but I don't particularly like really dark purple--I like a deep-but-bright purple (Procion MX Grape). So I'm still thinking about that--I wouldn't mind a russet but don't have that color dye and am not going to order dye this summer if I can stand it. I'm wondering if I could live with it this color. I want to--I'd love a sort of blank canvas--but I know myself well enough to know that neutrals are going to bug me after a while. And if I start embroidering it, I can't dye it--the DMC floss is cotton, so it will take dye, and if I stitched in, say, purple or pink or rose and then decided I wanted to dye it green later on, that stitching would look hideous. Ahhh, the complicated life of an inveterate dyer. . . .

So those are the garments from yesterday's outing. Cool, huh? And the only one that wasn't given to me is the blue print jacket, which is $28. I'll put it on and wear it around the house a bit before making a final decision, but I'm pretty sure it's going to come live with us.

OK--got to start the dye-bath now. Wish us luck over here at The Voodoo Cafe--

This Week's Project(s)

Here's what I did this week--I really, really enjoyed it. Partly because it's such a change form what it was and partly because it was so easy to sew through the fabric--no tugging, no pain--just nice, easy stitching.

OK--I'm going to try to start a new habit. Snort. Yeah, yeah, I know, but I really am. I'm going to try to get in the habit of: when I bring clothes home, I'm going to put each one on Ricë and photograph it before I do anything to it. Then I'll have a "before" photo. Even if it turns out I decide not to do anything to it, I'll have the photo. I mean, it's not like I'm going to have to have the photos "developed" or that I'll waste "film."

Gah.

But I didn't do that last week. I'm wishing I had, though, so you could see the transformation. The top--a long top but not really a tunic--was a grey linen thing by Match Point, about which I know nothing except that I adore their linen: mid-weight and very drapey.  If you have any random Match Point linen that you don't want, just drop it on my front porch, OK?

It was this color. Maybe even a little bit grayer than this is showing up--this looks a little blueish, and it didn't have that much blue undertone--I almost thought to dye it green, in fact. You have to take into account the undertone for greys and khakis when you're dyeing--if it's greenish, you have to go that direction. Yellowish or brownish will let me go orange; blue-ish will let you go purple. Get it wrong, though, and the color isn't ever going to make you happy.

That's one of the things that were sewn into the side seams and then had a button on each end--you know, those totally stupid things that aren't functional. They're meant to be decorative but just aren't. In this case, they were bulky--your arm would rub against them--and wrinkled-but-not-in-a-good-way (you heard Melly and me talking about wrinkled linen yesterday). I opened the side seams and took them out right away, and then I removed the three buttons on the yoke. The one in the center wasn't--it was off-center, but not deliberately. Sloppily.

Then I tie-dyed it--Sky Blue then Wedgewood Blue, and then I tried out various shades of orange and gold from old t-shirts. These are complementary colors--hence the pop. And I wanted it really to POP, so I auditioned the whole range before settling on these. This is why you save all your scraps--I have pieces of a t-shirt The EGE wore for years--it would fade, I'd dye it. The cuffs came off (he wore it first as a regular shirt, then to run in, and finally under other shirts to work in the yard); it got holes. Now it's these tie-dyed pieces of baby-soft jersey. I didn't use any on this, though--the tie-dye was too red for this.

I fused them in place (they curl, and I hate using pins all the time because I've developed some sort of Anti-Sharp Thing karma that causes me to lose every pin and needle I use, usually in the shag-ish rugs or carpet or--eeeeeeek!--in the bedding. This is really scary--I found one yesterday with my FOOT. Luckily for me, I ran into it lengthwise, not into the sharp end, and so went, "Huh, that feels like a needle" instead of "YEOWWWWWWWW!!!!")

And here it is:

The appliqués go all the way around, same in the back as in the front. That's not what I intended to do. I meant to do the x's just on the front but fused them in place and THEN realized I'd fused them to the back.

So these are the things I finished this week:
The skirt on which I re-did the waistband:

 And then the other two shirts I tie-dyed in that same load:

I got all these last Friday at BJ's and will take them with me today when I go to show the transformation, which is always fun.

This morning I'm working on a nice ("nice" in the way your mother would say it, meaning it was probably expensive and you could wear it under a jacket if you starched it up) Van Huesen blouse that was given to me--missing a button, really boring all-white. I dyed it pink, took off the rest of the buttons and replaced them with an assortment of diamond and pearl (all cheapo vintage fakes but FABULOUS) buttons and am now adding some beads to the weird placket so it will lie flat and not wrinkle up every time it's washed. Of course, these buttons will surely disintegrate in the wash, anyway. But what's the point of saving them in the button box for the rest of my life?

