Wow! You're my lucky 10,000th visitor!

Thank you!

A blast from the stash

Something like 15 years ago I found an whole lot of organza ribbon in a wonderful pumpkin pie color, CHEAP, and bought it up. I stitched it up with some lace and black cotton with the intention of making a flounced petticoat but it never got finished and I have been dragging that too-pretty-to-throw-away-but-basically-useless pile of fabric around with me ever since.

I am now quite flushed with the glow of virtuous accomplishment because it is a useless pile no longer!

My bustle petticoat in progress...

I put on my bustle and had my honey measure the waist to floor length front and back (which is 13 inches longer, by the way), took off 21inches for the finished length of the flounce, added 4 inches for a 2" tuck to cover the seam, added seam allowance and cut I piece to the front length and one to the back. I sewed those pieces into a tube (with an opening at the left side for getting in and out) and here we're pinning in the darts and back shaping/gathering to fit.

Even with the tuck turned the wrong way (up!) I'm pretty happy!

Only 14 days to Teslacon 3...

OMG, It's a skirt!

In fact, it's a skirt with a big poufy butt!

I still have all the handwork to do to finish it (waistband, hooks and eyes, ribbons, etc) but look, it's a skirt!

Another bit of progress

All three rows of lace are now stitched on my skirts so I thought I'd post another picture. The uppermost row is the lace just after it has been stitched and flipped over, the middle row is partway through the pinning process (I match up the corners of the pattern above and below the place I will sew the tuck, 1/2 way up the lightest row), and the bottom row is all done!

Back home and back to work

In order to cut out my skirts without making a separate set for the plaid skirt I basted in the tucks and hem before I cut it my pieces. This move allowed me to simply place my pattern pieces on the fabric, cut as usual, and when I removed the basting stitches my seam lines already had all the fancy angles I will need to get my tucks to lay flat on angled seams.

To make my lace emerge from underneath the bottom edge of the tuck I attached it by zig-zagging the upper edge of my lace to the fabric which will lie just behind that edge when the whole thing is finished.

The striped fabric which you can just see through the lace (above) is going to be the face fabric when the tuck is complete (see below).

I stitched the tuck so that the black lace will fall above the black stripe on my skirts. This first row of lace/black is also the hemline for my skirts. (I should mention that I reversed the direction of the back piece from the pattern. I want a straight hemline with a black stripe so I put the extra fabric which accommodates the bustle at the top of my skirt instead of the bottom. I put in some extra in order to accommodate my larger bustle too. Yet another experiment!)

I like a deep hem so I included an entire pattern repeat when I cut the fabric. This stitched up into the top of the fabric behind the tuck. It's completely invisible from the right side. Nice!

And now, back to the ironing board!

And then there was SANDY

Hey, who knew they were expecting a hurricane in Baltimore?

I only heard about it as we were on the way to the airport, at which point it seemed rather too late to say "hmm, Honey, maybe we should stay home?"

I've never really been in the potential path of a hurricane before. it's...interesting. In a hotel there isn't much you can do to prepare! I think I'll go see if they have any bottled water in the vending machine...

:)

Renaissance Africans in Europe...and BALTIMORE!

Wow. I really don't know what to say.

Being in an art museum that has *any* depictions of black people is pretty rare in my experience. If we are there we tend to be the ketchup of the show, not the burger...or even the fries. Just the condiment that underscores the importance of the main dish.

Unless, of course, it is a special exhibit of some kind...(sigh...)

So here I am at the Walters and it *is* a special exhibit, but for the first time in my experience it is truly a show about me. My timeline and place in art and the world, and history. I'm surrounded by folks who could be my family, wearing things I would wear, doing things I might do, and suddenly I'm not that weird black girl who likes to pretend to be 16th century Italian. (Like *that* could have happened! ... Insert eye roll here.)

I'm that weird 20th-21st century girl who likes to investigate her cultural history. I *belong.* We really were there.

And I gotta tell you, the painting of a whole gang of Black Landsneicht is a real life changer!

And now for the lecture...