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 …

I hope this is big enough that you can see the little buttons on the floral one on the right — aren't they adorable? Covered buttons. I used to hate and fear covered buttons, but then I read that if you got the fabric wet first (assuming it's a fabric that you CAN get wet, and I don't really sew or wear things that can't get wet — every once in a while it's been known to rain, right?) it makes everything go more smoothly. And I tried it out, and it is, in fact, true! Go figure.

Anyway, as dramatic as the dress on the left is, I know that collar would drive me insane within a minute or two. For one thing, it would constantly be catching my iPod earbud cords — something the original designer did not forsee, obviously. And you can't carry a shoulder bag with a dress like that, and every time I carry a short-strap bag like the one pictured I feel as if I should be hitting Benny Hill with it. Don't even get me started on clutch bags, or, as I like to call them, "Guaranteed to Be Lost" bags. I put it down to get a drink and five minutes later I have no idea where it is. I have to call my cell phone and hope I can make the bag ring. (If you hear an evening bag playing The Pixies, it's probably mine.) Making my husband hold it, while entertaining, is not really a long-term solution, either. You can't even really wear a coat over a dress with that kind of collar. It's not exactly practical.

Watch me end up making it anyway. What do you think — shantung? satin? Something really shiny that shows every spot — if you're going to make an impractical dress, might as well do it up right.

As a woman approaches forty she has had her vision and knows whether or not her dream will come true. If her mind has kept pace with the years and is now a storehouse of inspiring thought, she is at the most interesting time of her life. The Earth and the Fullness thereof is hers if she wisely avails herself. Her wit, her poise, her vividness attract all. She radiates a certain fascination that is only partly sophisticated. Balzac said of her, "She has the art of making her attitude speak for her. Her silence is more dangerous than her speech."

This woman of middle age should sparkle with the brilliance of a glittering gem or she should glow with the appealing luster of a pearl. No ingenuous trappings of youth should tempt her, but she should reign in sumptuous gowns of metallic tissue or of rare brocades. Her gowns of velvet draped in long lines should be innocent of all adornment except the jewels which are worn as a definite part of the costume. She can by right wear those jewels that are not suited to young girls.

For her morning clothes, she will probably select the coat dress of woolen fabric or of dull-finished silk, dark in color and usually with matching accessories.

For afternoon, her clothes display an elegance in fabric and decoration that does not belong to the jeune fille. The woman of forty does not think in terms of prettiness but of mature charm. Of one such American woman it was said, "Her charm and beauty are such that, when she walks into a room, everybody is expectantly silent."
…
The woman of forty knows her own limitations, but she has knowledge of her good points as well. She characterizes her clothes with her own intellectual personality, a mental vividness, a sympathetic understanding, a sense of proportion, balnace, and judgment. "The women who are remembered," says one of the foremost cinema directors, "are seldom the younger ones. They are usually the women of maturity."

It is, of course, absurd for woment to lose interest in dress at any age. Certainly the women who have reached the "dangerous age" of forty should never, while mourning the departure of youth, become lackadaisical about their clothes. This is the age when women should be brimful of a great desire to do something worth while in order to meet the interesting people with which the world is teeming. And to get the most out of the new world one can not be a frump. One must keep up an interest in clothes and an appreciation of their power of Expression.

From Individuality and Clothes, by Margaret Story, 1930.

Look at this gorgeous set that Mary Beth sent to my attention. Isn't it amazing? The jacket comes off and there's a cute little low-backed gown under it. Picture it with a tight marcel wave and Fred Astaire attentively handing you a cocktail. I love, love, love the quilting at the hem and have resolved to do that kind of mock-trapunto work on a skirt soon, if not immediately.

It's at Vintage Martini, click on the image to visit the page listing. It's a B32, and it's $425, and it's missing a button, but I wish I could buy it just to look at it every once in a while, and imagine the Busby Berkley dance scene that would take place on the terrace while this dress was being worn on the balcony. I'm pretty sure it would involve giant mock champagne bottles and feathers, aren't you?

Okay, actually, they're peonies (which I like more than roses, anyway) but isn't this a nice example of the dress I'm currently obsessed with? Rose let me know about it.

I like especially (you can't see it in the teen-einsy picture) that it fastens with side buttons. It's a nice detail, although it means you can't fudge the fit the way you sometimes can with a zipper, or the buttons will pop right off.

There's another very similar one in a nice blue-greeny print, too.

Luckily, hotpatterns.com say they will start shipping again Dec 1. Guess who will be feverishing hitting "Refresh" on their page to order their Boho dress pattern? I have the most perfect art deco steel grey and blue print for it …

Isn't this adorable? I should have scanned the back for you, too, but I'm lazy. Suffice it to say that it's bloused in the most charming manner.

I haven't even checked the instructions for this one because I don't even want to know how horrible all that topstitching is going to be to sew, nor how weird and profanity-inducing the "hidden front closure" will be. (At the very least, I think, covered snaps.) Right now, I'm in the honeymoon stage with this pattern (and, in fact, with the other nineteen patterns I bought yesterday). I'm still daydreaming about how happy this pattern and I will be in our little cottage with the honeysuckle vines trailing over the front door. I'm still hoping to find the perfect light wool for this that will be wonderful to sew yet will be able to be thrown in the washing machine. Yeah, it's all roses and kittens here in New Patternland.

If pressed to say just what I love about this pattern, it would have to be the belt detail. The belt detail and the neckline. The belt detail, the neckline, and the sleeves … and the soft unpressed pleats of the skirt. Yeah. That's it. And I'm really into bodice shaping through panels lately. Aw, heck, I just love everything about it, including the fact that I paid $2 for it! Click on the image to see the whole front of the pattern envelope, which includes a photo of a model in a mushroom hat. Who is inexplicably wearing beige shoes with a pale-gray dress.