Obsessed with Embellishment

One of the things that really mystifies me about the internet is how many people don’t seem to understand what they give up, and can’t get back, when they blog about really personal stuff to a vast audience of anonymous strangers.  The internet is not a hippie commune where we’re all in this together, and you know everybody.  You can bet for every nice comment on my blog (or yours), there’s a couple people out there who think I’m (or you are) a total nutcase.  And aside from the Too Much Information issue, and my personal inability to understand why anyone would be interested in reading about home made sanitary protection (human or canine), it just floors me that so few people ever seem to realize that the internet is the most public of public spaces and what you blog about today, or post on a message board, could haunt you for decades.

Here’s an example of why I really try to maintain privacy on the internet when it comes to my personal life and my family:  I just got a new job, a great one, with a fabulous salary, great benefits and perks, and lots of income potential.  I also knew that my prospective employer, like most employers these days, would do a background check on me, and how hard would it be for them to Google my name?  Not hard at all.  And how good is the background checking software that companies use to screen candidates? Very good.   The last thing I wanted was for that employer to find anything, anything at all, that could hurt my chance for a job. A few years ago a woman who worked for Harvard University made the mistake of  bashing the University on her blog and she was fired for it and the taint of that mistake followed her for years – so my mantra is, just because you can say it on the internet, doesn’t mean you should. 

To paraphrase an old carpentry motto: Think twice and post once.

My husband’s big project this summer has been building raised beds for our yard. He’s been working on this for almost a month; he designed the layout and beds himself and I think it looks great!  Before our renovation three years ago we did a lot of vegetable gardening, and we got away from that while the house was being done over.  But that project is finished now, so we can get back into veggie gardening, which we both love.

 

Our yard has very little turf, just enough for the girls to use as a play area.  Grass is a water and fertilizer hog, and in my town it’s common to see people watering a HUGE lawn that no one ever sets foot on during the summer, and this is just wasteful.  So most of our property is landscaped with native plants and now the side yard will be filled with raised beds.  And what isn’t landscaped is just left natural.

 

Here’s a view of the project, there are two L-Shaped beds facing each other, with another large square bed in the corner near the garage.  The inside area will be paved and used for seating, and I think it will make a nice alfresco dinning area.

  

 

That’s John on the left inspecting his work.  The beds are about 18 inches high, and the top and sides are made from Trex, a wood composite material used for decks.  It doesn’t rot, and it doesn’t need to be painted.  The 4 x 4 posts are pressure treated, but our research indicates that the amount of chemicals that will leach into the beds will be negligible.  Below is the one finished bed, the corners will be dressed up with a metal edging and the white material is PVC tubing that will support row covers. We’ll be able to plant these beds this fall with cool weather crops like lettuces, parsnips, carrots and radishes, and also for fall planting for crops like shallots and garlic that need to be planted in the fall for early spring harvest.

 

 

I think many vegetables are beautiful and ornamental in their own right, and the pretty ones like swiss chard, cabbages, kale and squashes will be interplanted with herbs and annual flowers such as nasturtiums, zinnias, and petunias to make the beds more decorative.  The theory of vegetables in straight rows is not really needed in a project like ours – we’re not doing vegetable commercial production.

 

 

This is a view of the PVC tubes that will hold the row cover hoops, which are necessary to keep out animals and pests.  We’ll be doing organic practices in these beds, and a barrier method is preferable to me over insecticides.  The 2nd PVC tube is an inlet for irrigation. The bottom of the beds are open, and we’ll need to install wire mesh to prevent critters like voles and bunnies from burrowing underneath the Trex.

 

We also have two rain barrels to catch water that runs off of the garage.  Our town sells these to residents with a subsidy to encourage less use of town water.  John will add an irrigation inlet to each bed, and then we’ll hook up a pump get the rainwater into the beds.

 

 

We also have peppers, chillis and basil growing in front of our house this year.  This view is the courtyard right by the front door, which is on right, and the big windows are the living room.  On the left is the home office, which is part of our master suite wing, and the two tiny windows right in the middle are for the master bath.  The peppers and basil are on the right, and the left bed is celosia (not looking too good.  Next year I’m just doing zinnias there.)

The right bed has pepper, chili and basil plants and all are actually attractive bedding plants, unlike tomatoes, which start looking really raggedy once the plants start to bear fruit (those will be in the Trex beds!)  These concrete beds face south, and they work only for annuals because of extra heat and protection coming off the house and windows creates a microclimate that throws perennials and spring bulbs totally out of wack.  This spring we had to dig up 200 bulbs from the front beds because the left sides of the beds were blooming about 7-10 days head of the right side of the bed, and it looked really weird!   We seasoned the bulbs on the north side of the house, which is dry and shady.  The bulbs are Ice Follies daffodils, and we’ll re-plant them elsewhere in the fall.

