Sweet potato plaid

I was foiled in my attempt to go get the mulberry sweater knit that I can’t stop thinking about since I left it on the bolt at Mood because as it turns out, Mood was closed on December 24th. (What!  Do they not realize how short my time in New York is??) Fortunately, on my way there, I bumped into the Japanese bookstore Kinokuniya (more on that expensive and unexpected happening later) and Paron. Having filled up on basics already, I perused their extensive 50% off heaven/annex for things that caught my eye, and fixed on this nerdy-chic chocolate and burnt orange Banana Republic plaid wool:

It’s sort of a shetland weight that would make for a nice substantial pair of pants or fall jacket. My first thought was a high waisted pencil skirt of the sexy-librarian-shakes-out-hair-good-heavens-you’re-beautiful! variety.  (I don’t know why I always think I can pull that off when I haven’t got anything in the va-va-voom department.) In particular, I would pair said skirt with my new also nerdy-chic Sweet Pota-toe Heels from ModCloth (believe it or not, my first ever actual ModCloth purchase):

(If these are your style, I should let you know that they are a bargain at $39.99.  Grab them while they still have a few pairs left!  And I am the reason that they’re sold out of size 5.)

I asked for a yard and a half of the fabric (originally $24/yard, but $12 after the 50% off), but the woman unrolled everything that was left on the bolt and said she’d give me the whole piece for the price of two yards. In the interest of not accumulating too much stash I thought about wisely saying no.  After all, it’s not a super basic like black wool gabardine or white cotton poplin. But she was so nice and it was almost Christmas eve and she was really selling hard to the selfish in me. And there went another $6.

I took it home and measured it and found that the entire piece was actually four yards long. Plenty for a pencil skirt and something else (which I would not wear WITH the skirt because I do not want to dress like a crazy lady.)  What do you think?  Three-quarter length coat with chocolate brown faux fur trim?  Trench-style jacket?  Trousers? What does one do with so much sweet potato plaid?

Mad for Mod

Remember this Vera Wang brocade fabric?

I was contemplating making the Michael Kors Vogue 1117 dress from it for a while. Well, after having received Vogue 1117 and looked over the instructions, I’m thinking that the fabric might be a bit too rigid for the pattern. I’m going to hold out for a lightweight menswear fabric for it. But I was just trolling ModCloth and found this dress, which I think is the perfect cut for the brocade:

It’s just right, I think- I wanted something with some nice structured pleats (the fabric is just dying to be pleated) and after playing with the fabric a bit, I also wanted a little bit of fullness in the skirt, but again, something structured. So, game plan switched up again.  It’ll probably be months before I even think about starting this anyway.

But as for ModCloth, it’s one of those sites that makes me want to sew stuff.  I know for a lot of hobby seamstresses, Anthropologie has this effect on them, but for me it’s ModCloth.  There are the dresses that look like they’d be fun to draft:

And those that look like they’d be fun to drape:

I save all of the images in a folder where I keep sewing inspiration and then never get around to actually making them :)

Here’s a prime target for D.I.Y. Check out this insanely simple dress (by Betsey Johnson) that showed up today on ModCloth:

100% polyester with 100% polyester lining, for $428!  I don’t love it, but is anyone else starting to see why ModCloth makes me say, “I think I’ll make that!  And that…. and that…. and that…”