I bought this one from Macojero's Sewing Patterns, and I think it's going to turn out to be a workhorse. It's got four pattern pieces, not including the facings — the pockets are cut in one with the skirt. It needs barely 2 1/2 yards of fabric — a smidgen, compared to what I usually sew. I can usually piece together 2 1/2 yards out of scraps! (Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but you know what I mean.) If I can get the fit right I could probably run up three or four of these in a couple of days, and if I pick some SOLID COLORS for a change, I could probably wear them for years. I have some nice old-gold wool crepe that should make up beautifully into this, and if I wanted to get fancy, I also have some bubblegum.jpgnk satin that would be really cute. (Although that last really isn't something you can wear over and over again …) A dress like this under a nice cardigan or little jacket (of which I have, again with the exaggeration, hundreds) can go anywhere and do anything.

It's even supposedly one of those "proportioned" patterns, with different bodice pieces for petite, medium, and tall sizes. I might measure the petite bodice and cut that one instead, as I'm so short-waisted.

I'm not sure, though, if I'll do the neck facings. I hate neck facings, they're so lumpy and bulky and need so much trimming and fussing. I might cut bias binding in the same fabric, or maybe line the whole bodice (I have ten yards of lining silk around here somewhere, might as well use it) instead. If I am careful about the zipper placement at the neck edge, I think bias binding is probably the way to go … it looks so much neater.

Old gold, dove gray (I have some nice heavy Italian cotton with a bit of stretch that I tried to make a Vogue DKNY pattern out of, a great pattern I'd made half-a-dozen times before and that for some reason I can't find online and am too lazy to scan (but let me just say it has a midriff band) but the combination of the pale gray and the very severe pattern lines made me look like the warden at a women's prison), and maybe even black — I have some nice black Italian cotton, too. I always buy black fabric and think "oh, I'll make a black skirt!" and then I either never do, or I never wear them when I do. (A plain black skirt is something you can always buy for $30 at Loehmann's.) And red. I have some red sitting around just begging to be made, like a puppy wanting a walk. Guess I better get cracking.

Well, of course the colors are all wrong (on the plaid at the top the grays are lighter, and the bottom is olive, black, and teal squiggles) but here they are, the fun fabrics I bought last week. After I had scanned them I realized that maybe the store had already done the work for me and put them on their site but no such luck. Either that or what I call "plaid" is not what they call "plaid."

But hey, aren't these cute? The top fabric is a mid-weight summer fabric with a slight slub to it — perfect dress weight. The bottom is a light corduroy, very shallow wale, almost babywale. I'm pretty sure I'm making a skirt out of it, as I just have never warmed much to corduroy dresses. I think my mother was frightened by a corduroy jumper when she was pregnant with me.

Sometimes I think finding great fabric is both the best and the worst part of sewing for yourself. Spending hours in the fabric store rummaging around can turn up amazing treasures, or it can be an exercise in deep frustration. If you want something highly specific — like one fabric I've been looking for now for many a long year, a midweight cotton in sky blue with a white fluffy cloud print, like a Magritte background with no SILVER GILT on it (my clouds don't need silver linings!), or the deep chocolate brown silk with dark yellow and green gingko leaves that I fantasize about on a monthly basis — well, god help you, my child. If you need a specific color to match something else, if you have a tremendous need for polka dots of a particular size (and if you want to see someone squirt coffee out their nose, walk into a Manhattan fabric store while heavily pregnant and say you're looking for fabric with fist-sized polka dots), if you need fabric in an exact weight, there will be a gaping void where the objects of your desire should be. If you walk in not needing anything specific, the fabric gods will open their arms to you and rain down endless possibilities. It makes it hard to plan, but it makes it easy to be surprised. And as I get older I find I enjoy a good surprise more than I love it when a plan comes together.

I know it's a fuzzy picture but hey, fuzzy or not, it's still a big damn dress from Firefly, and it's being auctioned now on eBay. You can also get some leftover fabric from it, and a few other dresses and outfits, but not, sadly, Kaylee's frilly dress (scroll down) from the same episode. Which I believe was the also the episode that gave us the immortal monicker "Captain Tightpants." Mmmmm, Mal. Anyway. Where were we? Dresses?

Do you want to know how much devotion Joss Whedon inspires? The costume designer remade HER OWN WEDDING DRESS to create this dress for this episode. I'm hoping she's still married, because if not, it's not as good of a story.

Of course, the only real reason to buy this dress (although it's very pretty) is if you are obsessed with Firefly (which I'm not any longer; the movie gave me closure, dammit). I'm not sure if the proceeds go to charity or not; there was no mention I could find in the listings.

Thanks to Rio for the linky goodness …

I was in M&J Trimming on Saturday and barely made it out of there alive. I managed to restrain myself ONLY because I hadn't brought any yardage requirements with me, making buying trim for specific dresses an exercise in pure guesstimation. I ended up buying some green leaf trim (what I went in there for), a Superman patch for my little boy, and a string of yellow beads (they were 99).

