The opposite of stashbusting is fun!

So, March happened. Yep. In a whole month I managed to make one whole garment. And I’m so glad to hear that you didn’t find yet another knit dress boring, because really the only other sewing-related thing I accomplished in March was – wait for it – buying even more knit fabric! Because I need more fabric like I need a hole in the head. But it was LA! It was the fashion district! It was Mood and Michael Levine Loft and yeah, I have a problem.

As you may have gathered, I was down in Los Angeles for work for about three weeks in March. My schedule there leaves me free in the evenings, so I did my best to cram in as much LA-specific stuff as possible. Which mostly amounted to buying things. By things I mean fabric. Oh, what, you want to see it? Well okay then:

The pieces on the left are from F and S Fabrics, which is a lovely store along the line of Mood but not as big. They also offer sewing classes, one of which was happening when I was there – I’m glad the fabric stores are making an effort to secure their future by luring more folks into sewing. I managed (not on purpose) to buy two polka dot fabrics: the pink dot is a rayon remnant that will probably become a flowy sleeveless top (if I ever sew a woven fabric again, that is), and the other is the graduated dot poly knit I mentioned that I will certainly use to copy Amanda’s awesome dress. And what’s that behind them? Why, it’s my very first Burda mag! Found at the newsstand next to F and S. The stand was like a Burda jackpot, actually, with multiple copies of the January, February and March issues. I chose March because it contains a gathered front cardigan pattern that I’m dying to make up.

The middle row is my haul from the Michael Levine Loft, where everything is $2.50 a pound so you don’t have to count your yardage! Turns out this is important when you’ve arrived at the Loft only 20 minutes before closing after literally running there from the Metro stop. (Yes, LA has a very nice Metro, that will get you within about 7 blocks of the heart of the fashion district. Provided you are starting from somewhere with a Metro stop.) From top to bottom: an avocado doubleknit for a summer version of my sweatshirt dress, a textured deep turquoise poly knit for some kind of dress or other, a random colorblocked stripe fabric that will maybe be a Cation dolman top, and like 4 yards of a striped rayon knit for a Tiramisu finally (that pattern needs kind of a lot of yardage – I mean, not that much, but better safe than sorry, right?)

FInally, the last piece is the one thing I allowed myself at Mood. I only had about a half an hour for Mood, and without a specific need for anything I told myself I would only buy something if it was a statement fabric that I loved. And when I spotted this modern graphic ITY I knew I had to have it. I got enough for a maxi dress, and I’m excited about it. Black/white/gray/chartreuse modern art print? How could I not?

But hey, I didn’t just shop. (Well, mostly I did. Discount Swedish furniture is almost as hard for me to resist as discount fabric.) But I did manage to get to LACMA, the Los Angeles Museum of Art, which is a really, really nice museum. It’s open til 8 on Fridays and after 5 LA residents are free! And if you’re visiting LA, I highly recommend you skip the tourist junk in Hollywood and go to LACMA. They have a huge, very diverse collection and a lovely facility. I love their contemporary art building in particular, and was thrilled to be able to see the super cool sculpture/construction Metropolis II in action. It’s basically a little city that has thousands of Matchbox cars rushing through it. It’s loud and beautiful and complicated, just like a real city, but less stressful since I don’t have to drive in it. (Man I hate driving in LA.) Anyway, I can’t recommend LACMA enough. I also recommend the restaurant/bar at the museum, Ray’s/Stark Bar, where I had a good pizza and a fantastic cocktail afterwards. Do it!

But the best part about being in LA was that I got to hang out with a fellow sewing blogger! I met up with Ms McCall at F and S (where I convinced her to buy a totally awesome red-orange stretch velvet, under the condition that if she hadn’t turned it into something in one year that it would pass to me!), again (brief as it was) at the Loft, and on my last day we checked out Golden Road, a great brewery/restraunt in Glendale. Sadly, my only photographic evidence of our awesome time is this really embarrassingly bad picture. Was I already 2.5 beers in at this point? Entirely possible. Anyway, the magic of the internets never ceases to amaze me, and I’m so glad I live in an age when sewing can connect two people who end up having a lot more than sewing in common, to drink beer and talk for hours and have a great time. Hooray for technology! And I know there’s more of you sewing-types in LA, so I hope I can meet up with you too the next time I’m down.

