Feeling at home

Quick thoughts from East Village until I am home and better set up to blog and not just tapping this out on an iPad. I have a lot I want to write about like my major collar stand discovery at the Ivy League exhibition at FIT but that will have to wait.

Some of it like my fabulous evening with the quite extraordinary Carolyn will have to be fully digested over the next few days but there is one amazing thing I want to share with you.

Carolyn from diaryofasewingfanatic and now Mood blogger fame is an extraordinary sewist. But she has something, something you really have to meet her in person to appreciate, that I have never quite seen.

Let me explain. Some sewists are great at execution and their work is a technical marvel. Some have an eye for fashion and are great at picking trends. And then there are the fit experts who work their way through muslins and end up with the perfect fit. 

None of these people are me, but I sure do like fabric.

When I see an amazing amount of fabric, like Carolyn and I saw at Mood tonight, I am attracted to the colours or patterns I have bought before ( am I the only one who has a large collection of nearly the same fabric at home?) and I feel sort of overwhelmed.

It was different tonight because I had Carolyn with me and she has a real designer's eye. She can look at the fabric and see the potential garment in it, she can see the creative potential. Shopping with her is about hearing things like "you can run the pattern down like this and cut the sleeves from the border on the edges" she knows right away that she is going to cut the button and from that white strip on the side, that one side of another fabric can be part of a dress front and the other side can be another part. She has a real sure eye.

All this means when I got back to my venue tonight and laid out all my purchases on the bed I had this revelation that I have never in my long and active fabric shopping career ever been so pleased with my purchases. She was right, she had the taste to say when I showed her one coating "you're not sewing for the little girls, this one is a grown-up fabric."

This has really got me thinking now about my own eye and opening them up. About making the most of a piece of fabric not just making it up.

I am going to be doing some major percolating of these thoughts.

On another note my AirBnB experience is turning out just great. First you could say that what I have saved staying in this very nice apartment has financed Mood. 

So once again my fabric purchasing is revenue neutral.

Secondly there are few decent hotels in East Village where my son lives, in an apartment with a roommate that he describes as so small he has to put his shoes on the dresser. So this arrangement puts me close and let's me feel more what his day to day life is like.

Third my host is a polite nice boy, and I do mean that he is about 25 and you might remember I am not. But I have sons and students and that is comfortable for me. The place is neat ( he is a recent grad from design school) and he is out a lot. Would you believe the only food is garlic in a bowl on the counter and bottled water in the fridge? I asked him last night where his tea towels (dish towels) were after I did a few dishes because I still eat even when I come in late. He doesn't own one.

This is an interesting lifestyle.

Anyway last night when I tucked myself into my very nice bed I heard a voice in the dark from down the hall "goodnight Babs."

I thought to myself, sometimes I think I could write a book.

Then I remembered I write a blog.