 

 

In the courtyard I like using tropicals and tender perennials as container plants.  They grow fast, look good with our modern house, and are inexpensive and widely available.  I throw them out after the first hard frost because these are all zone 7 or higher plants and won’t survive our zone 6 Boston climate.  The plants are Cannas (the banana leave plants, not blooming yet), Imopeas (the black and lime green plants, also called Sweet Potato Vine), Dahlias (the dark maroon flower), Caladium (the white and green leaved plant, much nicer in person that it looks in photos), and Alocasia (the big green heart shaped leaves).

 

This has been a great year for gardening!

This was not my idea - I saw this years ago in a fashion mag, and it was SO long ago I can’t even recall when it was or what magazine it was! Basically, it’s a sushi mat used as a roll for makeup brushes. Take about 27 inches (3/4 yard) of 1 inch black elastic, and thread it through the bamboo sticks to secure your makeup brushes. Roll them up and secure with the elastic.

Last week I was in Sephora (my absolutely favorite place to shop, other than a fabric store) and the tech doing my makeup loved the idea and brought over about 4 or 5 of her coworkers, who all declared “I am so stealing this idea.”

So steal away yourself!

I thought you might like to see who I work out embellishment ideas.

This version of the Sportive Skirt is a wearable muslin, which I don’t usually do, but this is an embellishment experiment rather than a fit experiment, and I’ve already done 3 versions of this style anyway (2 Hot Patterns Sportive Skirts, and one Trouser Skirt; they share the same sloper.)

There’s no lining on this denim version, and I wanted to finish the cut end of the (too long) zipper. The red stitching is decorative, and also holds the outside edge of the invisible zipper tape to the seam allowance. There’s a small piece of leather to finish off the cut end of the zipper (I always shorten coil zippers from the bottom and finish the end this way, or with a dab from a glue gun. I shorten molded zippers from the top by pulling off the extra teeth with a pair of pliers.)

The hem is finished off with Petersham because I decided the cut length is where I like the hem, so I had to make a faux hem of some sort. Lace was my initial choice, but I didn’t have any in brown, so I thought I’d go sporty with the Petersham.

This fabric not super high quality or special, and I used iit for the wearable muslin only to test the embellishment. The fabric I really want for this skirt is a stunning dark wash stretch denim that I need to retrieve from Ann. I’ll refine these interior embellishments on that version.

This was a fun experiment. The ideas are good and the colors just need to be worked out a bit more.

My mother gave me this for Christmas, and I just gave it a try for the first time. It’s a great alternative to a regular metal thimble.  When I hand sew I like to have as much dexterity as possible, and this product is just a small metal disc with an adhesive pad on the inside.  No more sweaty hands! Another advantage is that, unlike a traditional thimble, this fits on just about any finger, and there are extra pads in the package. My mother found this in a fabric store, but if you google “ultrathimble” several sources will come up.

It’s so comfortable that I left it stuck to my finger when I wrote this post!

For the most part the red carpet parade at the Oscars was pretty much what I’ve come to expect. Starlets, old movie stars, previous winners, industry types - the tabloids will cover it better than I ever could. Nothing really made me crazy, fashion-wise, although the level of glamour was uniformly pretty high. Penelope Cruz, who is always one of the best dressed women in Hollywood, looked great as always in a fluff of Versace, Ann Hathaway was adorable in Valentino, and I loved the wit behind the brooch over Catherine Deneuve’s Gaultier heart, stabbed with a saber and trailing symbolic blood.

But - then Cate Blanchett showed up and I gasped in amazement! Her Armani Prive gown was a masterpiece of couture embellishment and color! The deep, rich gunmetal color was gorgeous against her pale skin and I’m convinced the inspiration for this magnificent gown was the Art Deco bronze & ivory figurine “Starfish Dancer” by Chiparus The above photo of Cate really doesn’t showcase the gown as much as I’d like, but in HDTV it was easy to see that it was heavily encrusted with beading, crystals and even mirrors. A stunning work of embellishment, just like the original Chiparus bronze from the 1920’s. Nice work Cate!

F

This is a great skirt – it’s a short version of the HP Classix Nouveau Trouser Skirt, and is based on the same sloper. I really love the jacket too, and will probably make this up again as a suit in gray – a color that showed up quite a bit during Fall ‘07 Fashion Week - with a contrast lining on the hoodie.

