Month: March 2013

Revisiting the Hoard

Erin23 Comments

As much as moving sucks (and it really does suck) it also can be the occasion to re-find things you forgot you had. Like these buttons:
more buttons

and these:
even more buttons

and these:
and yes more buttons

 

The “e” buttons were from this dress, which died a terrible stained death; the black flower buttons were used on a different dress that I can’t remember now; the others are all still waiting their turn with me (although as vintage buttons they’ve had full lives up until now).

I don’t usually start dresses at the buttons; they’re always added in a desperate flurry at the end, where I dump out all my button boxes and hope to find the perfect buttons somewhere in my stash. (I only add buttons in that window between thirty minutes after fabric-store closing time to three hours before fabric-store opening time.) This means that it’s better — actually essential, truly optimal — to have as many buttons as possible, to increase the chances of finding a good match.

As I pack (and unpack) I’ll try to take more pictures …

Today's Pattern Story: Butterick 3526

Erin9 Comments

The grass is always greener.

 

Yellow Dress: I wonder what it’s like in there. In the capsule.

White Dress: She looks so vibrant. So alive. So … three-dimensional. It must be wonderful, to be able to feel like that.

Black-and-White Dress: When I get out, I’m definitely going to eat the yellow one first.

Random Is Still A Kind of Order

Erin14 Comments

I tried an experiment last week, and it looked like this:

Untitled

 

There’s a lot (and I mean a lot, as I am finding to my dismay as I prepare to move house) of stuff in my closet that I don’t wear — not because I don’t like it, but because it doesn’t EXACTLY go with something ELSE in my closet. So last week I took a look at a few of the favorite things that I don’t wear as much, and thought “oh hey, why don’t I just wear all these things at once?” So that’s what I did. It’s not like they don’t go together, it’s just not the level of obsessive color-matching that I usually aspire to. (Or maybe they don’t go and I’m just fooling myself? But no kindly people came up to me in the street to commiserate with me in my affliction, so I feel okay about it.)

So this was: peacock Land’s End sweater, orange scarf that I think was a gift, although I’m not sure who from (Kate, was this from you, maybe?), black-and-gray gingham 9929 dress (which I don’t wear as much because it only EXACTLY MATCHES either a red, black, or a gray cardigan), and  Fiorentini and Baker buckle boots that I saw on Pinterest and then obsessively searched for on eBay for months, because they are truly unconscionably expensive when new. (I don’t think of them as “used shoes,” I think of it as “outsourcing the breaking-in period.”) I also have them in brown, because they are that awesome. They increase the badass quotient of any day by 37-42%.

I expect that there will be a few more random outfits than usual in the next few weeks, as I’ll be both packing things from and unearthing things in my closet. I really don’t mind packing, and I actually love unpacking — it’s the schlepping things from place to place that isn’t that much fun. But expect a post about my new sewing space — it’s slightly bigger than my current space (if not as blessed with electrical outlets, sigh) and I have BIG ORGANIZATIONAL PLANS for it.