Noile dot Net

So sheltering-at-home is getting old, but a surprising benefit, around here, at least, is that old projects, long-procrastinated, are finally getting knocked off. This week duvets got addressed.

We got our duvets and covers quite a while ago because one of us was always too warm, and the other always too cool. Two wonderful over-sized twin duvets, with covers, one for each side of the bed, did the trick. One duvet is thin, and the other thicker; we each get to pick our own. Problem solved!

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Well, maybe less “jogger” than just “sloppy comfort wear”. Clothing for our [Covid] times! Like Vogue 8499, these, Vogue 8712, are wide-legged pants, but these taper in more at the ankle.

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So, while tooling around the Mennonite fabric stores of Lancaster County, PA back in the days when tooling around places was possible, we ran across this charming faux-retro fabric. I figured I’d use it for pocket linings, if nothing else.

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Count me as one of those who looked at this pattern and who said “um, noooo, never”. Well, never has arrived . . . and it’s pretty cool. Or warm. Or cozy and just right . . .

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So I’ve had to learn to sleep  on my back (ugh) . This has not been a nice process, and has involved a lot of more-or-less ineffectual trial-and-error experimentation. The latest iteration — and one that seems to be working! — involves this triangular pillow.

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I know, it’s October, and totally the wrong season for white pants. But what’s a season, anyway, in our Covid world?

I’ve made these pants — Vogue 8499 — many times in the past, and always mis-remember how hugely over-sized they are. This time, at least, I sized down to the smallest in the envelope — which has absolutely nothing to do with the size chart Vogue provides. If I want to keep making them, it’s probably time I just re-drafted the whole thing so that it actually fits me.

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Herein, a brief history of my life with masks. (Hail, Covid!)  I began researching and sewing when urgent calls went out in early 2020 from institutions desperate for any kind of masks at all.  Home sewers like me took to their machines, and produced vast quantities of the things when, somehow, our government just couldn’t get it together to support our first-line medical care providers.

My own initial effort was a pack of thirty surgical-style masks with filter pockets donated to a big city hospital, quickly followed by just under 130 more of the same style donated to an assisted living facility where a loved relative lives.

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I bought the Named Talvikki pattern strictly for the neckline, because I didn’t want to draft it myself. This was just as well, since the neckline was the only part of the pattern that came close to fitting me. But ohhh, what a neckline! For someone like me, who wants to live in sweatshirts, but hates the standard styles, this collar makes all the difference.

The bottom line is that Named patterns are not made for smallish, 5’2″/157cm people. Nothing — other than the neck/collar — about this pattern worked for vertically-challenged me. Since the collar is stunning, though, I simply franken-patterned the rest, combining it with Vogue 8854, from which I’d made a batch of sweatshirts many years ago.

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I spied an odd canvas tote at the Freer Gallery several years ago. It was just black canvas, but the (rather nicely done) print on the front was Philip Evergood’s Dowager in a Wheelchair. (Yes, the name’s not his original one.)  The painting is in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where I’m afraid I still haven’t seen it.

Although Evergood called his inspiration “tragic“, I loved the indomitably of his subject; the (intended) evocation of vulnerability in a privileged person, and the vibrancy of New York life (Evergood says it’s Madison Avenue, and it clearly is the Upper East Side, right?) crashing all around the dowager and her ghostly, younger, attendant.

I didn’t need a tote bag, so I converted it to a backpack so that I could easily transport my Cricket rigid heddle loom.

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Sometimes — that is, some non-Covid time — when I’m in a city — looking at you, Washington, New York, and various other smaller, sidewalk-enhanced locations — I like to have a small (non-electric) scooter with me. This is especially nice in summer in Washington, where it’s often possible to work around pedestrian routes, and where the humidity and heat are only enhanced by zipping through summer on wheels.

But my little scooter needed a bag. Topo Designs makes a great bike bag, and I really, really wanted to buy theirs, but it’s way too big for my scooter, so I took inspiration from their slightly kooky triangle shape and made my own.

That strap is actually a bright bold red. Sadly, I’m someone who sews,
not someone who actually knows how to use a camera phone.

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