New fall McCalls patterns

I have gone through them all and this is the best of the bunch in terms of wearable style:

more later.

Changing profiles

As you probably have gathered I am a pretty astute follower of high fashion.  

I have after all made a peplum top, even if I was the last sewer to do so, and have made a leatherette skirt which only looks mildly like it came out of an autobody shop although sadly it no longer fits me since the moderate weight loss - and no one in their right mind (which I often am) would bother to take apart and resew any garment that is still off gassing that much.

However a lifetime of following trends when they are about to leave the station, and being on the vanguard of those new trends that never actually caught, I have learned a few things.

OK, I have learned one thing.

It makes sense to watch the way the wind blows because nothing ever looks as dated as something that was most in last year.

Which, if you sew sturdy, is really quite the pain.

So I try in my own way to stay alert to the Big Shifts when they are about to occur.

You know what I mean. 

Those about changes that the clothing czars and czarinas decide to pull once they are well and truly confident that everyone is finally comfortable with a silhouette and maybe even knows how to fit it.

So operating as an early warning system I have been looking at the Spring 2014 collections and can detect one of those big changes on the horizon. You know just when you have refined the TNT patterns.

The New Shape seems so far ( and I have only just skimmed the collections to date - sooo many slideshows) to have this going on:

1. The skirts are fuller (these allows them to declare, no surprise, in about 6 months that the pencil skirt has come back). By fuller I mean a) circle skirts, or semicircles, you know the big hems and no darts and b) your basic A line and even the inverted pleat jobs.

2. Tops are wider, like in 80s wider. This is going to cause those of us who have sort of figured out the full bust alteration something else to thing about.

I figure both of these trends have legs, despite the fact I usually call these things wrong.

My reasoning is that they are easy to wear.  Women tend to clutch tightly to things that are comfortable.

Remember capris? 

They came back for about 2 weeks and then the fashion world and all the What Not To Wear folks declared them total no nos, but guess what?

Everyone is still wearing them, in or not in.

Listen, designers once you let something back into the system that covers up varicose veins you are going to have a damn hard time getting it out again.

This might be a good time to let the pictures say a thousand words, from designer Lam and Lim:

We have all sewn shapes like those before (assuming you are of the generation that remembers working around a fax machine) and we can do it again.

The thing is once a new shape starts taking shape it takes a while for a person's eyes to get used to it. On her own body I mean.

But to dress you must be brave. And to sew even braver.

So I jumped off the cliff this week and made this outfit - one that last year I would have told you was too ugly because the top was shapeless.

In full transparency I must disclose I was pushed off the cliff by the fact I am still in that anti black frame of mind and I have a ton of red wool garbardine that no way in this lifetime is going to get tailored into any suit. Listen I would be retired from suits completely by the time that was ever done, I am so busy, a project like that.

And as shapeless as it was I knew, and was right about this, that this would be an easy sew.

At least I didn't do it in beige.

I actually really like wearing this outfit. It is suit like enough when I need that and easy and comfortable to wear.

But best of all I finally got to use these buttons, and how cool are they:

Best part of the project.

Bright spots dark spots

First the bright spot.

I did my Burdastyle seminar on Thursday.

I just had a blast. There is nothing like a captive audience of folks to listen to your opinions about interfacing and pressing to give a girl a good time.

Really I just loved it and am looking forward to one on knits next month and sleeves in November. I have so much I want to say about sewing and this is another way to have that conversation.

I am thrilled.

O.K. on to the dark spot.

Today the husband and I were in a golf tournament where if there had been a prize for the worst drives our foursome would have won, at least my end of the foursome.

Afterwards there was a lunch and because it a husband's work thing there were draws and prizes throughout the meal and since they are all in the engineering field the grab bags contained knives, flashlights, and golf balls with the big door prize a set of cordless drills. They kind of threw the prizes around and said "OK if you are finished eating see you next year." Let's say it was not exactly run like a shower if you get my drift. I thought it was hilarious and the man holding tightly onto his ticket to see if he won the drills didn't see what so funny.

But it was. If you were me it was.

