desert dessert

Hey guys! So about a week ago Nick and I packed our car and headed out west to Marfa, TX for a little desert excursion.  I go out there once a year for work, to give the resident artists a break from the humid Gulf coast and to become oversaturated in minimalist art.  It's always great to get away, even if it is for work.  I become a bit militant about sneaking in hotel pool time, a hike or two and lots of staring off into sunsets in between the tours and the meetings and the dinners (I know, it sounds awful, right? hehe...) 

During one of our last nights there, Nick and I snuck off into the desert to snap some blog photos.  It was super windy, and I had been on a long hike earlier that day, so please excuse my slightly sun-dazed and less-than-polished appearance in these photos! I've been meaning to get photos of this little shimmery skirt for literally months now. This is Grainline's Moss mini skirt that I made up, um... back in March...? Yeah... and it's now almost June... bad blogger!!! But this was really the pattern that made me decide that Jen was a genius. I'll try to keep my pattern-romanticizing to a minimum with this one (if you'd like to hear me wax poetic about Grainline patterns, then look no further than this post) but let me just say that, once again, the fit is spot on, the design is both modern, streamlined and classic, and the drafting of the pockets show that subtle attention to detail that makes a sewist like me go all gooey on the inside. 

The fabric is a linen from Tessuti fabrics (no longer available, but isn't is beautiful??) that I bought last spring with the intention of making a pair of shorts.  The shorts never happened, summer passed, and this pretty gold-flecked linen sat in my fabric pile for far too long.  Fast forward to this spring and all of a sudden I became obsessed with highly wearable, casual separates that could easily be incorporated into my wardrobe (hence the sudden interest in button-up shirts like my Archer, or this guy).  Not that a pair of shorts wouldn't have fit the bill, but my closet is decidedly lacking in this sort of versatile skirt.  Or really any skirts. At all. And that's just a shame, isn't it? I'm glad I went with the Moss mini skirt because it has been getting some serious wear ever since!

I don't really have too much more to say about this make! It was a dream to sew up - everything from the pattern to the fabric just seemed to marry perfectly.  Once again, Jen's tutorials were a huge help - this time to hold my hand through her fly front zipper insertion method, which was different from the method I've used in the past.  While the skirt might look like a bit of a wrinkly mess on me in these pictures (blame it on the linen, the long day, and my 'I-don't-care-I'm-on-vacation' attitude) it's really a very flattering little guy! It's definitely a mini skirt, which made me feel a tiny bit exposed at first, but I swiftly got over it once I realized just how darn comfy and practical it is! And, also, I mean... I think I've posted far more risqué things than this... so what's with all the false modesty all of a sudden?

I'm excited to use this pattern for more makes - I've been envisioning some variations in bright wools (like chartreuse or fuschia...) for fall and winter...

And now... since I'm all out of things to say... some gratuitous vacation instagram shots!

 

xx

mmmmmmarfa

i've been sitting down trying to write this post about our trip countless times over the past couple of days but unfortunately i keep getting distracted! so here we go!

nick (my husband) and i are pretty dismal about documenting our lives. this is funny because i'm quick to snap pictures of a new sewing project and have filled an entire blog with photos of me posing like a weirdo in public places - but when it comes to documenting trips, or life around us we both seem to forget what a camera is for! i always chalk this up to the fact that i'd rather be experiencing the beautiful sunset, rather than staring at it from behind a lens - but in reality i just forget that these are the moments i'm supposed to be capturing.

so thats my excuse for my utter lack of relevant photos from this trip.

last monday we got in our car and drove 11 hours through the state of texas. 11 hours of driving and we're still in this damn, big state! it was pretty incredible watching the landscape change as we went. from the humid, green, almost tropical gulf coast to the hill country in the middle of the state, to grasslands and then desert mountains. i was actually surprised by the mountains. in my head i thought west texas was all flat.

i have to say - its really beautiful out there. marfa is a pretty interesting place. its where the movie giant was filmed, and more recently there will be blood (a favorite of mine). marfa itself is teeny tiny, like a lot of the west tx towns we drove through. one or two main roads. one stoplight sort of thing. quiet and lazy. but its become a bit of a magnet for the art community. for a town with such a small population i think i saw more hipsters there than i would during sunday brunch in williamsburg!

we went out to marfa with the nonprofit i work for (and where my husband is a resident artist) it was maybe 10% a work trip and 90% vacation.  we stayed at the thunderbird hotel where i spent a good amount of time lazing by the pool reading the french lieutenant's woman. really, this is how i spent  most of my time in marfa (another reason for the lack of photos). and it was wonderful. in between pool lounging and lazily biking through the town to get falafel from the one and only food truck, we also paid our respects to the art gods.

the donald judd foundation and the chinati (or chinazi)  foundation (also by donald judd) are in marfa. we did a full tour of chinati (and were scolded on numerous occasions for being late, or drinking coffee, or taking too long to pee...) which is an old army base that judd bought up in the 60's or 70's and slowly renovated. it houses some pretty epic judd sculptures along with the work of some of his friends and other artists he felt were "worthy".

judd was never really a favorite artist of mine - but the metal works housed at chinati were really pretty damn good, and some of the best judd's i've ever seen. the work felt very appropriate for the buildings and the surrounding landscape, and i have to admit that he knew what he was doing by placing them there. some of the other works housed at chinati were not quite so well placed. or maybe i was just getting tired and "arted out" by the end of our 4 hour tour in the 108(F) degree heat. the dan flavins in particular required an extreme force of will to get through, and i think my entire group felt that by the end of the tour we had given more of ourselves to the soul sucking judd than he gave to us. like we made our sacrificial offering to the ghost of judd and somehow we would be exonerated by the art gods.

i'm joking of course.

sort of.

another highlight of the trip was our visit to the macdonald observatory on tuesday night where we attended an event celebrating the transit of venus. we had an excellent view of venus as she eclipsed the setting sun - the last time it will happen for another 150 years. did anyone else get a chance to check this out? you would have needed special glasses to see it with your naked eye - but nasa had a live feed of it too. it wasn't that exciting - just a tiny dot traveling over the surface of the sun, but i always get pretty geekily excited about that sort of stuff. driving out to the observatory also afforded us a glimpse at some of the surrounding land. the mountains and scrubby desert vegetation. and one of the most breathtaking sunsets i've ever witnessed.

we're planning on making the marfa trip a yearly excursion for the artist residency (maybe someday i'll tell you about what i do for a living - its pretty radical - in the 80's sense of the word) so hopefully next spring i'll be making the trek again. next time i (hopefully) won't have an oozing toe and will be able to do some hiking in the surrounding land. and of course i'll return to cleanse myself in the sacrificial waters of mid to late 20th century art...

this photo has absolutely nothing to do with marfa. but it was just too good to pass up!

things have been pretty quiet on the sewing front lately. i'm having trouble starting some of the bigger projects i had planned for this summer, and i keep getting distracted by all the inspiring things i'm seeing on everyone else's blog! might be time for me to buckle down and get focused...

in the meantime, i have a few "life" and non-sewing related posts i've been wanting to get up on this here blog, so i might turn my attention to those while i wait for my sewing intuition to kick back into gear!

hope you're all having a great june - its freaking hot down here!

xx