And now I've got to plan a couple of projects for the weekend. My dyeing days are about to come to an end. We're on newly-severe water rules starting this weekend, where the cost of water is going to triple--they sent out letters showing how much we'll pay if we use the amount of water we used last summer, and WHOA. Over $400 for the month of June. We're in real danger of running out of water here in the desert, and I won't go on about it except to say how totally disgusted I was to read in the newspaper yesterday (yeah, I know: I shouldn't have even picked it up) that cotton farmers last summer kept watering their fields even though they knew by June that the crops were lost. They had to do it to collect crop insurance: they had to have the proof that they had "tried" to save the crop, and the only way to do that was to run the pumps and water the fields even though 1) the crops were obviously a lost cause and 2) we are in a severe drought and were already on restricted water usage. This is so obscene I can't even think about it without feeling like my head is going to catch fire. Sometimes rules are so stupid you want to find the person who thought them up and go, "You know, if you can't get creative and figure out a better way than that, you ought to just lie down in a barren cotton field and let the buzzards eat your liver."

OK. Before I really begin to rant, let me go do something useful~~

Whew.

I. Am. Beat.

After I got the regular work done--the podcast finished and uploaded, the magazine deadline met--I tackled a big, big job: I started sorting through my books, rearranging the bookshelves so I can easily find the books I use most, and making piles of books to Leave the House Already.

I've got books I bought decades ago, books I've never read, books that were given to me. I have tons of books on writing that I don't even recognize--I don't know *where* they came from. Like that one on top of the stack? I swear I must have bought it because I liked the hair on the drawing of the guy on the cover. I also swear I never read it--in fact, that I never even saw it before today. Even though I know that's technically impossible since there's nobody else in this house who would have brought that book and put it on those shelves. On the left is a box of dozens of Quilting Arts magazines and some quilt-related books for a friend, in the middle are books to leave at Starbucks, and on the right are books for The EGE to take to the art teacher at his old school.

So now it looks like this, with room to move the pile by the side of the bed onto an actual shelf, once I read those books and decide to keep them. Or not--I'm guessing only about half of them will be keepers. In which case I get to do this all over again, albeit without several decades worth of books to sort. Yiiiiiii~~

Now it's time to go have coffee. Decaf, of course, with a side of stitching. And a discreet little stack of books left on the table with that note taped on top:

Take It

Read It

 Pass It On

~~ XO

Wardrobe Geekiness: A Podcast with Melanie Testa

I get so excited when I find someone to talk wardrobe-altering with that I can hardly stand it--so on this podcast I kind of talk more than usual. But Melly gets to talk, too--she's gotten all excited about altering her clothes and making new clothes and doing really cool surface design on clothes, and when I found out she's going to be doing a column on garment surface design techniques for us over at CreateMixedMedia.com, well: I had to talk to her again. She's doing a sew-along over on her new blog starting next week, so be sure to check that out, too, and

Click on the little player to listen to the podcast~~

Whingeing About Ponchos

I've finished a couple of the ponchos from the new Alabama Studio Sewing + Design. If you like the stuff I'm doing, and if you don't have this book already (it's new this year), then get yourself one. I adore this book. These things I'm working on are from the instructions included on pp. 64-65.

So here was my first one. Just a piece of cotton interlock (on sale, $6.99 yd), over-dyed Sky Blue and Wedgewood Blue and then stitched following the directions in the book. I didn't follow the size--I just cut off a strip and used it--this was totally an experiment. This first one was 23" x 57"

I wore it once, liked it, and made another. This one is two layers with the outlines of the rubber banded sections stitched through both layers.

 Here's the length of stitched fabric. This one is 19.5" x 60". I would go with 24" x 56", I think (the book says 22" x 54")

 This is how you fold it--one short side up and over to the end of one long side--the instructions are in the book:

 Here it is on Ricë, pinned and ready to stitch. You can see how it's folded over. You can wear the point anywhere--front, back, off to one side. I like it in back, covering up the part that's always cold:

I'm going to have to do some thinking about this. In a way, I'm still jazzed about all the ideas this has sparked. In another, though, I'm bummed. For one thing, sewing through two layers of this fabric was really hard on one of my fingers, and I hate that--it sets off some deep-seated worries about how much longer I'm going to be able to do this. Since there have also been some other rough spots, too, though--shoulders, neck, etc.--it may be something else (weather, diet, shoes). Which would be a Really Good Thing.

The other thing is that I wore the second one last night when we ran some errands, and I was not impressed. While a poncho is a good thing for sitting around in a chilly room, having a conversation or sipping wine or watching a movie or something, it is totally impractical for shopping or loading bags into the car or even carrying a shoulder bag. Totally. Finally, in frustration, I yanked it off and left it in the truck so I could just MOVE. It was hobbling me, and this pissed me off: how many confining garments do women still wear? Spanks. Heels. Bustiers. Skin-tight mini skirts.