Back to the dark spot.

OK.

Every foursome had their pictures taken. I looked at ours there I was black shoes, jacket, and pants. I looked like someone who was there to park your car.

It was at that moment that my style came to its final screeching halt.

For my whole working life I have been a black basic sort of girl. 

It's logical.

It's economical.

There is always something to go with something and there is always a black version of whatever you want to buy.

It made packing for business trips a breeze and accessorizing a snap.

It made it easy to go to New York.

I knew what to wear to a black tie and to an office party and a funeral and a speech.

According the lady who did my "colours" in my mom's living room in 1978, black is my colour and I have been working around it ever since.

The problem is.

I look like someone you would give the keys to.

I look dull and lifeless.

I look like I am wearing a uniform for a company at which I am not the CEO.

I look like someone else and not like me.

So the black has to go and leave me behind.

But how exactly am I going to do that?

What about the twenty pairs of black shoes?

The black leather bags?

The boots?

47 yards of black you know what?

The question is:

For me what is the new black?

Flypaper thoughts

• Lots of sewing but none to show.
• Working on my Burdastyle webinar for this Thursday
• Just making the pieces I need for pictures.
• Will get back to the rest of the garments later.
• Two jackets and a suitish thing.
• Shape appears to be going out of style.
• Same thing happening here.
• I have a student who paints little landscapes on fake nails then glues them on.
• Pretty impressive.
• Next thing is the assignments.
• My favourite foods may be crabapple jelly and rhubarb pie.
• This realization is part of why I am going to start phasing out black from my wardrobe.
• Maybe if I don't look so serious they won't expect it.
• Maybe they will know who they are really dealing with.
• About time.
• I can feel the serious reservoir getting pretty low.
• May not refill it.
• Why do children start to whine only when their mother comes to pick them up?
• Why do dogs get up to pee 5 times in the night only when my husband is away?
• Why do facing pieces always go missing?
• Why do they come back only when you make new ones?
• Who is around to answer these questions?
• The hard part of getting this webinar ready is knowing what to leave out.
• I am going to be haunted by the "I should have saids"
• Fall people start "activities."
• I think someone should start a book club where the rules are only funny books.
• The last one I tried exposed me to the fact that only books of suffering get prizes.
• Three months of all members saying they really didn't like the book.
• Too bad, the food was pretty good.
• How about a funny book club where you can come in your slippers and at break you eat rhubarb pie.
• And you can ask people how they get their eyeliner on so straight and they show you.
• After the pie.
• Do you think in the webinar I should say cut twice the number of facings?
• Will someone other than me let the dog out?
• Back to the sewing room.
• Call me when it's dinner.

Domesticity

I have been thinking lately about next life stages. The fact is that women reinvent themselves many times in their lives and often in the same day.

Any working woman who has hit her first week alone at home with a newborn knows what I mean. Any working woman who has become instantly transformed into Mrs. somebody at parent teacher after day spent in meetings where no one knows you have a family at all knows what I mean. Any woman who has gone to a husband's Christmas party, any grandmother who sits at a birthday party being served the cake, not serving it, knows what I mean. Any divorced woman who goes to that first Christmas party alone knows what I mean.

And as I decided when I found myself home alone the first time with that first baby, you can only be happy if you do reinvent yourself.

And women do it. That's probably why we aren't the ones who have heart attacks the first day of retirement lifting the golf clubs into the car, the first day of an undirected life. 

Which is exactly what happened to one of my neighbours.

Twenty years later his widow is still driving around the neighbourhood, earrings matching necklace, car window rolled down so she can stop and talk to everyone she sees.

I am entering a new decade next month and will be retiring in stages sometimes over the next five years. I love my job but increasingly only take on what I really do love, that means more time with the kids, less time with the adults.

Observing what my next transformation looks like, this is what I am picking up:

Learning to be older is partially a process of learning to be alone more. With the kids gone you can go out when you want and there is no time you have to be home. In my case, with work continuing to call my husband away on projects further and further away, it also means more cooking for one. 

