Today, a brief needlelace tutorial!  This is a simple edging stitch, meaning you can use it to decorate your hems and other edges, even if you're not hard-core into lace-making! 

The stitch is called "shell stitch" in the Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Needlework, as well as in other sources.  However, several Victorian resources I've found online name it the "point de Venise", and Thérèse de Dillmont simply numbers her stitches (which is not memorable at all)!  As you may recall from my post about French Needlelaces, the nomenclature for lace is not consistent.  So "point de Venise" could mean Venetian needlelace in general as well as being a name for this particular stitch.  I'll stick with "shell stitch" for this tutorial, since the finished nubs look like wee shells. 

The next UFO checked off my list!  A friend whom I described this project to waxed poetic about it, trying to decide if it was a "melusine dress" or "ondine gown".  "Mermaid rag, haddock frock," I quipped back.  Though it's watery, fishy, and beautiful, there are no sprites or fairies on this garment, so "fish dress" is fine by me.  My poetry is in the dress, not the name. 

In 2003 I visited Scotland, and I wanted to buy some tartan souvenir, since the plaids are so beautiful.  Since I have no affiliation with any Scottish clan, I didn't feel right buying a clan tartan; luckily, there are non-clan tartans.  So I browsed through a very touristy shop, and one particular color combo caught my eye: almost equal parts blue and green, with thin orange and black stripes, and subtle gray easing from one stripe to another.  I looked at the tag, and read "New York City". 

​A friend (B.) found a lovely wedding dress at a thrift store.  Check out the pricing history: originally $3,000, marked down to $350, then marked down to $19.99!  The tags were all still on, so the dress has never been worn for a wedding.  But it's clearly been tried on... a lot.  I suspect it was a floor model at a bridal salon, and when it got shop-worn, they discounted it.  Eventually it landed at Goodwill, where B. bought it. 

B. has a vision for the dress, though.  She planned to attend a Leukemia survivors' ball, and wanted to wear this wedding dress, but embellished with flowers to look less bridal, more fairy-like. 

Now, as Mark Twain put it in The Prince and the Pauper, "Let us change the tense for convenience".  (If he could do it halfway through a novel, I can do it in a blog post!)  Present tense for the project diary...

Happy New Year to everyone using the Gregorian calendar! 

Have you ever looked at a fake flower--you know the type: plastic stem and fabric leaves and petals--and thought "too bad that's a big bulky fake flower; I wish it were softer and more sew-able so I could stick it on my dress"?  If that's the sort of thing you think, you're reading the right blog! 

When I was a small child, someone gave me a crewel kit, partly sewn already.  It was a hive of bees, with bees buzzing all over the place, and flowers.  There were instructions teaching each stitch.  I enjoyed sewing it very much... in fact, it probably started my love affair with needle and thread.  But I didn't like the pattern... I was not a fan of orange, and this kit was one of those 1970's shades of orange... Anyway, the kit came to me half-started and left me half-finished. 

Years later (2012), I was moving to a wilderness area with limited internet access and decided to bring some handwork with me.  I found online a beautiful crewel kit in the Jacobean style, ordered it, and waited. 

​I moved to Portland in March 2014, and one of my goals while in my new locale was to learn to draft clothes.  This circle skirt, made with brilliantly printed cotton with a hibiscus flower pattern, was one of my very first attempts!  Lacking a sewing machine, I hand-sewed it. 

Most of my early sewing projects have long since been consigned to Goodwill, in hopes that someone else will love them more than I did, but this happy skirt has been a prominent member of my closet since I made it!  When you're learning a new skill, it's nice to have an early success, to encourage you to keep going.

​One day in 2015, my friend Dwayne and I did a photoshoot, showing off my outfit and playing with his camera. ​ More recently, I took some pics of the hand-sewing and interior construction. 

​Sometime, I fall into a hole in the internet.  No, not a time-sucking vacuum of a hole, like when I go to TVtropes.com and emerge hours later wondering where my day went; I mean a content gap of a hole, where I can't find the information I'm looking for, and I don't know if I'm using the wrong search terms of if--incredible as it may seem--the information is not there!  Such was the case when I went looking for a pattern to sew a Glengarry cap.  Plenty of info about Glengarry caps was to be found, but when I added the search term "pattern", I only got crochet patterns (not useful for sewing) and a bewildering amount of Iroquois beadwork.  Now, I like Iroquois beadwork as much as the next sewing-obsessed bead-loving person, but it does not help me turn my upholstery scraps into a cute Glengarry cap!