Re-fashion #1: summer shirt

This one's for Amy. Amy Karol, of Angry Chicken, is a re-fashioning goddess. Weekly, it seems, she's taken some ho-hum article of clothing and made it sha-zam. This post is a recent example. Wow, right?

So, Amy's the angry chicken, a brave woman with a pair of dressmaker's shears. Me? I'm chickenshit, too timid to ever ever just boldly CUT into a perfectly good shirt. What if I mess it up, royally? How will I live with knowing that I've taken something and wasted it through my own stupidity? It's always seemed more than I can bear. That is, until today.

This shirt was one I thrifted, for $1.50, sometime over the summer. It was, er, a little big, but I liked the fabric, so I brought it home and threw it on the Clothes Heap in my studio, to wait for the day when I could screw up the guts to tackle it.

It's a scary process, man.

Eeek!

After taking in the neckline incrementally, and doing much sipping of tea and fretting and pacing, I decided what this thing really needed was an empire waist.

Empire waists? Big fan. I'm at total peace with my upper body: arms, shoulders, back, boobs, all satisfactory and presentable. The marsupial pouch? Hmmm, not so much, that one.

It's sorta hard to tell in this picture, but the shirt ended up getting a myriad of tucks and gathers (three in front and two big ones in back), an empire waist, pleats under the boobs, and ties in the back.

So, first re-fashion project completed, check! Baby steps. Maybe someday I'll be like Amy and wear my shears in a holster on my hip, ready to unleash creative goodness at any minute... well, it's good to have heroes, isn't it?

I'll close with a gratuitous shot of my (satisfactory) boobs. The pleats and the empire waist are way easier to see in this one.

Bonus points for the first one to spot the cat in this post.

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Re-fashion #3: Once upon a dress

Something about the sunshine, and the possibility of wearing tights on a ten-degree day made me want to spend an hour with the self-timer mode on my camera. Thirty takes, I'm not kidding, and this was the best one.

The occasion was the long-awaited completion of that skirt you see. As the title of this post suggests, it used to be a dress. It was a thrift store score a few years ago, just the latest in the procession of long-forgotten thrift finds that are getting dragged out and re-fashioned here these days. This one even involved inserting elastic, and a zipper (!).

The re-fashioning I've been doing is part of a plan. Well, part of two plans, actually. The first is to clear some stuff out of my studio. I have so many little bits stuffed into corners, projects waiting to be made, etc etc. I'm sure some of you can relate to this plan.

My other plan involves sewing clothing. I've never sewn anything intended to be worn, short of a shoulder bag. Oh, sure, I've done quilts and little pouches, birdies and wee houses and even stuffed elephants, but I've always been afraid to cross over and start sewing clothes. Deep down, I have this fear: I'll see something, the Perfect Dress or Perfect Skirt, something I want to sew. I will fall in love. I will go out, I will buy a few yards of the Most Gorgeous Fabric, I will come home. I will bravely cut into it. And after being as careful and attentive as possible, after following the directions to the letter, the darn thing won't fit right. In the end, after all the effort, the skirt will pucker in an unfortunate place. It will sag. It will be downright unflattering, and so, disheartened, I will stow it in the back of my closet, never to be worn, the fabric too beautiful to part with.

This is my fear. So, in an effort to confront my fear, I've begun dabbling with some of my thrift score finds. If I mess up a dress I laid down a buck fifty for, it's not such a big deal. In the meantime, I might learn some stuff, like about pleats, or tucks, or how to do elastic. Bit by bit, I'm hoping to gain the skills which will enable me to salvage my unflattering sewing project of the future.

So far, so good.

Saturday scores

Let me set the scene: It was Saturday of Memorial weekend. A ripe time for yard sales. I knew my friend Kat was coming down for a little debauchery, while our respective men were away at afestival. Kat and I are both of good, frugal, resourceful upstate-New-York stock. We know how to re-fashion and re-finish and re-purpose, and most of all, we know how to haggle.

Was there any suitable way to spend the day but at a yard sale? But first, some waffles.

A good, hearty breakfast is important. Especially when perusing an entire table of elephant knick-knacks, and picking the one among the denizens that speaks to you.

The chair is my favorite: $10.

My Dad has one sort of like it: old and oakey, with brass fittings. Do you ever find your present desires shaped by something you loved and lived with 25 years ago? Me, too.

Not pictured: a lovely set of vintage sheets, white with the most delicate sky-blue viney flowers. They were taking a tumble in the dryer while I snapped these pictures.

What has the long weekend brought you so far? Good things, I hope.

Headed down to visit some wonderful friends tomorrow, be back Wednesday!