This skirt is a 100% stash reduction project - I literally didn’t buy a thing; the fabric, thread, beads, lace, lining, interfacing, zipper - everything - came straight from my stash. That felt really good!We’re going to an Oscar party tonight, so I’ll wear this pretty much as you see it, with brown fishnets. Oops - I need to press the hem a little more - just noticed some ripples.

This time I thought I’d try a hand picked zipper. Lately I’ve been hand finishing my projects because for some reason it’s easier to get my brain around that than it is to do all the steps to machine finish every detail. The lining is hand fell stitched to the zipper tape – honestly, sometimes it’s just simpler to just do a bit of handing sewing instead of wrestling with it on a machine. Plus I like the smooth look of hand finishing. The top stitching works, but I’m not convinced the beading really does. On the first try I just had the seed beads, but it made the zipper look eerily like a chest surgery scar, which was a little freaky. So I added the bugle beads. So the beads may come off at some point. Maybe I’ll do the pick stitches in the same brown topstitching thread I’ve used on the seams.

The lace edging on the lining is something I’ve done before on skirt linings – a friend said it’s a sort of a fin de siècle look, and I like the hidden luxury. A more detailed review of the pattern itself is on PatternReview.

So – I really like this result, it’s a great Hot Pattern!

Lately I’ve fallen back in love with dresses - they’re so easy to wear! You just put them on and off you go. A while back I made the HotPatterns Plain & Simple Shirtdress out of a fine wale corduroy and I wear it almost once a week.

Marfy has three great sporty dresses for Spring ‘07, and it going to be hard to decide which one I like the most.

All three of these would be great in a cotton pique, linen, denim, seersucker, or a twill.

F1312

This style has really great lines, I love the slanted inset pockets on the skirt and the button front. The machine embroidery concept for the skirt looks kind of dopey, and instead I’d use one half of a metal tooth zipper as an edge trim for the pockets. I might also replace the button front with a nice Riri zipper, and again use the extra teeth to trim the edges of the inset pockets.

F1310

Reminds me of my fave HP Plain & Simple Shirtdress. This would be killer in a dark wash denim with snaps and rivets as fasteners. Another great combination would be white linen with brown topstitching. I’d wear this to work with a tight cap sleeve T-shirt underneath and in the fall I’d wear it over a long sleeve body suit and tall boots.

F1313

Now, the only thing I don’t love about this style is the dowdy length on the skirt - do you know any woman who looks good in a hem that hits right below the knee cap? I’d raise the hem for sure to right above the knee, and other than that I love the 70’s neckline and all of the zippers (Riri again would look fabulous), snaps, and topstitching.

Every once in a while, and this is as predictable as the tides, questions about intellectual property issues such as trademark and copyright crop up on sewing message boards and forums. And just a predictably, people who are not attorneys seem compelled, for some inexplicable reason, to dispense legal advice.

Now granted, anyone can offer their personal opinion on a legal issue. But the whole notion of “I’m not an attorney but I play one on a message board” is not only unethical - it’s illegal.

Dispensing legal advice is practicing law, and to practice law you need a license. And if you are not licensed to practice law, then keep your legal advice to yourself and stop using forums and message boards as a bully pulpit to dispense information you have no right to dispense.

I am not an attorney - although I do have a paralegal degree from a university program acredited by the American Bar Association. I work in a corporate legal job and I have several years of experience in intellectual property, contract and licensing. Ethics are a huge part of the legal profession and a huge consideration in my career and my life.

If I was on the receiving end of sewing message board legal “advice” I’d view it with the utmost skepticism and I certainly wouldn’t rely on it for being anything more than the uninformed, albeit interesting, opinion of a regular joe. And if I had a real concern I’d certainly consult an attorney.

Over on Sewing Divas I posted a valentine to Isabel Toledo’s new collection for Ann Klein, and the love it-or-hate it reaction pretty much reminds me of the reaction to Karl Lagerfeld’s first collection for Chanel 2+ decades ago. Something tells me this type of controversy is a good thing for Isabel’s future at Anne Klein.

One accessory from the show I lusted after where those Ghillies. I’ll admit they seem to be a love it-or-hate it shoe style. Diva Ann doesn’t like them at all, but I really do, and I have a pair in beige suede that’s has been in my closet for over 10 years.

You can bet I’ll be wearing them again this year after I sew up my versions of Isabel’s designs for my fall wardrobe. Ghillies are a great walking shoe, super with pants and adorable with the right kind of skirt. Nanflan reminds us that Anne Klein has a shoe line, so hopefully Isabel’s runway version will soon show up on Zappos.

But until that happens - Behold - the John Fluevog Darjeeling Ghillie! A big thank you goes to Vivienne for pointing out this really fun shoe.