A serendipitous pocket

Well, in truth, it's not the pocket itself that is serendipitous. In fact, this pocket is not going to be particularly useful for anything now that I'm done making it.

But it happens that the goals I listed in my last post included mention of welt pockets as a technique that has left me confounded. And then, ta-da, Carolyn of Handmade by Carolyn posted a very clear and detailed tutorial on double-welt pockets. What made her explanation work for me where others have failed is not only her detailed step-by-step approach with photos but also her description of where you have to be precise and just how precise you have to be.

Mine is not perfect—the sides are just a bit off vertical, and the upper and lower welts overlap a little at the ends—but it pleases me no end. I do need to figure out how to make a skinnier button loop without having my machine eat it as I sew. (I have a couple of ideas on that: get a throat plate with a smaller hole, and start with a wider bias strip so that the feed dogs on at least one side have something to grab onto.)

So now I have a pocket on a patch.

An entertainment note:
Along the lines of my earlier plug for GeoGuessr, which I still think is one of the best online games ever, take a look at Kern Type. The instructions read, "Your mission is simple: achieve pleasant and readable text by distributing the space between letters." Tell me I'm not the only one who finds this addictive, please!

Shape Shape no. 4

Also known as the flared wave skirt. I have used two patterns so far
from Shape Shape by Natsuno Hiraiwa, and I love both of them. I first learned of this book from the blog of the talented and inspiring Carolyn S.








More on the sleeveless scarf blouse another time. For now, here's the skirt.

Several years ago I bought some beautiful raw silk mesh from B&J Fabrics in New York. It was black, woven into a very open grid and then apparently smashed flat, rough but with a nice sheen at the same time. I had no clue what I would do with it, but it was so interesting that I couldn't bear to leave the store without it. And it sat in my stash for all that time, exuding its loveliness and what I thought of as a vaguely Japanese vibe. Finally I came across the skirt pattern and had an aha moment.

And since I am all about blue and black, I made it wearable by underlining with some light blue China silk I had hanging around. This took it away from the rustic, rough quality of the fabric, but I think I liked it even more.

This skirt pattern is quite unusual: it's really one huge piece of fabric that wraps around and attaches to itself in such a way that the grain where it joins runs in two completely different directions. I believe this would make it pretty tricky to alter the length.














You can wear it with the buttoned opening wherever you want, and it will hang in a subtly different way accordingly.

I absolutely love this skirt. In fact, whenever I wear it, I'm surprised that people don't come rushing up to compliment me on it. Haha, I do realize that sounds terrible.

I only dared to cut into my silk mesh because I had already tried the skirt in another fabric. From an even earlier trip to B&J, I had a couple of yards of a rough brown hemp.

Again, this was bought just because I liked it and not because I had any idea what to do with it (a pattern emerges!). The fabric is fairly heavy and stiff, maybe not well suited to garments in general, but I was pleased with how the skirt came out. This one is definitely rustic.

Garden notes:

The rain has been knocking our peonies down into the mud, so I cut most of the blooms today.

Bonus entertainment note:

If you are interested in other places and don't mind spending even more time online, take a look at GeoGuessr. It's seriously fun: You get dropped down at some random place in the world in a Google Earth street view, and you use whatever clues you can find to figure out where you are.