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YouTube Rec: Micarah Tewers

4/16/2020

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Are you being a responsible human being, staying home and keeping to yourself?  Are you doing your bit to protect your community by not breathing on them?  Good for you!  I'll bet you're binge-watching something, too.  Allow me to recommend a YouTuber filled with brio and joie de vivre.  

Her name is Micarah Tewers and she makes clothes.  I suggest her for the following reasons:
  1. Her method of working is refreshingly historical... not that she makes historical costumes (though she does), but that she has a historical approach: no patterns, just pinning things to her body, testing the fit, and improvising.  If you're a sewing geek like me, eager to know all abut pattern drafting and the "right" way of doing things, her videos might make you feel like a kid again, just discovering that with a needle and thread you can turn an old tee shirt into a ball gown for your Barbie.  Watching her simply "wing it" is delightful.  If you're a new sewist, intimidated by all the technical stuff on sewing blogs, and wondering how much time and money you have to invest before you make something worth wearing, Micarah's thrifted flights of fancy are permission to play and encouragement that you can get great results without having all the "right" tools and methods. 
  2. She is funny!  Clearly, she has a theatrical streak (and at least three different voices that she employs for dramatic effect), but she doesn't come across as snobby or out of touch the way many theatricaal people do.  Instead, she's wonderfully accessible.  She's a complete goober, a total dork, and you're invited to join her in her romps.  Her video editing is very MTV... rapid cuts that feel like a strobe light flashing in a club, which can be annoying if you're in a more contemplative mood.  But if you're in the mood for light entertainment, enjoy it!  Like, just watching her crack herself up with puns in her "Turning Adult Diapers into a Wedding Dress" video was hilarious.  I couldn't contain myself.  Ha!
In some ways, she is my working opposite.  Where I over-engineer things, and can find ways to make any project more complicated, she uses hot-glue!  It's fun to watch her work.   

One thing to bear in mind is that even though the frantic pace of the videos seems fast, it takes a lot of editing. As of right now, she doesn't have a lot of videos uploaded, but I have high hopes that more will come.  

Micarah Tewers brings zest, kindness, humor, and goodwill to her videos and her interactions with viewers and followers online.  These good character traits are why I've filed this post under Phillipians 4:8. 
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Belgium in WWI: Flour Sacks and Lace

10/22/2018

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Picture
Photo courtesy of Jorie, of EmbroiderElaine blog. Click to see her site!
As a child, I attended Herbert Hoover Elementary school, yet never knew who Herbert Hoover was.  For years, I had him confused with J. Edgar Hoover (not the same guy at all, it turns out), which is a shame, as I now find he was really an extraordinary man. His greatest and, I think, most lastingly significant work was done when he was a private citizen during the Great War.  For his actions on behalf of starving Belgians, he received grateful tributes of needlework and lace which are are far more compelling and beautiful than my elementary school.  So today: WWI, Herbert Hoover, Belgium, and lace! 

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Tineke Stoffels' "Little White Collars"

10/1/2018

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As an amateur lacemaker, I was delighted recently to find some beautiful and unique old laces displayed in an art exhibit online.  Little White Collars is a collection of photographs by Dutch artist Tineke Stoffels, each showing a young woman wearing an antique collar.  Their other clothes are all black, which sets the collars off to perfection, as well as referencing the Calvinist dress code of Holland in the 1600's. The photographs are also finished in a painterly way, so that they look like works of Old Masters. 

I reached out to Ms. Stoffels, and she agreed to answer my questions, and even to provide some close-up lace pictures so I can see how the pieces were made!  What a marvelous lady!

Picture
Girl with lace collar II/Gros point de Venise (cropped). © Tineke Stoffels 2018
Most pictures in this post are the property of Tineke Stoffels of the Netherlands.  Please do check out her website!  The other images are credited and linked to their Wikimedia Commons source-pages. 

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Yoko Saito Skirt (Another A-line)

11/20/2017

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Today's post is about Yoko Saito's artwork, and about a skirt I made recently, from the same stash and pattern as the A-line of last week.  It includes a strip of bias-cut wool in very soft taupe colors, appliqued onto a darker wool using Yoko Saito's instructions, so I've taken to calling it my Yoko Saito skirt! 

Yoko Saito is a famous quilter.  Her work is very Japanese in its sensibilities: subtle colors, subtly combined, with impeccable stitching and attention to minute detail.  There are three elements which come together to make a Yoko Saito quilt really distinctive to me: the taupe colors; the complex and often layered applique; and the hand-quilting.  Doing an image search for "Yoko Saito" will give you a pretty good idea of her aesthetic; it's the kind of work that rewards close study.  Be aware as you look that Saito has many students and followers who replicate her style, so not everything you see is definitely made by her; but it represents her school of quilting. 

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NWQ Quilt Show, 2017

8/28/2017

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On May 13th this year, my friend Rosanne and I went to the Northwest Quilters' Quilt show.  For me, it was an art show!  So much artistry, so much beauty.  I want to share it with you! 

Re: the pictures... I did not talk to the quilters or get their permission to post these pictures here, but as they'd already made their work public by exhibiting it, and as I was within the rules of the exhibition to take pictures, I think it's all right to show their workmanship here as long as I credit them.  If the work is yours and you object to its placement here, Contact Me and let me know, and I'll remove your stuff.  Ditto if I've mis-attributed something and you want me to fix it.  Thanks! 

As always, click on a picture to see it enlarged. 

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Admiring Tim Gunn!

6/15/2017

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Tim Gunn is a fashion guy.  He worked for twenty-five years on the faculty at the Parsons School of Design, before becoming the chief creative officer for Liz Claiborne.  Overlapping these two jobs, he's also served as a mentor to contestants on Project Runway (fifteen seasons, so far!).  It was through Project Runway that I first encountered him.  My sister and I went through a phase of binge-watching the series (including Project Runway Australia and New Zealand, which had different mentors), and loved to see the amazing things people did with fabric, creativity, and not enough time.  And of course we enjoyed Tim Gunn. 
Picture
Tim Gunn at 81st Academy Awards / Chrisa Hickey

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Hankies!  Gloves!  Gazingus Pins!

4/24/2017

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In the book Your Money or Your Life, authors Robin and Dominguez offer the term "gazingus pin" for a certain kind of spending weakness: the things we just can't seem to pass up without buying, even though we don't need them and may have dozens at home.  Each person's are different (office supplies, kitchen gadgets, cars), but the term is the same.  It's a gazingus pin!  

I have a few gazingus pins.  Cloth handkerchiefs, for example.  They are so sweet and darling, some of them.  They have printed patterns, or whitework embroidery, or wee flowers, or monograms!  The cloth can be quite amazing, too: I have one that's nearly sheer linen, with a pattern of hearts and shamrocks visible in the weave when you hold it to the light...  

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Whatever is True

3/20/2017

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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.

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    Karen Roy

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