Hello friends!
So many things to tell you today. First of all, thanks for your enthusiasm about our first tween and teen pattern, the Girl on the Go Dress + Top. It will be available for sale Monday, and if you want to be the first to get it you can leave your email address on the product page. We’ll email you a reminder the very minute the pattern goes on sale.
Also, we’re finally posting to our @lieslandco Instagram account! Quite a few of you have already found us there, so thanks for that. Feel free to follow if you aren’t already. We’ll be focusing mostly on Liesl + Co. and Lisette for Butterick patterns and inspiration.
Pinterest Picks
If I was going to own a car (I’ve never owned a car, can you believe it?) I’d want one that’s cute and little. Like these.
The fabric below, left, reminds me of an Everyday Skirt made from one of Anna Maria’s Loominous woven fabrics. Also, now I really want to add a besom pocket to a Liesl + Co. Classic Shirt after seeing this cute striped shirt below, right.
You could make a cute little sunsuit like this by combining our free Popover Sundress with our Seashore Bloomers pattern. I love the colors of these. And how fun to make a seersucker Playtime Tunic with an added ruffle on the sleeves like the photo below, right.
Just for fun: Bunny butt and kitty photo bomb.
It’s already March? I guess it’s time to starting thinking about springtime and Easter dresses. Here are two cute ideas you could sew using the Building Block Dress book.
pinterest link and pinterest link
Weekend Reading
- Pantone’s autumn/winter 2018 color palette is full of jewel tones, including our beloved Ultra Violet! Actually, there are some very wearable tones included.
- This paragraph about the dress Michelle Obama wore for her portrait caught my eye (I really love her dress in that portrait!): “Quilting is the essence of Americana; specifically, the pattern evokes the strikingly modernist quilts created by the isolated African-American community of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, beginning in the late nineteenth century. Created from recycled scraps of fabric, often in unheated shacks with no running water or electricity, the quilts are notable for their abstract, asymmetrical compositions, in stark contrast with the geometric regularity of traditional American quilts. Since being rediscovered in the 1960s, Gee’s Bend quilts have been exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.”
- You might start looking at tea bags in a new way after you see these.
- I fell down a nursing uniform rabbit hole the other day. It’s really quite interesting.
- The death of clothing. (Thanks to Erica for sending this.)
- So much love for my friend Lesley’s Manhattan home. (Lesley shot our very first Liesl + Co pattern covers in Central Park.)
- Isn’t it fascinating how our culture is changing? The solution to overcrowded cities has been car sharing. To combat too many discarded clothes (and maybe even help many young people struggling to find work), now we have small businesses that specialize in secondhand clothing.
- If you come to visit us in Madrid, you’ll certainly want to take the Metro. Especially once you’ve seen this video. (Why were the 80’s so, so awful????)
- One last look at the Olympics. Such great photos!
- The history of the high heel. (Not suitable for work or maybe around children.)
- This weekend’s baking project: perfect blueberry muffins. (Which might just be true, given the luck I’ve had with Smitten Kitchen’s other recipes.)
OK, have a wonderful weekend! I hope you’ll be sewing something fun. I’m hard at work developing fall patterns, but I might sneak in something fun, myself. And we’ll be back next week with all sorts of fun things for you!
You will definitely love those Smitten Kitchen blueberry muffins! They are a huge favorite at our house.
I second Elisabeth’s comment – hands down the best blueberry muffins I’ve ever made (and I’ve tried many difference recipes) and a huge hit wherever I take them. Thanks for all the other interesting links too!
For most of the last thousand years we have had businesses that have dealt in second hand clothing, either for resale to use as-is, or to break down to make new fabric or even paper. Wool, particularly, was broken down and respun to make new fabric (and it wasn’t necessarily inexpensive, either – Rowan Yarns had a blog post about this years ago).
But the part I found interesting – and wrote a paper on, when I was studying art at uni – was that printing and paper was limited by the amount of linen fabric available. Until spinning (and then weaving) was mechanised, every piece of fabric was worn until it was a rag. Paper was made from linen rags, and until mechanisation of fabric production, rags were hard to get and expensive.
So next time you wonder why Leonardo reused paper, now you know!
That is fascinating, isn’t it? I guess what I was getting at is that we’re currently living in a culture that disposes of far too much, but maybe that’s changing a bit as young people find a small business in marketing clothing in their own on-line shops–even clothing that isn’t especially well-made. It’s probably not making much of a dent in the masses of used clothing, but sometimes this can be a sign of a coming shift. Like the car-sharing that’s becoming more popular in cities.
You just sold me on those pockets!
On the Classic Shirt, you mean? I think it would be adorable!
I loved reading about your friend Lesley’s Manhattan home. The topics you cover under weekend picks as so wide ranging Liesl, it’s always a treat when Friday comes around.
Thanks, Asmita! I like to learn about a wide range of things, and I figure you might be interested as well. Why limit it all to fashion, right?
Hi Liesl. I thought this might interest you: https://museumnetwork.sothebys.com/article/madrid-the-insiders-guide?cmp=email__selects_Madrid_An_Insider’s_Guide_button7_24-Feb-18&utm_campaign=SothebysSelectsLive&utm_content=email_sothebys_selects_live&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zaius&zm64_id=ZnJhbmNhcmxlbkB2ZXJpem9uLm5ldA%3D%3D
What a great list, Frances! Thanks very much. I’ve been to all but two places, and now those two are going to the top of my list. xo
Don’t know about the tony bar, but the art-house cinema looks fun: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2018/mar/12/pedro-almodovar-madrid-top-10-film-locations-to-visit?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=267193&subid=2447724&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2