As fun as it was, I’m glad to be home and back with my sewing machine, though I’ve been sadly neglecting it since I’ve been back. But this month? April’s got a lot of potential, I can feel it. And though my new acquisitions are sorely tempting me, April is the stashbusting month – Cation Design’s Vibrant Color Stashbusting Challenge and the Pattern Review Pattern Stash Contest are calling my name! Now let’s see if I can undo some of my March Madness…

Updates and belated thanks

Once again my terrible procrastinatative (yes I just coined that word) nature shows itself in a something like three-week blogging hiatus. In those weeks, I returned from LA and was immediately met at home with the craziest weeks of my work schedule as well as visiting family members, and, you know, a not unconsiderable amount of turkey. But I have at last managed to carve out some computer time (I am also woefully behind with what you all have been up to), and I have things to say/share!

I’ll start by going back to my last few days in LA, when (on very short notice) some awesome LA sewists came out in the rain the week before Thanksgiving to meet up in Venice for some fabric shopping, dinner, and lots of sewing talk! I met up with Cindy of Cation Designs, Sandra of Brown Paper Patterns, and Nhi (who can be found here on Pattern Review) at Fabric Planet (open til 8, about the only place to fabric shop after 6 in LA), which is a pretty big, delightfully random fabric store with a nice amount of knits, some nice wovens, a ton of zippers and just about every trim you could possibly imagine. I walked out with a piece of mustard yellow modal knit and a super stretchy blue chambray (shirtdress!), and a few random zippers (all zippers $1!). The proprietor was really nice, and funnily enough was surprised and amazed that we had all sewn the things we were wearing. I guess he mostly gets people in who buy fabric for curtains and then hire someone to make them? We let him in on the secret world of the online sewing community and he gave us some deals (he miscut my knit at first, but let me keep the miscut remnant for free!). We then went and had dinner at a really cool place called Lemonade, which is like an awesome, mod, gourmet Souplantation, with everything served “cafeteria style”. We stayed there talking until we realised the employees were waiting for us to leave so they could go home… I once again marvel at the magic of the internet, which can so easily connect four people with like interests living in roughly the same geographical area, when we otherwise would have had no idea that such like-minded folks existed at all. I had a great night and I hope we can do it again sometime! And, luckily, we remembered at the last moment that we’d better take a picture:

(I love how it looks like I bought the whole store… really it was just 4 yards of fabric! The bag was actually made from a funny ribbed knit fabric remnant, tied into a bag shape with handles cut out.)

Following short on the heels of my return home was the holiday week. I actually started this post on Thanksgiving day, but didn’t have time to finish it before the cooking needed to start. But even though it’s two weeks past the day of thanks, and we’re well into the next holiday season, I still wanted to share some thoughts I had on that day. I’m not one of those folks who goes in for a lot of sentimental stuff, so generally the most important thing about any given holiday for me is what I get to eat, rather than, you know, giving any thought to what the holiday is supposed to represent. Thanksgiving for me has always been an amazing food orgy and little else, but this year I actually had a couple things that I was, well, really thankful for. So I thought I’d depart a little from my usual meaningless-holiday tradition and run down the reasons why this was maybe the most appropriate Thanksgiving ever.

First, on that Wednesday morning I got my cast off, found out my wrist was totally healed, and on Thanksgiving morning I rode my bike for the first time in over 6 weeks! I even got a flat tire and it didn’t dampen my joy. I was, ridiculously, a little worried that I’d have forgotten how to ride or something, but it turns out that riding a bike is just like riding a bike – huh, I guess that phrase exists for a reason. I am generally grateful for having full use of both hands back, which makes everything so much easier of course; and I’m also glad now that the weather has turned colder and I’m wearing tops with sleeves that I won’t be stretching out one cuff on all my warm shirts and sweaters! Mostly the whole broken-wrist experience really made me so thankful that my usual state of being is whole and healthy, and I will try not to take that state for granted so much in the future.