Looking around I can see that the cheerful older women are those who don't rail against being alone, but who get good at it. Many of those are sewers, many of them are those who appreciate and develop their female friends. If those women sew, so much the better.

I am also noting, and this is a surprise, that as you move into this next stage it is your domestic skills that are most appreciated.

After years of having those activities only on the edges of my career I wasn't expecting this, but a summer of a lot of caregiving has reinforced it. 

Despite all the other things I still do, it has been the meals I have made, the children I have babysat, the mending I have done, the dogs I have walked, my canning, my sock knitting, my "how do I get that stain out" advice that has been most appreciated. Who's going to feed the cat when you are away?

Mom can do it.

Men who leave the boardroom and become dad in the baggy pants down the basement seeing what is wrong with the dryer probably feel this too.

Sure I can still discuss Syria and I still have too much work to do but I am beginning to hear the call home, at least some of the time.

I have a big work project to figure out, and I have to think it through. Today I don't have classes so I am staying at home, away from the interesting corridor chat, and setting my laptop up on the island in the kitchen. My plan is to wash the kitchen floor and make some crabapple jelly from the bathtub full of crabapples we got down from the tree over the weekend and write down my plan as my thoughts on this one come together.

I am not quite ready to take some of that jelly and leave it on desks at work, but maybe one day I will do that.

Dresses

Busy week, simple sewing.

I started the fall term this week and that is always exciting for me. 

I am a social person and kids are so funny so I am always glad to get back into the classroom. I always tell them, just around the time I note that glazed-over look, that I always know that there is one person in each of my classes who thinks the material is terrific.

And that is me.

I love seeing the new students, particularly the first years, who come in all dressed up with whatever dressed up is at home- clubwear for some, studied blue hair and don't care for others, and I watch them relax and find themselves and their style through the year.

And of course the same is true of me.

With a time challenged year ahead, and with samples and things I am making in my after hours time the Burdastyle webinars, my own sewing has become very streamlined.

I am doing a lot of skirt alterations (now that's a fun job, just love to waste creative time putting in a zipper again) to account for the fact that I lost about 20 pounds over the spring and summer watching what and how I eat to deal with a sore throat the doctor told me was reflux, and turned out to be just dairy. Along that way I must have also stopped eating like a stevedore and stopped eating before bed so that weight has stayed off. (Opps another explanation just popped into my head - in the same period of time my husband has been away during the week and he is the much more elaborate cook).

For whatever reason the weight has been off long enough  to require me to take in some clothes I like.

A person can't just do must-do sewing of course without losing it, something I try not to do often, so I have been sneaking in some for me sewing.

In my case that has meant dresses.

So I was delighted to see in this morning's NYTimes that I am on track with the sophisticates in the big city - something that doesn't happen as often as you might think.

Here is Bill Cunningham on Simple is best, dress dressing:

http://nyti.ms/167A1KA

On that theme, despite the fact is it back to school not fashion week around here, I made this dress, the Kristen from Stylearc:

Now obviously there are a lot of similar basic knit dresses around (this one has an invisible zipper in the back - went it quite well because I stablized the seam allowance with fusible knit interfacing) but Stylearc always has a nice fit in the neck and shoulders, and since that's where a dress hangs that's important.

I made this as a sort of trial garment for this pattern and to have a backdrop for some silk scarves that were new to me during some vintage store shopping with various younger relatives over the summer. 

So this is a basic (my husband even looked at it and said "that's a basic" which just shows you it is that obvious).

So it needs something but sometimes you have something that needs a dress that needs something, if you follow.

So here are the shots:

One of the scarves and with the pink glasses I got because I was tired of hearing my daughter complain about my new googly glasses.

Outside in the wind with a necklace that doesn't go with anything else.

My favourite scarf because it has lions and the jungle on it, and it's pretty hard to beat that.

So all in all a good teaching dress, suitable for tired first thing Monday morning classes when there will be a lot of walking around the classroom going on. I am going to start thinking now of course of how I can make variations of this one.

After the next alteration session.

Proper Burdastyle webinar link

I have contacted Burdastyle about the class time issue and this is the correct link that tells you all that. Sorry about that.