After finishing this skirt, I had a bit of leftover fabric, and thought I'd made a beret for myself.  I found a tutorial on YouTube, and whipped the thing up in an evening. 

In the end, I didn't like it and stuck it straight in the Goodwill pile.  Nevertheless, here's the making-of documentation, so I can do better next time! 

When I told my six year old niece I would make her a hat, and asked what color she wanted, she answered: "Teal and sparkly pink!"  Well, I found sparkly teal and pink, so I decided--close enough--and set out to make the hat with them. 

I picked up a Maw-Bell pattern from Fabric Depot a while back, during their warehouse sale.  It has a plaid skirt and hat in it, but I was just interested in the adorable hat.  As it turns out, it's a super simple pattern! 

Jean-Étienne Liotard was a Swiss pastel artist in the 1700's, and is one of my favorite artists.  I love the unique poses and facial expressions of his subjects.  Color-wise, I love how he uses plain gray or brown backgrounds to make his colors pop.  I love his blues.  There's a clean, refreshing look to his pictures, and a unprepossessing uniqueness to the people he portrays.  Unlike oil paintings of the time, which were formal and expressed rank and privilege, his pastels are informal, intimate. 

One of his more famous pastels is The Chocolate Girl, a young woman carrying a tray of hot chocolate.  She wears what looks like a cap or coif, but made from what looks like pink silk instead of the more common white linen.  It's sweet and pretty, and served as the inspiration for a cap I made about two years ago.  I already had a nightcap, but I wanted something prettier to wear around the house, to cover my hair so I wouldn't pick at it. 

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! 

​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!  

As my sister has expressed the wish to wear more hats, and I am happy to oblige her, I sat down recently with some curtain remnants.  I decided to make a tam, though she fretted that it would be too "fussy".  The pattern was easy: 

Hat people are like cat people: we are sure that anyone would join our ranks if they only found "the right one"!  I am a hat person, and this may just be the right hat for my sister! 

(That skeptical look on her face is at the mere suggestion of being a cat person!)

So one wintry day, my sister wore the hat outside for a photoshoot.  Here's the finished chapeau!