Scattered Progress of Scattered Sorts

Unlike some of my more virtuous friends, I did not entirely manage to eschew the frenzy of retail indulgence that is the weekend after Thanksgiving. I have of late been itching to make something, and went to JoAnn with an eye to maybe finding some nice steel or bronze taffeta for a dressy circle skirt (with pockets!) suitable for holiday parties and such. It was interesting to note that the Southcenter superstore has rearranged their sales floor so that now all the fabrics and sewing notions are pushed off to the very back of the store, as if no one sews any more, and floral, craft, and seasonal displays dominate the front. Maybe they're working on rebranding themselves away from being a fabric store.

As it turned out, the special occasion fabrics weren't on sale, and none of them properly wowed me anyway. On the verge of giving up, I prowled around the corner to the brocades and went idly poking through them, like you do, even though brocade was really not the effect I was after in a skirt. And then I fell in love. You'll see the object of my affections in the photo above. Deep midnight blue with gold and garnet. I just lurves it. It was obviously not at all suitable for the skirt I wanted to make, though, so any rational person would decide to pass on it. Me, I was so totally smitten I decided I needed to come up with a totally new project to suit the fabric, so I would have an excuse to buy it. At first I thought I would just get a yard or so to make a fancy smoking cap for a gentleman I know, but then I became seized with a much grander scheme.

This brocade would make an amazing Chinese-influenced, kurta-style tunic jacket, and with coordinating gold or garnet silk salwar trousers (with pockets!) it could be as suitable for dressy occasions as any taffeta skirt ever. Better in fact. So I went home and printed out the half-off-any-one-item JoAnn coupon and went back the next day and bought not one but seven yards of the stuff. Actually, that left less than a yard on the bolt so I let myself be talked into buying the last partial yard at a deep discount. Yes, I am a sucker.

And I'm here to tell you that if the wait for the fully-manned cutting tables the Saturday after Black Friday is anything to go by, then it's definitely not true that no one sews any more, and JoAnn is missing a bet by hiding all their sewing stuff in the back. Even on a Saturday evening the queue was over 20 numbers deep, and the young lady who cut my fabric said that this was the quietest it had been all day. Take that, sewing skeptics.

So now, of course, the project wants a pattern, since this was not the garment I planned for. Since Saturday, I've been spending a little time each evening digging around the basement and garage trying to unearth my stash of Folkwear patterns before I go buying duplicates, and tonight I finally found them. And while I was at it, I tracked down the box that had all the Christmas/Holiday music CDs in it, and now I have at long last got the several wonderful mix CDs that I got years ago in a music exchange that Rivka Wald organized right here on LJ. This is a score of epic proportions. I'm not that big on many of the traditional recordings of Christmas music, but the ones I love, I do love. So, anyone interested in a holiday music mix CD exchange? I have the wherewithal now.