Re-fashion #6: I sheet you not

This is too much fun. The puns. Good sheet. Hot sheet. Sheetfire!

As you might be able to guess, this skirt was made from a sheet. Pretty sheets are so hard to come by at Salvation Army, so when I spot them I snap them right up. They're the first thing in the cart. Finding such a pretty, 70s-retro-daisies sheet for $2 was exciting enough.

But on top of that... on top of that, (deep breath), this is the first thing I've ever sewn from a pattern. I know, I know. Small potatoes. But when your own mother sweated bullets over sewing the badges on your girl scout sash, you celebrate the baby steps.

Let me talk about this for a minute. My mom kept a sewing box. About 6 x 8", it held a paper of needles, a small box of pins, a few tangled spools of thread and neglected packages of bias tape and rick rack, and a bag of my great-grandmother's embroidery floss. I remember her sewing on the occasional button, girl scout badges, and once, a felt hat for my Halloween costume in second grade. Suffice to say, needle and thread were not her tools of choice.

But, anyway, yes, the pattern. Simplicity 4236, a straightforward skirt, a good place to start. Skirts are such beautiful things. They are by far my favorite type of clothing, especially the ones that flare out and swish as you walk or dance. What could be better than clothes that are fun to move in? This particular skirt I made is a full circle skirt. Yesterday (before hemming), I spent a full ten minutes testing it out, sashaying around our bedroom and twirling, twirling, twirling. It flies up, perfectly parallel to the floor when I spin. Why is that so much fun?

Sigh. I'll probably have four more sewn before the summer's over. Don't say I didn't warn ya.

Re-fashion #5: Plaid skirt

The beautiful thing about thrift stores is, they have lots of clothes for cheap. The even-more-beautiful thing about thrift stores on half-off days is, clothes are so cheap you don't need to try them on before buying. To me, it's shopping at its very best: you can go by the feel of things, checking the tag (if there is one) and sizing things up with your eyes. After all, who really cares if it doesn't fit? You paid two bucks. Move on.

Of course, if you're me, you end up lugging home huge bags of great clothes which, let's face it, may or may not fit. Sometimes, I get lucky. Sometimes, concessions must be made.

I fell in love with the fabric of this skirt in an instant. It's lightweight cotton jersey with a really nice swish to it. Truthfully, I probably would've bought this skirt if it was four sizes too small; lucky for me, it was only off by one size.

Once home, a radical zipperectomy was performed. Zipper removal, I've discovered, is usually the first step in refashioning a skirt or a dress. Once that was done, I had a tapered tube of fabric with a jagged gap in one side (where the zipper was).

The magical thing about A-line skirts (besides being extremely flattering to just about every body type, heavens be praised...) is that they get wider as you go down. For this skirt, I measured my waist, divided by two, and then slid my ruler down the skirt until its width matched my own. Then, I cut.

I made a new waistband by turning down the top two inches and stitching, and I added some elastic around the back. (All the most comfy skirts involve elastic.) That all was straightforward enough. But how to close that gap? What to replace the zipper with? Tea in hand, I commenced to pacing. And then it hit me.

Little loops and buttons! This was way easier than it looks, trust me. The only really tricky part was making (and sizing) the loops. And the minutes hours I spent dumping and sorting my button collection was mighty therapeutic. These petite little wooden guys were in the jar I bought last weekend. Good stuff.

Now, all I need is a slate gray crochet cotton cardigan, some lace and knee-high boots. Hmm. Do I feel another thrift trip coming on?

A saga: silk slipcovers that nearly killed me

My first mistake, looking back, was buying silk.

Who hasn't been there: it's the nameless racks and aisles of a giant, corporate fabric store. Whatever surety you had about what you wanted to make has fizzled at the sight of bolts and bolts and bolts of luscious fabric.

You round a corner, somewhere between Interfacing Infinity and The World of Wool, and there you behold the Clearance Section. A dangerous place.

If you're like me, you uncover buried treasure: a bolt of copper-colored dupioni silk, its label a happy procession of sucessively lower prices. You gasp: $6 a yard!

In my defense, I did hesitate before folding it under my arm and marching to the cutting counter. Silk slipcovers, really? My practical side pointed out its faults: delicate, hard-to-work-with, and, curse of curses, dry clean only. Was I convinced? No. My inner cavalier bought three yards.

What followed was a ridiculous and trying series of events. I can laugh about it, now that they're done, but for awhile it was touch and go. It took me three whole days just to make a pattern for the project, even before I cut into the material. When I did cut, I cut wrong. I sewed together a tapered form that had no hope of ever fitting over the back of the chair.