I also had a funny experience the week before Thanksgiving that really brought home how glad I am that I’ve embarked on this whole sewing lark. I was in IKEA (like I was going to be in LA and not go to IKEA. Man I love that place), and up on the top floor in one of the sample rooms there was a really cool orange bird-print table runner on a table all decked out for Thanksgiving. I immediately thought “I must have that”, but when I went downstairs to the table linens section, no bird runner. Then in the fabric section I spotted the orange bird fabric and realised that the sample room decorator must have made the runner from the fabric. After a moment of disappointment that I wouldn’t be able to buy the table runner, I literally thwacked myself on the forehead and thought “wait, I can sew!” So I bought a yard of bird fabric, got it home, cut a strip of it and hemmed the edges. It made me wonder how many other people had walked away disappointed that the table runner was not for sale, when it was so easy to make. Sewing is pretty cool. So here it is on our Thanksgiving table:

We had a wonderful feast, featuring a splatchcocked turkey (it’s laid out flat in the pan so it cooks more evenly – it really works!) basted with Emeril’s Essence (terrible name, but it’s awesome on turkey and the drippings make the best. gravy. ever.), as well as a terrific apple parsnip soup and a persimmon salad (no spinach at the market so we used kale, marinating it all day in the dressing, and it worked great), not to mention fall cocktails. So even though I had reason to give thanks this year, it still was an awesome food orgy too.

And now, finally, things have slowed down a bit and I can really get back to sewing – I mean, sewing frantically, since before Christmas I want to make a bunch of long sleeve knit shirts as well as at least one pair of pants, since I’ll be spending the holiday somewhere rather colder than Southern California, not to mention all the presents I want to make! Right, more than I can chew as usual… I’m off to a good start with 5 shirts and a dress all cut out and waiting to be put together. Let’s just hope I can keep up the pace, and still make time to share the stuff with you all! In the meantime, I’ll be back with actual finished clothes soon, the last of my pre-LA sewing binge (including the dress I wore to the awesome LA meetup). So a belated Happy Thanksgiving to those who had one! And with that discharged at last, full steam ahead to the next holiday!

LA fabric fandango!

Although I do still have some makes to blog, after spending the afternoon today in the Los Angeles Fashion District buying loads of fabric, I just had to share immediately! Apologies for the lousy lighting and iPhone picture, but it’s the only camera I have down here. You’ll have to wait for true color representation until these fabrics reappear as garments…

I started at Michael Levine Loft, which is the super discount, by-the-pound, random-piles-of-fabric room at the biggest downtown fabric store. It’s like my Crazy Fabric Store in Solvang on steroids. Boxes and boxes and piles and piles of fabric… I ended up with about four and a half pounds of fabric – a grand total of $12 for almost 10 yards, not bad! Across the top, there are two lightweight sweater knits for winter cowl tops, a nice cotton jersey for a long sleeve t-shirt, a weird stretch woven that has a brown and black textured weave for a pencil skirt, and almost 5 yards of green polka-dot poly chiffon – I know, it’ll be a bear to work with, but it’ll make such a fun summer dress, and since it weighs almost nothing I got the whole piece.

With the time remaining on my parking meter I ran across the street to the main Michael Levine store, where I got the two pieces on the bottom left for more than twice as much as all the Loft fabric… but they’re really nice. The stripe (it’s actually white and navy) is a viscose/spandex and has a wonderful weight and drape, and the rust solid is a ponte knit (it’s a color I’ve been on the hunt for for months). Both will become winter dresses I think.

Finally, I drove up a few blocks to the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, where there is a secret gem of a fabric source in their Scholarship Store. Companies and others donate clothes and fabric to the store, where it’s sold at a discount to fund student scholarships. And though there was just a short wall of bolts, there was some really nice stuff. From the bottom right, there’s a orange-red cotton/spandex jersey, a brown polka-dot cotton jersey (both for cozy winter tees), and a wonderful turquoise jersey that feels just like a knit used to make super expensive RTW athletic wear (think lululemon) – all for a dollar a yard! Also at FIDM I found my favorite piece of the day, the gray geometric. It feels like a silk charmeuse, but it didn’t wrinkle in the couple hours it was crumpled in the bag, so it may be poly – I’ll have to burn it to be sure. But whatever it is, I love the print and it’ll make a gorgeous blouse.

After all that I was starving, so I headed over to Baco Mercat, a new restaurant downtown where a colleague of mine tends bar, where I had a fabulous meal and an amazing cocktail. And downtown is already (very creatively) decorated for the holidays:

So that was my downtown LA day! Los Angeles gets a bad rep sometimes, but it’s actually pretty cool (aside from the driving and parking, of course – I used like $8 in change for meters today). It would have been more fun running around in all that fabric with some cohorts, though. Thanks to Cindy at Cation Designs for clueing me in to these fab resources, although she couldn’t join me today. Any other LA sewists out there? Perhaps a post-holiday LA meetup is in order? Though I don’t know that my stash can take it… less buying more sewing from now on!

