No, this isn't a police line-up, it's my lovely sister showing off the entirely unlovely block I've made for her.  Twirly twirly twirly! 

A few months back, I decided to use up some of my stash.  I pulled out a lovely piece of green rayon(?), with gradients of warm color and Japanese style twisty trees on it.  I love this fabric!  I figured out I had enough to make a dress, by the simple expedient of wrapping it around myself.  Not a very full dress, but a dress it would be!  There was about 1 1/3 yard at 60"(?) inches wide.

As I rarely wear white clothes (not my color, and too hard to keep clean), I don't usually sew with white.  So this project, sewing a pair of jeans that are not just white, but blindingly white, has been interesting!  Some white tips I'm learning as I go:

This post is an intro to my tag Philippians 4:8. 

One of the blogs I love reading is Male Pattern Boldness.  In particular, I like to click on the tag "Clothing and Culture" and read all the archived stuff.  Peter Lappin's quirky humor and thoughtful questions bring out the best in others, which accounts for the wonderful conversations that blossom in the comments section.  Today I was reading this discussion, from 2010: (Re)touch me in the Morning.

​​What a fun and colorful project I have to share today!  Today is National Quilting Day, and this year many people are making baby blankets for the first babies born in their local hospitals.  Meanwhile, some of my Congolese friends from church are expecting a new baby, and I decided to quilt a baby blanket for them!  Their baby shower is not for a few weeks, but I'm posting the quilting details today! 

I am a procrastinator.  I wish I weren't, but since that is my natural tendency, I find ways to "hack" my life.

​How do you hack your life, you ask?  By understanding how it naturally works and manipulating it.  In my life, there are two opposite forces at work: I hate to be idle and unproductive, but I put off starting things because my big plans for them overwhelm me.  So my lifehacks involve forcing deadlines on myself for the big things, and having a variety of small things on hand to fill my procrastinating time.  I call these small things procrastination projects: things to do when I'm putting off the bigger things.  That way the time is not wasted!  And the big things get done because there's a deadline and I hate to let people down.  (As a side note: if you care about me and my goals, the kindest thing you can do is hold me to my deadlines.)  

But the American obsession with denim is not my topic today; mono-butt is the subject du jour.  Mono-butt is when the seat of the jeans is ill-defined, like a bubble instead of buttocks.  This means that the crack is bridged by fabric (making a cave-like sauna inside), the legs have limited range of motion (you can't lift your leg without pulling the fabric from the other leg), and the fabric gets stressed on the center back seam.  And this look seems to be everywhere, on men's jeans and women's.  So unattractive.  "Buttocks" is plural for a reason, people!  I'm not asking for an extreme wedgie or anything, just a subtle bifurcation to make me feel like a woman instead of a baby in a diaper. 

A repeat client of mine always surprises me with interesting challenges.  When he told me he wanted high-waisted jeans, the request plunged me into a world of patterns, construction methods, rivets, and body-types that were all new to me.  Here is the tale of the first pair I've made him, which I call the charcoal jeans because of their color.