Ponchos.

How many of these do men wear? I mean men in their regular lives; I'm not talking about men who like to dress in women's clothes, because I'm guessing the more stereotypical the women's clothing (i.e., confining, totally gender specific), the better they would like it. No, I mean men going about their regular daily lives.

None, except for neckties. Even their dressiest shoes are built mostly for comfort, at least if you buy the good ones.

Thinking about this irritated me no end, and it irritated me further that I hadn't thought of it before and had gotten all excited about making something that is pretty much unwearable for any practical endeavor.

So now I'm re-thinking my enthusiasm. The EGE is puzzled, since it seems perfectly sensible to him: I'm always chilly. We spend a lot of time at Starbucks. It's chilly there. I'm sitting, stitching, drinking coffee, maybe visiting. Ergo, these are perfect for that. He has a valid point, indeed. Of course, I could save my fingers and just carry a length of cotton interlock fabric in the back of the truck and toss it over my shoulders.

Well, obviously I'm grouchy. I'm not big on pain, even small amounts of it. So the last couple days have left me whinging rather a lot.  I've been working on more floss drawers--since I gave away the last of my rubber stamps, I had five more drawers to use for floss and had to cut and glue the dividers.

I've finished that, and it was no fun for the hands again. To get back on track, I'm going to stitch on muslin for a couple days--I've got this

ready to go. I made the mistake of doing that getting-it-ready-to-go when I was tired and kind of gritchy and got the x's ironed on and put it back on Ricë and went, "Huh? Where'd they go?" and was looking around on the floor to find them, wondering how in the world they'd fallen off after I'd ironed them in place, and with steam. Then I realized: I'd ironed them not on the front, where I thought I'd ironed them, but on the back.

Sigh. (Yeah, I really did heave a huge sigh right now.)

I think I need to go chill a while. I'll report back when 1) I get something fun done and 2) when I get over myself and am not quite such a whinger.

~~XO

Meet My New Best Friend, Ricë

The box arrived on Friday when I was over at BJ's, the consignment shop. I go over on Friday afternoons for a couple hours, hang out, try on clothes, listen to other people talk about clothes, look at all the clothes and think about what could be done to them to make them cooler--there are a lot of expensive hardly-worn clothes, stuff I would never, ever wear--think totally Mother-of-the-Bride stuff--and I like to imagine what might be done to make it actually wearable to me. Most of the time I can't think of anything. Much of the time there's polyester involved, and I don't go anywhere near polyester.

Well, except for that green tunic. The more I look at it, the more I have no idea what I was thinking when I bought it.

Anyway, so UPS delivered the carton while I was gone but after The EGE got home from school, and he brought it in the house and hid it in the corner behind the coat rack, just in case I came home while he was out running. I didn't, and so he moved the carton into the office and propped it up against my desk chair where I would see it as soon as I walked into the office.

There was much squealing involved--he was in the shower and could hear me even with the water running.

 It was both reallyreallyreally exciting and scary--I had no idea if the dress form was going to be really cool or a disappointment. It could have been flimsy, wonky, the wrong size (never mind that I printed out the size chart and measured and re-measured myself and had a conversation with the nice people at DharmaTrading.com). But she. Is. Perfect.

We got her all put together, and I started trying stuff on her. I was trying to decide what to call her. For a while I thought I might call her Maggie. I always liked the name "Maggie," but I don't know why. I have no idea why, actually. I had a Bad Boyfriend in high school who called me Maggie because Ricë reminded him of rice and rice reminded him of maggots and Maggie was short for maggots, and I was too young and stupid to tell him he was a complete and total idiot and should go away immediately. [I actually sat here for a couple minutes and wondered if he's still alive. I'm guessing not; he was the sort of guy who probably came to a bad end early on--not very self-aware, not prone to making good choices. You know. And a totally lousy boyfriend, by the way. Frankly, pretty much a jerk. My god, I'm glad not to be young any more.]

Anyway, anyway, anyway--I always think of a "Maggie" as a radical, feisty, energetic redhead. I wonder if I once upon a time knew someone like that? But while I was trying to decide if that was what I was going to name My New Best Friend, I stopped and looked at her and realized: I have no choice. I can't name her Maggie. Or anything else. I had put one of my bras on her to make sure things fit the way they fit me, and I was like, "Whoa. She's wearing my underwear. Please!" Ergo, she has to be Ricë. Otherwise, if she were someone else, and she were in my house in my underwear, I would have to shoot her.