It’s my 1(.033)-Year Blogaversary! Giveaway time!

As you may have noticed by now, I tend to be late for things. I can generally meet deadlines of the if-you-don’t-finish-this-dress-you’ll-be-naked variety, but I’m a terrible procrastinator and important dates tend to slip by me. So here we are, a week and some change past the one-year anniversary of my taking the plunge and starting this blog, and since I’m never one to pass up an opportunity for a celebration, even if I am one to let pass the actual day of the reason for said celebration, I’m having a giveaway anyway.

I want to say thank you to everyone who reads my ramblings, occasionally or frequently (I mean, as frequently as I write them, which is not very frequently), and thank you so much for all the kind words of encouragement or advice you’ve given me. I know I’m terrible about replying to comments (see above admission about procrastination and letting the moment pass), but every time the comment notifier pops up in my inbox it absolutely brightens my day. I really love this crazy sewing community and I’m so glad I’ve spent the last year(ish) being inspired by all of you, and hopefully occasionally inspiring you!

So for my first giveaway, I wanted to share some of the delightful weirdness I get from my somewhat local bizarro 99-cent fabric store. I would say that roughly 60-70% of my fabric comes from there, and I feel so lucky to have this resource nearby! So I’m going to send a little weird to someone who can’t stop by and dig through the piles (yes, there are literal piles) every few weeks, in the form of three pieces of fabric:

First, on the bottom is a yard and a half of a very dark navy blue cotton-lycra knit – it’s got a bit of weight to it and has good stretch and recovery and would make a very cozy long-sleeve tee or tunic (fall sewing, that’s what I’m supposed to be thinking about, right?) It’s pretty easy to work with and would be a good first knit experience for those of you who haven’t taken the plunge into sewing knit fabric yet! In the middle is a yard of the black and white border print that I used to make a simple elastic waist skirt last year – just add wide elastic and you’re practically done! And on top is three yards of a fun print woven (a burn test indicates poly content) that’s fairly light and crisp and would make a great blouse (Alma, anyone?) or a last-gasp of summer dress. I’m also including two of my go-to knit notions: a twin needle and a package of clear elastic.

If any of this strikes your fancy, leave a comment before midnight (my time, PDT) next Sunday the 16th. [Sorry, the giveaway has ended. Thanks to everyone who entered!] I’ll choose a comment at random and that person gets all of the above! And since the fabric wasn’t exactly pricey, I’m happy to ship worldwide. You don’t need to be a “follower” to enter (since I confess I still don’t use a blog reader and hope desperately that there are others out there who don’t either so I don’t feel like such a Luddite), but if subscribing’s your thing and you don’t already, by all means hit the follow button in the sidebar!

Thanks again for making my first year of blogging so fantastic!

San Francisco is a magical place

Growing up in Northern Nevada, San Francisco was always my “big city”  - where we would road trip to for art, food, culture and shopping. It’s always has a special place in my heart, but this last weekend’s trip to the bay with my mom really pushed its awesomeness level off the charts for me.

It started early Friday morning with a trip to the deYoung museum to see the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit. I’m glad the deYoung seems interested in showcasing the work of fashion designers – last year’s Balenciaga exhibit was pretty incredible, but Gaultier really turns it up to 11. It’s so cool to see the garments up close; I think I’d appreciate fashion design more if I got to always examine the construction in person rather than on TV or in full body runway stills. Not only does Gaultier have some smart and interesting views on gender and style (he’s fairly miffed that women seem to be able to have our cake and eat it too; i.e., we get to wear dresses or pants while poor men only get to wear boring suits – an excellent point), but he’s a masterful creator of complex and beautiful garments. Here’s a couple iphone snaps of my favorites (click to enlarge):

   

On the left is the first sweater dress I’ve ever seen that I’ve really liked. Seriously, it kind of makes me want to get more serious about knitting… On the right is a pleated dress with rows of pearl buttons sewn just on the inside of the fold of each pleat. Beautiful! (The full houndstooth bodysuit in the background, though? Very cool, but I can’t imagine a model ever actually wearing that on the runway… well, maybe one did – it was by far not the strangest thing in the exhibit.) The show only runs through this weekend, but if you happen to be conveniently located in the bay area, I highly recommend you check it out!

