Have you ever met a dress pattern and fallen in love at first sight? Some just speak to me, and such was my first encounter with Simplicity S8873. It’s crisp and clean, but has a bit of sass in the shoulder ties. Plus, it looked like a pretty straightforward make. Truly, sometimes simplicity really is best.
You always hear that the start of a new year is supposed to imbue you with a renewed sense of impending possibility. Of hope for a new beginning. Now, as a glass half full kind of person, I can confess I’ve definitely bought into this a time or two. Despite knowing intellectually that New Year is just a time-honored construct of “endings” and “beginnings”, it still does help to have a mental model of leaving things in the past. But, this year I’m trying something new. This year, I think, instead of a “fresh start”, I’m going to tentatively sidestep…
Despite the fact that a calendar year is really an arbitrary block of time, there is something about an impending new year that gets me motivated to check things off the list. Be it a sewing project or the never ending To Do list at work, I always try to make that final push to put projects behind me, add one more tick in the Done Column. Almost as if, in doing so, I will truly feel as if I deserve a break. (Note to self: You deserve a break anyway)
Have you ever had an idea that, when thinking about it in retrospect, you realize if you had known then what you know now, you never would have started it? (the wave skirt comes to mind…) That’s a long winded way of saying my latest sewing project started as a sketch that seemed very doable, and yet took more hours and more steps than should ever be humanly possible.
I’m not sure where you guys live, but here in North Carolina, there is an autumnal inevitability: regardless of whether you are smack in the middle of October or November and have busted out all manner of light coats and tights, there is always a day where you step outside in all of your glorious layers to feel a bit like Dorothy when she comes out of the house after the tornado. Except instead of walking from a world of black and white into one of color, you emerge from a presupposed expectation of the autumnal chill into a veritable…
When I was little, one of the biggest treats was getting to visit my Mimere (our name for grandmother). She called it our “bonding time” and always made me feel so special. The pantry was always stocked with my favorite cereal (Cinnamon Toast Crunch – dubbed a “sugar cereal” and therefore forbidden in my house), let me watch Pretty Woman (though put a pillow over my face during the rude bits), and would stroke my hair until I fell asleep.
Well, it’s officially September. And even though we are still experiencing pretty sweltering temps some days here in NC, I’m already dreaming of layers and hot chocolate and leaves crunching underfoot. What can I say? I’m almost always in an autumn frame of mind.
I think, no matter how daring you are, you can always get stuck in a bit of a rut. While I have a reputation for being somewhat fashionably “You Do You“, I’ll be the first to admit that I have my comfort zone. Without fail, day or night, you can be sure you’ll see me in a full skirt cinched within an inch of its life and as many crinolines as I can conceivably stack beneath some manner of glitter.
I don’t know what it is about summer, but I swear the months conspire to move at different speeds. I always seem to glide lazily through June, sipping mules from copper mugs and meeting friends for outdoor BBQs. July is always on a mission, moving forward with a blink-and-I’ll-miss-it ferocity, and August barely even seems to exist, her eyes already on autumn and the start of a new school year.
I’m an 80’s baby, which was all about color and exuberance and some seriously poor fashion choices. There is something about stone washed jeans and puff paint that makes me both nostalgic and horrified at the same time. And I must admit I was definitely one who gleefully joined the splatter paint phase, unapologetically adorning my clothes, my version of “art”, and even my bedroom walls with color.