I'm a Winner!

Today was the Los Angeles ASG Annual Meeting in Calabasas. It was about an hour and a half drive, but fortunately it didn't rain on my friend Karen and I. The meeting was a lot of fun, especially when I won one of the door prizes.

I've won the door prize at the last two meetings I've attended. One was the Chickasaw Tribe Council meeting a couple of months ago. I won a t-shirt. This time, however, I hit the jackpot! Included in the package was a quilt of the month pattern for Halloween, a 5in1 sliding gauge from Nancy Zieman which I've been wanting, a 15-piece fat quarter collection in a lovely metal basket, and a bottle of Mary Ellen's Best Press. When they brought up the package, Karen told me I should smell how good the Best Press was and I told her that I would just have to win the prize--and I did!

The meeting's guest speaker was Leora Raikin from African Folklore Embroidery. While her stuff is really interesting, I'm not going to be picking up a needle and floss anytime soon. However, her stories about South Africa and the life there was fascinating. Next time I have a South African guest to my house, I'll be sure to offer them some tea.

After the meeting on the way home, we just happen to be passing near downtown Los Angeles so we stopped at the garment district where I found 27 yards of knits that needed to be mine. Knowing that I'm close to a new t-shirt pattern, I was on the lookout for some great new fabrics to sew up this fall and winter. 

Starting from the left chair arm to the right, the teal blue and purple flowers is a heavy onionskin type poly knit. The next seven fabrics from the brown and turquoise fabric around to the large black snakeskin print are all poly lycra prints. Under these is an embossed orange heavy acetate slinky, then a non stretchy heavy textured poly knit in a black and white print, and then an RPL double knit in navy for some yoga pants. And last but not least, hanging from my dress form is a poly ruffle knit fabric in a red and black tie-dyed animal print fabric. All the fabrics except the ruffled one came from either Michael Levine, or the Loft. I don't remember the name of the store where I purchased the ruffle. It was sitting outside the store and was calling my name very loudly, so I just followed it inside and got 2.5 yards of it. I only wanted 2 yards, but they threw in the last half yard for free. Again, lucky me!

Tomorrow I'm supposed to go clothes shopping with my niece, but all I want to do is stay home and sew up some of these fantastic new fabrics. So far, the 3/4-length sleeve t-shirt from the 2-2007 Ottobre Magazine is looking like a clear winner for me. I cut the pattern too big, so once I trace it again in a smaller size and make it again, I'll know for sure if it's just right for me. I'm not sure why, but I traced it out in the largest size, and I should have made it in a size 48, which is the size I usually cut for this pattern line.

Thank you to everyone for their great ideas on finding my old t-shirt pattern. Trina had a great idea to make a rubbing off one of my old t-shirts. I tried that and the t-shirt made from the rubbed off pattern just didn't fit right. I'm not sure why. However, I did trace that pattern in permanent ink onto my cutting board so I'll never lose it again. I think I'll do the same thing with my new favorite pattern, when I get it perfected.

It's time to take myself and this lovely feline to bed for the night. Do you see why I prefer prints to solids? They don't show the cat hair nearly so much. That, and I think they hide the flabby rolls around my middle. I promise that my next post I will be sharing some t-shirts.