After a delicious lunch at Magnolia, a fantastic brewpub in the Haight, we headed over to the Legion of Honor for the special exhibition on surrealists Man Ray and Lee Miller. Surrealism is my favorite art movement by far (huge Magritte fan), so it was nice to learn more about these two artists and their take on and contributions to the movement.

Having gorged on the city’s art and fashion offerings, we decided to pop into a funny little discount fabric store in the Richmond called Fabrix that I’d stumbled upon the last time I visited the city. After browsing for longer than we had fed the meter for (oops), I was having my fabric cut when I noticed that the girl standing next to me looked familiar… it was none other than Cindy of the brilliant Cation Designs! Yes, I actually ran into a sewing blogger in a fabric store. What further proof do you need that SF is magical? This was my first internet-life-meets-real-life encounter, and I’m so glad it was with Cindy. She writes one of my favorite blogs and creates such amazing garments, not to mention has an awesome cat. After the initial is-this-really-happening exclamations, we managed to snap some phone pictures, of course (Cindy’s picture is better – posting procrastinator that I am she beat me to the punch):

She’s wearing her not-a-Renfrew, and I’m wearing my Simplicity 2219, which is obviously completed but yet to be blogged. Hey, I was busy meeting awesome people in awesome fabric stores, so sue me. Cindy, it was super cool to meet you, and hopefully we can meet up again sometime closer to one of the cities we actually live in!

Still aflutter from my chance encounter, I dashed across the street to Satin Moon, a beautiful fine fabric shop, where sadly I found no additional sewing bloggers lurking in the stacks, but I did fondle some lovely Liberty lawns:

Ultimately, though, I couldn’t bring myself to pay $50 a yard for fabric, no matter how nice it is. I’ve been ruined by 99 cent mystery fabric, I guess.

Luckily, the next day, driving through Berkeley to Oakland, we literally stumbled on a delightful place called Discount Fabrics. Clearly the SF magic extends across the bay, since we weren’t even looking for another fabric store, let alone a huge discount fabric warehouse. (More magic: at this store I ran into a former student who I hadn’t seen over a year. Seriously.) FInally, finishing out the astounding weekend, we went for tastings and a tour of the St. George Distillery in Alameda, and then met some good friends for delicious pizza and cocktails at Boot and Shoe Service in Oakland.

Coolest. Weekend. Ever.

So, right, the spoils. Here’s what I came home with to feed the ravenous Stash Monster:

On the top right, my two finds from Fabrix in SF: a lovely soft turquoise print cotton poplin and a heavyweight brown geometric print lycra knit. The poplin I think will be an Alma blouse with tie belt (must place that pattern order soon!), and the knit is for some kind of practical work dress. Along the bottom, my haul from Discount Fabrics in Berkeley: gray polka dot ITY knit, a really nice gray cotton twill (my mom got more of this to make a Minoru, but since I already have one I just got a yard for a pencil skirt), and two stretch denims of different weights to …gasp! make pants. Yes, I’m going to attempt a couple pants patterns this fall. Finally, on the top left, two remnant pieces of Marimekko cotton from the Crate and Barrel outlet in Berkeley (for bags or something? I don’t know, they’re just pretty and were only 50 cents).

So that was my magical weekend in San Francisco. I can only hope that I managed to bring some of the magic home with me, and I can use it to successfully blog the four(!) projects that I have finished in the last month as well as, you know, sew some more stuff before work and autumn hit me like a ton of bricks in just a couple weeks. If you’ve got some time left in your summer vacation, might I humbly suggest a trip to the city in the fog? (Which, may I add, was delightfully warm and sunny for much of the weekend. Need I say more?)

Feeding the Stash Monster

So I haven’t gotten a lot of sewing done lately. Between being super busy at the beginning of the month, then being sick, then the holiday… I am on an upswing, though, and I am almost done with one item and have three more cut out and ready to sew! But in the meantime, what do you do when you can’t sew? Plan more sewing, of course!