I cursed and pulled out seams. I re-drew the pattern. I realized I was going to need more fabric.

I realized I was going to need more fabric...

No one ever wants to come to that realization. Especially when the fabric in question was clearance, and is probably gone, and if not gone, expensive.

This was the only ray of sunshine in the entire journey of this project: I found it, there amid the towering piles. I heard harps. I felt the presence of divine intervention. There were three yards left. I bought them all. And then a choir of angels picked me up and carried me to my car.

The rest of the project proceeded in ordinary fashion: more screw-ups, more sewing things on backwards and inside out. More cursing and pulling out seams.

With about 45 seconds' worth of stitching left to go, my sewing machine started sucking great wads of thread down into the bobbin case. The needle broke.

It was the end of a long day. I calmly turned off my machine and walked away. In the morning, everything was fine. I finished my seam, clipped my threads, and did a happy dance. Done, done, done!

They have met with Pete's approval. (Always important.)

And my favorite thing: they have bows in back. Yeee.

Now off to sew something ridiculously simple and let my craft ego recover from this battering.

Re-fashion #2: denim skirt

Meet skirt. Skirt was picked up, by me, at a thrift store probably four years ago. Skirt has never been worn. Skirt is a lovely J. Crew denim, worn irresistably smooth and soft from years of wear (by someone else) but alas, skirt is just a tad too tight for me.

Correction: was too tight.

This project didn't take quite as much courage as my shirt from two weeks ago. There was no cutting involved. I just applied my trusty seam ripper to the middle seam, inserted a tapered panel of fabric, and sewed it back up again.

The patches helped distract from the insert. The poppy-printed scraps were leftover from an earlier project, and I'd been squirreling them away to use on something for myself. This was the perfect chance.

I spent many happy hours in my arm chair, listening to This American Life podcasts and executing rows of perfect little blindstitches along the edges of the patches. I looove hand sewing.

Now, roll on warmer weather, so I can actually wear my refashioned goodies!

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Nashville, 2014

Hold on tight, it's going to be a long one. First, synopsis. Last year, we came to Nashville for five nights and four days, and it was absolutely magical. We left feeling like we'd gotten just the very tip of the (amazing) iceberg, and we wanted MORE. So, back we came, hoping that the magic wasn't a fluke, hoping that, though we'd gained some familiarity, the element of surprise would be as present as it was the first time. We knew it was a tall order, but still, we hoped. And we were rewarded with a week (seven nights, six days) that was absolutely full of serendipity, surprise, and magic. Like, did this really just happen-type magic.  Our journey began at about 9am, the day after Thanksgiving, when we folded ourselves into the car and embarked on an eleven-hour drive down 81. It was not fun, but it was uneventful, and when all was said and done, we were able to check in, unpack, shower, and be downtown by 9pm. Plenty of time to rock.

Last year, when we came, it seems like we hardly left Robert's Western World all week. It's the ONLY good honkytonk downtown, the one where they still play real country music, and it's special. This time, we told ourselves, there's more to Nashville than Robert's Western World. We made up our minds to see more of the city. And we did. But we also spent a LOT of time at Robert's, because there is no other place like it. The back door leads right out into the alleyway behind the Ryman, and in another time all the greats would wander over after their show at the Opry. The faces are on the wall. The boots are on the shelves. The magic is in the air.

Saturday afternoon, we were back. This is Rachael Hester and the Tennessee Walkers, probably my favorite band that plays Robert's regularly. Lots of Patsy Cline. Then we saw Chuck Mead playing at a record store called Grimey's. Anyone know who Chuck Mead is? If you like hillbilly music as much as I do, make it your business to know Chuck Mead. He basically set off the whole downtown Nashville revival back in the 90s, playing at Robert's with a band called BR5-49. And there he was, in a tiny space, doing his awesome hillbilly front man thing, and after I bought the new vinyl he was there to promote, I went up and he signed it. I told him it was nice to meet him, and apologized for being the drunk chick at his Oneonta show (back in the spring, when he came to play just 20 minutes away!) screaming for "Ramona." And he was courteous and funny.
Later that night, we went to the Bluebird to see four songwriters play in the round. Last year we had a terrible experience (mostly due to a song with a refrain of hey y'all hey y'all) but this year we decided to give it another shot and it was wonderful. Marshall Chapman, Will Kimbrough, Tommy Womack, and Matraca Berg (who wrote "Strawberry Wine"). So we got to see Matraca Berg tell basically her life's story in song, and she sang Strawberry Wine, and then her husband Jeff Hanna from Nitty Gritty Dirt Band got up and sang "Mr. Bojangles." 
Oooooookay. No biggie. It's just Nashville. It gets better.
The next day, we were back at Robert's seeing Rachael Hester again. There is something to be said for exploring the city, but there is also something to be said for doing the comforting, sure thing. Watching her band, with Chris Scruggs on guitar and her dad on fiddle, drinking a $2.50 PBR at Robert's on a Sunday afternoon is about the best way to pass time I can contrive.

