Mirroring Suzy Bee Sews - Life So Strange It Should Be Fiction

Rather than use my rather embarrassingly large amount of millinery supplies, I went the easy route for Tweed Ride and sewed my hat.  Once again, Simplicity shoots itself in the foot with its pattern photo for Simplicity 1736.  Why did they have Natalie Portman (truly, the likeness is striking) model the least distinctive and attractive hat in the envelope?  How does a shapeless blob in a novelty fleece print make the cut over the 20s cloche and the 40s fedora?  Are they deliberately cultivating the frumpy label?  So many questions.  I only bought this pattern after seeing someone else make the cloche. With my burgundy and deep teal plaid jacket, turquoise skirt, and mustard tights I was running out of colors!  Even after making a jacket I still have a ton of this Vera Wang wool left from Fabric.com's legendary $1.99 blowout, but the original magenta color was too close--but not close enough--to the burgundy in the plaid.  Enter some orange R...

Source: lwrenscott.com via Trena on Pinterest I first made this pattern in 2007 and always planned to return to it.  It's a gorgeous style, and unusual. The neckline with little cut-on collar is remarkably similar to this insanely beautiful L'Wren Scott (a more brightly-lit runway shot shows two rows of decorative buttons down the front--for which I do not care--and princess seams).  One thing I really like about the Simplicity neckline is that the centers have an inward curve.  Very graceful. When I pulled out the pattern pieces, I was first struck cut this out along the smallest size line.  When my mom taught me to sew, she made me cut out the pattern along the largest size line, pin it to the tissue at the desired size, and then cut underneath the tissue at the desired size.  I truly HATED this.  Cutting is hard enough, but cutting underneath the tissue at the precisely the right spot was just horrible.  So when I started buying my own patte...

Sunday was the Tweed Ride, and of course we were on it!  Nothing is more fun than dressing up retro and riding around town.  Here is the crowd riding about a block from my house.  I admit that we peeled off here--we had to get ready for the party.  We started off in Franklin Square in downtown DC.  Everyone was in their finest and there was a lot of inspiration to be had.  I have never been into the tiny top hat for women, until I saw this woman's hat.  Love it!  I think the scale is just perfect--not so small as to be entirely twee, but not so full-sized so that it loses its sauciness. Cidell and Liz got custom Maryland license plates for their bikes. I was pretty jealous and think I might need a DC one. I just can't decide what to put on it! Any ideas? I had a lot of fun putting together my look.  I spent the 10 days before the ride working on two different hats, and couldn't decide which way to go.  In the end, I figured that the c...

The Seersucker Social is coming up on June 9!  You get dressed up and ride your bike around town, and it could not be more fun (Fall's event is the Tweed Ride ).  Having a fabulous hat is de riguer and once I had my dress underway it was time to think about head wear. I have wanted to learn more about sinamay, a flexible, moldable straw fabric, since watching this Martha Stewart video .  Somehow I stumbled upon the class list at Bits of Thread studio in the Adams Morgan area of DC, and saw that there would be a sinamay hat class by Holly Slayton of Artikal !  Perfect timing! This was my first visit to Bits of Thread.  The outer door is a bit unobtrusive though if you have the address it's not difficult to find.  There are instructions for how to ring Bits of Thread on the call box . Holly is from the DC area but lives in New York now where she specializes in making bridal headpieces.  But she has a full line of hats and enjoys sharing her milliner...