Above is my latest contribution to the Stash Monster. Well, when I started sewing, I saw people mentioning their “stash” on their blogs, and I thought, “Ha, I only buy fabric I intend to sew right away!  I will make fabric purchases on a project by project basis!” Well, that sense of superiority lasted about a month. I absolutely only buy fabric I intend to sew, who doesn’t? Of course, the problem lies between what I intend to sew and what I actually do sew. So was born my Stash Monster. I tend to feed it with occasional big meals, made up of destination trips to the Crazy Fabric Store, or big sales at one of the online places. This particular meal is from the wool sale at Fashion Fabrics Club a few weeks ago (man, their shipping is slow! At least this time I got tracking information, so it at least seemed faster). I recently got a SmartWool bike jersey (for half off at the local outfitters!) and I totally love it – warm when you want, cool when you want, thin but substantial – and I wanted some of that magic fabric in other parts of my wardrobe. So this is five different wool jerseys in solid colors to make dresses, tunics, maybe even leggings! And I am absolutely machine washing and drying it, despite the instructions to hand wash or dry clean – too much work for easy knit garments. I’ve washed a couple pieces of it so far and they seem okay. Shrunk a bit, and they’re a little softer, but hopefully they’ll hold up through repeated washes. The fabric on the bottom is a coating that I couldn’t resist. Yes, another coat project even though I haven’t ever made a coat! It will happen… maybe next fall. I also availed myself of some Jo Ann pattern sales recently and increased the pattern stash by maybe 10 or 12… because I’ve got to make this fabric into something, right?

In addition to overstuffing the Monster, I certainly overstuffed myself on Thursday (and Friday, leftovers!), and I hope you did too! I love Thanksgiving. It’s a holiday that’s just about eating! And drinking! How great is that? And if your turkey this year was not as good as you wanted, may I suggest the most excellent turkey recipe ever – the Emeril turkey. Beer brined, basted with Emeril’s spice mix (which he calls his “essence“… um, awkward. But so tasty!) For the gravy, we just blend up the veggies that have been under the turkey with the essencey turkey drippings and add a little beer instead of wine, and it’s the best gravy ever. Give it a try next year… or next week…

Craziest. Fabric store. Ever.

I know I’ve gone on a bit about this totally crazy place in Solvang where all the fabric is 99 cents a yard and you cut it yourself and pay in the cafe upstairs… well, I promise it’s even crazier than you think it is, and finally I have some photographic evidence.

Yes, this is a fabric store. I encourage you to click on the picture to enlarge it and check out all the things that are totally insane. Notice the strange 80s ad posters of people in bathing suits up on the back wall? The mysterious short section of wallpaper border on one of the beams? The network of pipes-as-display-mechanism is maybe the least odd thing about this room. I’ve found pieces of fabric in here that range in length from one to fifty yards (I didn’t measure, there was a handwritten tag indicating the length). And this is just the first room. The other rooms have mostly bolts rather than pieces, though there are piles of small pieces too:

 

This is, I imagine, why I’ve found reference to this place being called the “Fabric Barrel”. There are about 6 rooms in total, of various sizes, spread across the basement floor of a big building. The doors to all the rooms are just open to the breezeway outside, and the first time I went it was about a half an hour before I saw anybody at all in the place.  There is someone who oversees it, I met her the first time I was there, but since then I haven’t seen anyone who works there in the fabric rooms when I’ve been browsing.  The signs all read “Find something you like? Bring it to the cafe to pay” and indeed, that is what you do.  There are tables scattered around with measuring tapes stuck to them and scissors are provided to cut off what you want:

Then you take your stack of fabric upstairs to the cafe and tell the woman at the register how many yards you have and she rings you up (there is tax, if you were wondering, so my 10 yards the other day came to $10.68 or something). The cafe is actually a separate building, but it’s all the same complex.

The first time I went here, I literally spent the whole time muttering, “what? what?! why?!” under my breath.  It is one of the strangest places I have ever encountered. Oh, and I also walked out with 17 yards of fabric. Don’t get me wrong, the place is bizarre, but I also kind of love it. Much of the fabric is terrible polyester stuff or ugly prints or both, but there’s also a lot of solid colored rayon and cotton jerseys and the occasional really nice stretch poplin or flowy rayon. Some of the fabric looks like it’s been there for decades, and some bolts I see aren’t there anymore just a couple weeks later (who’s coming here and buying a whole bolt of something? Another mystery). The story, as I understood it from the woman I talked to on my first visit, is that they’re associated with a clothing company called “Jodi California” and they get all that company’s manufacturing bolt ends or things they didn’t use (though I think some fabric comes from the LA garment district, somehow), and the proceeds go to charity, hence the 99 cent price and lack of precise fabric stocking/accounting. The whole complex is known as Shelbi Ranch, and there are equally inexplicable clothing stores upstairs as well as a western museum of some kind (according to the signs, that is. I have not investigated further). It seems like a kind of local institution that everybody knows about but doesn’t find as delightfully odd as I do.