At a set break, Chuck Mead walked in. And then Rachael invited him to sit in, and he sang one of Hank's. Oh right, no biggie, we're in Nashville. I put my camera to use.

That was incredible. Then, we went to see the Time Jumpers, a ten-piece country swing outfit featuring three fiddles and one Vince Gill on lead guitar. That's right.

Ohhhhh man. But oh right, no biggie, we're just in Nashville. This is just the kind of thing that happens in Nashville.
From that point on, it was like, did we really just see Chuck Mead at Robert's? Did we really just see Vince Gill last night? Dream-like and crazy. But then it got even better. How? Well, we spent some more time at Robert's.

Of course. But then we had to go get ready. We had tickets to see chef Sean Brock talk about his new book with his buddy Jason Isbell. So: sit and watch a sweet Virginia boy and a sweet Alabama boy talk about what their grandmas cooked for Sunday supper? Oh, yes please.   As luck would have it, we made it out to East Nashville with just enough time to... eat fast food before catching the event. Oh, the irony. So painful.

Topics of conversation included: cooking cornbread on a car door, Sean's quest to cook the perfect brisket, and Jason's wife's first biscuit attempt, which did not end well. ("So I picked it up and dropped it on the table, just to see, you know, how loud it would be. It turns out that was not a good idea. That was not something that I should've done.")

And then I got my new cookbook signed by Sean. And then I stood there hyperventilating for a minute, and then I met Jason Isbell and his wife Amanda Shires.

Just go ahead and add that to my list of Peak Life Experiences. They were both totally sweet and accommodating, and I managed to not say anything stupid.  And then we walked out and to the car and my feet were not touching the ground...
We went to Robert's for the rest of the night. We sat in the balcony and met a really nice couple from Indiana, and I tried in vain to get a decent picture of the two of us...

Sigh. The never-ending quest.
Then it was Thursday morning: Our Last Day.

We went to Percy Priest Lake. We walked around in the mud. I picked up rocks. Patrick let me sing him lines from the Jason Isbell song with the chorus that goes:
Girl hang your dress up to dry  we ain't leaving this room Til Percy Priest breaks open wide  and the river runs through and carries this house on the Stones like a piece of driftwood Cover me up and know you're enough to use me for good.
Finally got a good picture.

And then? Well, maybe you can guess.

Yup. And then we walked on the Shelby Street pedestrian bridge, for what's becoming our traditional Last Night in Nashville swansong experience. Someone was kind enough to ask if we wanted our picture taken, and Patrick couldn't even make funny faces or give the finger.

He was less well-behaved when I tried to take a selfie.

We got back to Robert's in time to see another set from a different band.

And for a picture out front. Best, sweetest place on earth. Friendliest place. Then we walked to the car. I'm not to going to say I didn't have tears streaming down my face, because I did. Mostly happy tears. Smile-because-it-happened tears. Smile because this incredible happy kind comfortable little bastion exists on Lower Broadway in Nashville, and we can go to it when we need it, and Lord willin' it will always be there to take us in. (That's right, I just said Lord willin'. But I just spent a week in the South, and I figure it's justified.)

We capped off the night in fine fashion by going to see a real bona fide rock show at the Mercy Lounge. We wanted to see the Mercy Lounge-- a pretty iconic little venue-- and we wanted to see the band, Centro-matic, because they're good. And then I heard rumors that Jason Isbell would be sitting in, and that sealed the deal. 

It was so good to rock out all the we're-leaving-Nashville angst, and to hear all that glorious guitar work. I got to meet Amanda again-- she remembered me-- and for an encore Jason sang No Matter What by Badfinger, which was about as awesome and unexpected a cover as could be imagined.  I decided the song was Nashville singing to me:
No matter where you go There will always be a place Can't you see it in my face, girl, Ooo girl, want you.
No matter where or what, there will always be this place. I think that's what it is, more than anything. In Nashville, the fourth wall comes down, and you can meet and greet people without a pretense of fame or separation or other-ness. That's what I love. It's a warm, friendly bubble where the barriers are erased and we can go just sort of hang with the most talented people out there-- the ones who make the music we cherish. I am absolutely full of gratitude. I am going to try as hard as I can to hold on to that feeling.

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