The day has finally arrived…I have finished my third Little French Jacket and I am now excited to find places to wear it! Oh how I loved the alpacas…and their wool! More about that in an upcoming post. We just returned from a wonderful four-week vacation that saw us taking a ship through the Panama […]
The more expensive the fabric, I buy, the more trepidation I feel just at that moment when, shears in hand, I hover above the swath of fabric on the table in front of me. I have already prepared the tweed bouclé by steaming it within an inch of its life, and I have carefully laid […]
And so, the real work begins. I decide on three contenders for my *Little Black Dress project and get to work. Here are the three contenders: McCall’s 6464 has myriad sleeve options. Butterick 6410 looks a bit “day” to me, but I think it has possibilities — an I like the short sleeves. Vogue 1435 […]
Why, oh why does my dressmaker’s mannequin not resemble me? The short answer is that I’m too cheap to buy a custom dummy. So I’m left with Gloria Junior (her name) whose under-bust will never be as small as mine unless her waist becomes waspish, and her shoulders will never resemble mine unless they are […]
A few blocks from where we live in the city, there was, for many years, a tailor shop. Focused exclusively on menswear, they always displayed a garment-in-progress in the window. Often when we walked by, I marvelled at the “stuff” that seemed to be underneath the lapel (or revere as it is called in the […]
When it comes to tailored jackets of any type, it seems to me that the collar and lapel (or revere as my UK friends would say) shapes make the design. According to Indochino Made-to-Measure, there are three basic lapel shapes: notch, peak and shawl.[1] From the Indochino blog Further, they suggest that each of them […]
Anyone who knows me knows that there is nothing I like better than an LBD. Simple and unfussy, the LBD is one of the most versatile pieces of clothing a woman can own. There are so many places to wear one: dinner out, cocktails at a favourite watering hole, under a jacket when giving a […]
Sometimes I think I’m the only person on the planet who remembers wearing (and sewing with) crimplene. Yes, that’s how you spell crimplene. Trademarked in the 1950’s (long before I started wearing the stuff), this was a fabric that really came into its own in the late 1960’s, remained a mainstay of fashion and sewing […]
Anyone who knows me knows that there is nothing I like better than an LBD. Simple and unfussy, the LBD is one of the most versatile pieces of clothing a woman can own. There are so many places to wear one: dinner out, cocktails at a favourite watering hole, under a jacket when giving a […]
A few blocks from where we live in the city, there was, for many years, a tailor shop. Focused exclusively on menswear, they always displayed a garment-in-progress in the window. Often when we walked by, I marvelled at the “stuff” that seemed to be underneath the lapel (or revere as it is called in the […]
I ended my last post with a brief mention of some of the things I hate about indie patterns. So far, I’ve noted my annoyance with the gargantuan size of the pattern “envelopes” (really just cellophane thingies) and the heavyish paper on which they are printed. I also mentioned that I am generally unimpressed with […]
The day has finally arrived…I have finished my third Little French Jacket and I am now excited to find places to wear it! Oh how I loved the alpacas…and their wool! More about that in an upcoming post. We just returned from a wonderful four-week vacation that saw us taking a ship through the Panama […]
I just realized that I totally missed my four-year anniversary of starting this blog. It was last week—April 16 to be exact. I started this online journal with the idea that I could document the journey through my interests that I now had time to pursue. When I look back on that first post, I […]
I’m sure you’ve heard all about the “trending” style. A certain TikTok “influencer” has dubbed it “coastal grandmother,” but I’m here to tell you that many of us have embraced the style for years―or at least since those of us of a certain age fell in love with the movie Something’s Gotta Give. Remember that […]