Some of the garments I’ve made from fabric I’ve found here are my blue and black contrast yoke shirt (this fabric is my favorite find so far), the gray shirt and the blue ruffle dress (both rayon knits, I think), charcoal jersey skirt (this fabric mysteriously had two perfectly round, 10 inch circles cut out of it in one corner), the border print elastic waist skirt, the teal halter dress (another rayon knit), baker’s twine kimono shirt (this fabric had been sewn into a tube and was on the bolt like that), and the polka dot faux wrap dress (another oddly cut piece – remnants of manufacturing, I guess?). And I’ve got a bunch more fabric from here waiting to be sewn up (including a bunch of knits and a couple cute plaid shirtings).

Overall I highly recommend stopping by and checking it out if you happen to be visiting Solvang (I don’t know why you would be, but lots of people do) or just passing through on your way up or down the coast. The “ranch” is located on 1st street just down from Copenhagen. It is surely odd, but a wonderful resource.  The only real problem is that now I’m basically unwilling to pay more than a dollar a yard for solid knit fabric… and it’s terrible food for my growing stash monster!

SSS day 8 and Mail Time

It was warm enough at my house this morning to go sleeveless again…

…though it was not as warm at work, so I’ve been freezing all day! Oh well, one day of summer was nice I suppose. This is another of my easy jersey skirts with a fold over waistband.  After I made up the first one using the gathered skirt tutorial, I decided I wanted future skirts to have less or no gathering, like the RTW jersey skirts I see everywhere.  I decided to cut the skirt in a trapezoid shape, and I measured it all out and created this little diagram for future reference:

I of course neglected to include a length measurement in this drawing, resulting in all my skirts being rather different lengths (this one could be longer, but now that I think of it, I may not have had enough fabric – I made this with just a yard of 60″ jersey).  Also, these measurements still require some gathering, and since I am lazy and want a skirt with as little sewing as possible, I narrowed the top measurement by 4 more inches.  This made it ease into the waistband well, but it’s a little tight across the hips.  Oh well, I wear it anyway. The tank top is from Banana Republic earlier this year.  Guess how much they were asking for it. $30! I have always loved the Gap stores, but, really, that’s ridiculous.  I happened to have a $15 off coupon, so I paid $15 for the tank, but that still seems excessive. I must say I only ever browse for inspiration at that store now, I just can’t bring myself to pay so much for things I could (theoretically) make myself… not that my fabric addiction ends up saving me money, but at least I feel accomplished!

I also received an awesome package in the mail today:

I saw on the Sew Weekly blog last week that Mena was selling bundles of the fabric she used for her weekly creation, and in a bizarre fit of excitement about possible fall sewing projects, I snapped one up. (A not-so-brief digression: I bought early last week, and got the shipping notification the next day. Since it was just coming down from the Bay Area, I was expecting it over the weekend.  When it still hadn’t arrived on my doorstep by Wednesday, I started to get suspicious and went out to the mailbox. Our neighborhood’s mail is delivered to a set of small, maybe 6 inch square by 12 inch deep boxes that are in the middle of our block, but if something doesn’t fit in your box the mailman will drop it on your doorstep.  I was sure since it was two yards of fabric that it would have to be delivered to the door, but when I went out to the boxes I found it literally stuffed into our box, with other mail crammed in and crumpled around it. See the dented package? I’m sure glad it was just fabric and not something breakable! Anyway-) It’s a really wonderful red and charcoal grey plaid, and I’m envisioning a sheath dress, maybe, or a jumper? I grabbed McCall’s 5927 at the last pattern sale with this fabric in mind (very few seams to match plaids on! and a great subject on which to practice my new-found love of belts), but then I found Simplicity 2848 in my stash (more seams, but a jumper would be fun). Other pattern ideas? I don’t think I’ll be getting to it terribly soon, given my resolution to keep sewing sundresses for a couple more weeks at least, but I’m glad to have gotten the fabric.  There are still a few bundles left, check it out!