Lattice Sleeves

Here's a truly lovely gown.  The combination of the beautiful rose fabric and the tons of detailing makes for a very special dress.

Julia brought it to me because the netting inside the lattice sleeves was quite tattered.  It used to give the sleeve its shape, holding the lattice in a puffed sleeve shape, instead of letting it just hang down.

Horton Hears A Who

We (Thin Ice Theater) have just completed our second annual Dr. Seuss class. Last fall we presented The Cat In The Hat.  This year - Horton Hears A Who.

The format is designed to introduce young kids, ages 5 - 10 or so, to all aspects of play production.  Dr. Seuss stories are a great introduction to the theater.  The rhyming lines and rhythm help young actors with memorization.  And actually, the style is very much like Shakespearean scripts, so this is really a first step towards working with the Bard's great plays.

Little Stones p.s.

p.s.

The very next day, after I wrote about Ze Frank and the online art he is experimenting with, he posted this.  There is going to be an exhibit of the works that he and his online community have created over the last few months at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.  In this posting, he shows bits and pieces of some of the art, so it's a good way to take a peek at what's going on, if you feel so inclined.

Pretty cool!

Little Stones

Poking around in quilty blogs one day, I discovered Jude Hill.  I was immediately enchanted with her artistry, her photography, the ambiance of her posts, and her approach to her artwork.

Reading on, I discovered that one of her projects includes collecting small pieces from her readers that will eventually be included in her artwork.  I am really intrigued by this concept of using the internet as a tool or medium in creating art, not just as a static means of communication and information overload.

Crepeline

Crepeline is a super, super fine silk that is used by conservators to protect and stabilize worn textiles.  I buy both the natural and the brown.  You can see that, while they change the color of my hand a bit, they are still incredibly sheer.  The words "gossamer" and "fairy wings" come to mind.

That Old Italian Block

Although it sounds more like someone searching their memory for the right words, that truly is the name of this quilt pattern, "Old Italian Block".

The owner of this quilt had been told that the name is Corn and Beans, but it's really not like any of the blocks by that name in Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.  In the Encyclopedia, Brackman documents the Old Italian Block as a Nancy Cabot pattern.  It sometimes was used for signature quilts, with the name signed on the center square.  Why "Italian"?  I don't know.  Maybe it was inspired by a tiled floor that a quilter saw on her trip to Italy...

Black Bugle Beads

It's always a treat when I get something to repair that I really love looking at.  This dress is one of those treats.  It's a "little black dress" with extra flair - beaded trim at the neckline and the one asymmetrical pocket.  

Quite a few of the beads were missing, especially those decorating the pocket.  I bought a tube of matching bugle beads - how lovely to have such a basic bead so that I could find an exact match.

Here's the step-by-step of the bead replacement.