If I were to make a list of everything at M&J that seriously tempted me, we'd be here for days, so the highlights: some polka-dotted stretchy foldover trim (especially as a co-worker stopped me on Friday in dismay. "You're not wearing polka dots!" he said, looking stricken. "You *always* wear some kind of polka dot!" I talked him down but it was a close thing.) Some heavy beaded ribbon in tones of teal and turquoise. Some faux-folklorica embroidery edging. And the killer, tulle covered with tiny square sequins. Square! So Courrges! I wanted to buy the whole bolt and use it to make a skirt. I wanted to buy all the bolts (they had multiple colors) and just hoard it.

Then I thought of this pattern, recently purchased as part of the Great Midriff Band Obsession of 2005 (look, this one is SHAPED) and thought how nice the sequins would be as the "purchased trim" for this dress. Now I just have to decide the color. I think tone-on-tone would be the best … not that I really have any place to wear a sequin-embellished ANYTHING, but that's never stopped me before.

Just one note: the floral dress looks as if it has a tiny collar, but it's just the miter line of the trim. Sorry. Fooled me too.

So I was invited to speak last week (about my Real Job™) at a lovely library in Connecticut. It was gratifyingly well-attended and the audience questions were great. What does this have to do with why librarians are awesome and why this pattern is here? Well, as an honorarium for coming to speak, they gave me this pattern! And another one that was equally lovely! And they're my size!

"How did you know?" I asked, because this site isn't in my Official Bio™ … but it does say that I like to sew with vintage patterns. So they had not only READ it (you'd be surprised how many people that want me to come speak DON'T) but actually took the information and used it. So thoughtful!

Anyway, that's reason #15,988 why librarians rock. And I hope you can see in the scan (it's a little fuzzy, sorry) how the collar splits at the shoulder seam. That also rocks.

I am pretty sure that this dress has nothing to do with Updike, but if anyone googles anything different, let me know. Msbelle sent this one to me, last week sometime, and it's been growing on me ever since. It's at Nordstrom, $88, and the only thing I don't like about it is that it's polyester. (I'm a fiber snob, although I know polyester is getting nicer and nicer, it's still not as nice as silk. I'd rather have a nice rayon than polyester, even.)

I wish this dress was sold with two or three midriff bands. Velvet would be a nice alternative to the satin, and a color or a print would help make this dress a real workhorse.

Sorry no post yesterday; I was out buying some kickass fabric — seriously, some of the best fabric I've seen in ages. I'll try to scan it towards the end of the week and post it. Warning: more mock plaid on the way. And it totally makes up for me losing the auction for this fabric …

Isn't this wonderful? This dress reminds me of what Voltaire said about God: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." If this dress did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.

I'm not sure if I will sew this one — it might be better in this ideal abstract form than in whatever concrete hash I might make of it. Sometimes I feel some patterns are too pretty to sew, or at least too pretty for me to sew. When they're still in the envelope, they're perfect; when I'm swearing at them, wrestling with understitching facings and deciding whether I should hand-baste the zipper before submitting it to the not-so-tender mercies of my machine (the answer to that last question SHOULD ALWAYS BE YES, but still I ask it of myself) they descend to the merely real.

I've been trying to remember lately that the untried is always the idealized and to take the time to gedanken-experiment through whatever the situation is that I am assuming will be perfect. To remember that it rains, and that trains are late, and that people have colds in the head or bad hair days, that there's always static cling and lint and runs in stockings. The trick is to balance your hope for the best with your preparation for the worst — Pollyanna riding Eeyore, if you will.

And that's a long, long way from dresses, so check out the back view! (I actually scanned the back this time. Sorry the scan isn't better.) Ooh, pretty. Dress pretty.

This one is actually next in the queue. I know I say that about a lot of dresses, but this time I really mean it. I swear. I have the fabric all picked out — it's this green cotton satin, very bright green, absolutely beautiful, and very modern — I think it was the bitter end of a Chaiken bolt, at least that's what the tag said at Paron's when I bought it. I've been wondering what would be worthy of the fabric since I bought it, and I think it has found a home.

You know why I love this dress, right? Do I have to enumerate it? The midriff band (of course), the interesting sleeves (be sure to look at how they join the bodice, in a kind of modified raglan), the pretty skirt. And, to be totally honest, even the IDEA of wearing it with one of those little veil-ly hats. Not that I would, I'm not really a hat person (despite many and valiant efforts to become one) but the IDEA of it is tremendously appealing.

I have just scored a pair of silver shoes on eBay and have a gorgeous lunchbox-style silver evening bag with rhinestone trim, bought years and years ago in a Hadassah thrift store on Long Island (long story, but the short version is that all the lovely ladies in the store BULLIED me into buying it with lashings of guilt: "You'll always regret not buying it, you'll never find anything like it again, it goes with everything, etc. etc.", very effectively, obviously). Anyway, if I make this dress (AS I FULLY INTEND TO) I will have a great festive holiday party ensemble that is NOT BLACK. Not that there's anything wrong with that …