[We were watching a Netflixed show last night in which some Bad Guys broke into someone's house and shot everything up with a machine gun, and the good guys shot them to wound them and then called the cops. I was dumbfounded: if someone broke into my house and I could get my hands on my gun before they killed me? I'm not going to try to wing them. They're in MY HOUSE. SHOOTING AT ME. Duh.]

Or wearing my underwear. Either way, it's it would make me really, really grouchy, which is not A Good Thing.

So Ricë it is, because I don't want to have to shoot her. And I've spent much of this weekend trying clothes on her. It's amazing:  now I can take something I'm working on and put it on her and see it from every side. No longer do I have to put it on and take it off, put it back on and take it back off, sticking myself with multiple pins and trying to twist around in front of the mirror so I can see the back and see the length and see how it's going to drape, which is impossible if you're doing anything with your hands. Oh, sure, sometimes The EGE helps me, but come on: no matter that he's fabulous in every way and has been married for many years and has been hanging out with me forEVER, he's still A Guy. He doesn't sew. Pinning fabric isn't his forte, and never mind that I trust him more than I trust any other human being, I do not want to put on a garment, give him a whack of pins, and ask him to pin it while I'm wearing it. Uh, no. Thank you, but no. *I* don't even pin while I'm wearing it. Been there, done that, got the pinhole scars to prove it.

So I'll be trying more things and taking more photographs. I hope I take more photographs--I hope, I reallyreallyreally PLAN to take more photographs, now that it will be easier. The EGE and I were going to take some photos Stage A Photo Shoot (you know, like the Mommy Bloggers who dress their kids up in Vintage Attire and move the sofa out into the pasture with a random cow) yesterday, but I got kind of bummed out about my fingers and didn't much feel like dressing up and posing. This sewing-through-cotton-knit experiment is fun but is not going so well on the finger joint front, and I'm thinking it may be time to go back to The Hand Guy to find out if what I'm doing is hastening things or not. (Pulling the needle through the knit is painful, and there's this grinding/popping thing in one joint and I'm not really happy about this.)

So here are some shots-some of those weekend projects I showed you on Friday:

There was this long, boxy, Sacred Threads vest/tunic thing.

I cut it off with a curved hem. Much better.

 Then this, which I cut off and hemmed right at the bottom on my knee.

Lennie's tail--she's not happy this morning.

Lennie's being a pain this morning--Mondays are tough for her. She nags The EGE constantly when he's home, and weekends are like DisneyWorld for her. Mondays mean she tries to switch the nagging over to me, but it doesn't work. I work here. This is a workday for me. I don't have time to feed her treats every 30 minutes. Plus there's the whole Obese Brother Thang~~there is much whinging and sulking and pouting and the sound of kitty feet stomping from room to room until she finally gives up and goes off to nap like everyone else.

 This is a skirt Trish gave me--a fabulous floaty silk skirt. It looks pretty cool, huh? She gave it to me because it hadn't sold, and it hadn't sold because the waistband was hideous.
 It was this thing, below, that Lennie's looking at with such puzzlement: heavy and dark and sloppily beaded. It's a Miss Me skirt, and the shoddiness of the workmanship was just astounding.

It had that dark beaded band tacked in place and then this silk cord running through it as a drawstring tie. I ripped off the beaded band and removed the tacky tassels from the ends of the cord and then pinned and stitched the cord to the top edge of the skirt. That edge had been turned under and basted, and two rows of machine stitching held everything together nicely. I'll add three hooks and eyes on the rest of the opening, and it will be perfect. I may wear it with this--they're closer in color than they appear here, I think (I haven't checked yet):

Then there are three things I bought on Friday. One was white, and the other two were grey. Yes! I bought grey clothing! But I've been having fun with this Sky Blue + Wedgewood Blue = chambray-ish thing, so I bought them knowing that was what I was going to do.

The plain white cotton top got the rubber band treatment--I love the hippie look of the shape and tie-dye:

The grey Match Point (my new favorite brand) linen, below. It had dorky side detailing and some poorly placed buttons (the center one wasn't exactly in the center) and stuff, and I ripped out all of that before I dyed it:

 I'm going to do some appliqué on it with one or both of these colors of t-shirt scraps:

A Johnny Was tunic I love. It was also grey:

 The stitching was (gasp) polyester--the only--I mean ONLY--time I like polyester is with embroidery: it doesn't take the dye, so I can dye the garment any color I want and still have the true colors of the embroidery. Huh. I guess polyester is good for something after all. Who knew?

OK. Time to get to work. Ton of stuff to do today, including an interview I'm looking forward to~~hope your Monday is off to a marvelous start~~XO