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

27

happy birthday to me

i live in a tree

my na-ame is sallie

happy birthday to me!

yeah ok. my birthday was actually yesterday. i was too busy doing birthday stuff to blog. sometimes its gotta take a back seat, ya know? and here is my birthday dress!! don't you just wanna eat that floral print from tessuti?? i do. uh oh. sallie. don't eat the dress...

and look at that!! a smile! it must be a birthday miracle...

i wore this dress to a lovely wedding this past weekend for some truly lovely people. i don't know when it happened - but give me a pretty dress, a pretty wedding, pretty people, and a pretty good helping of champagne and i turn into one big old sentimental fool!

the wedding was really wonderful. it was out near kyle, tx. if that means anything to you then you're golden. i'm pretty geographically challenged even in the best scenarios so i kept stopping in the middle of admiring the beautiful landscape and saying "wait! just where the hell are we??!?" it didn't help that i couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone either. at first i was told i was somewhere in between houston and austin. then austin and san antonio. then i was basically outside of austin.

so that place - somewhere near-ish austin. in the region of texas... it was damn beautiful! we spent the weekend camping and then spruced ourselves up for the wedding and danced the night away! sunday was my birthday which was spent driving back to galveston and taking a looong loooonnngggg nap!

i had wanted to take these pictures out where we were camping (wherever that was...) because it was just so freaking idyllic what with the wildflowers and the bluebells and herds of caribbean goats... no really. i actually had a rather unnerving incident with a ram where he stared me down pretty intensely - on my birthday!!! (did i mention my birthday was yesterday??) this is important because i'm an aries - the ram!!! do you think he recognized me as one of his own??!?

oh yeah, but i didn't because, you know, i got caught up with celebrating. so you just get regular old galveston pictures.

oh yeah - so this dress! rachel comey for vogue patterns (v1209) made up in a tessuti silk.

well! i'm very glad a made a muslin. i did all the things i said i was going to do in my muslin post: i cut a bigger size, i let the bias hang, i added 2 inches of length and la-dee-da-dee-dee... all was going fine and dandy. until i got to the lining. lordy.

i mean really anytime i try and sew on a deadline i'm basically asking for some 2am drama rama. and thats what i got. i don't know what the deal was with this pattern. its cute as a button - don't get me wrong - but its a funky funky pattern. i'm usually one to own up to my own mistakes, but i really don't think this was my fault! i cut the lining the same size i cut my dress, and the dress without the lining fit great. so after installing the lining i go to try it on and... so tight!! like. child size tight. like it would not budge below my armpits.

i'm still not sure what the deal was - i didn't do anything wrong!! anyway i had a sad little breakdown in the wee hours of the morning where i weighed what seemed like my only two choices. either cut the lining out of the dress entirely (my fashion fabric is totally opaque - so it didn't really need a lining) or unpick the seams and see what that does. i decided to go for the latter. so i unpicked all my pretty french seams and re-sewed them at 1/4 inch. the lining fits - and comfortably - but the silk fabric is now a bit delicate. i think at some point the lining will need to be replaced - but i'm going to wait till i bust a seam to do that...

oh! and perhaps you're wondering how that zipper inserted into the bias seams worked out?

what zipper?!?!? muahahahhahahaha!!! that invisible zipper is invisible ya'll!!! okay well maybe not entirely invisible - but its very neat and there's no funny buckling of fabric. sunni's tutorial did me right. oh so right.

i wore my dress with my leather jacket when the night got a little bit chilly. they look good together. almost like they were made for each other (wink!)

and because i can... here's a lovey-dovey photobooth set for you from the wedding. whoever started doing photobooths at weddings was a genius.

well i'm off to stretch out the birthday goodness for a few more hours/days/weeks!!

xx

lightening bolts in my eyes

oh hello there blogland.

after a fight with a stomach bug this past week (i won) i've been left feeling a bit like a wet rag. when i become couch ridden its very easy for me to stay that way - well past my recuperation. when illness hits its like all my desire to be a normal, functioning human bean (because it sounds so much more fun than "human being") just drains out of me. so in order to kick my butt into gear i've decided i need to get organized and get inspired. it is with this impetus that i now turn my attention to my plans for spring/summer sewing.

spring in texas usually comes early (technically we've been having "spring" since january) and is generally quite lovely - and short lived. its merely the veil behind which the evil beast that is summer hides. our summers are like winter to all you northeners. its a marathon season which you hunker down for, pool your resources, and get ready for endless months of blinding heat and suffocating humidity.

sure, the weather might waffle back and forth a bit longer in my part of texas, but its undeniable that hot weather is around the corner, and when it hits, it hits hard. and if you're not ready for it you may find yourself a miserable hot mess. well, you'll still be a miserable hot mess regardless, but having a wardrobe full of sunny colors and easy breezy shapes helps to make one feel pretty regardless of the boob sweat (ooooooohhhhh the boob sweat!)

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i've really been feeling these punchy pink hues paired with earthy browns, greys and olives.

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i always find myself drawn to these loose, easy shapes at this time of the year. particularly when made up in a light silk, these types of dresses are perfect for allowing a breeze to pass through, and there is just something magical about silk blowing against your skin - its like a built in air-conditioner! i also love that last image - that picture has been implanted in my brain every time i imagine my summer wardrobe.

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hot summer + white dresses = perfection. need i say more? yes. yes i do. because that picture of frida, like the lovely lady in chambray standing in the surf above, has also been burned into my minds eye in association with summer. i've never cared for her paintings much (just a personal preference) but every time i see a photo of frida kahlo i'm always blown away by her beauty and personal style.

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by hook or by crook - this summer i will be making one of these pairs of shoes mine! about once a season i like to make a major shoe purchase, and shoes are one of those things that i generally feel okay spending a bit more one because, well, my feet are no laughing matter. also i feel that one great pair of shoes can be worn practically daily for an entire season and no matter what, they'll take your outfit up a notch. and i just really like shoes. i mean, lets call a spade a spade here...

in conclusion - friends, do you ever get the sewing blahs? oh, didn't i say i have the sewing blahs? well i do, despite my convalescence, i've been feeling a bit uninspired behind the sewing machine the past week. this post from mpb and this fabulous chart from oona are definitely hitting home for me! this is funny because i'm actually making something - something i hope to have finished and ready to photograph for you this weekend. anyway, if you do get the sewing blahs - what usually gets you out of it?

xx

hi. my name is sallie forrer, and i am not a witch.

Well, maybe I am.
I thought I should introduce my face to this here bloggy blog. Hello blog. This is me. And despite my feverish gesticulations with twigs, stringing together some vaguely Latin inspired words, and poking and prodding at newts, I am, as of yet, not a witch. However, I have been inspired to dress like one lately.
Today I wore a blanket / shawl. The impetus for this being me moaning and groaning about the house (a witch, no - but perhaps a ghost?) this morning, not wanting to go to work, and finally I called out to the man of the house "why don't I own a poncho?!?"
To which he thoughtfully replied, "I don't know - why don't I own a poncho?" (Uh oh! I know what someones getting for Christmas! Twinzies...)
Anyway I instead decided to throw this blankety item I bought from UO to keep the chill of the A/C off of my shoulders while at work over me and added this bestial belt and some shoesies. And I was off. On my broom In my car.

Wearing: UO blankety shawl thing, Anthropologie wolfman belt, Levi's Mom-butt high-waist jeans, Jeffrey Campbell clogs

I usually end up throwing some sort of blanket/shawl over me while at work anyway - since I get very cold - so I figured I might as well style it into some sort of outfit.

So full disclosure here: I really am not a witch (yes I am) but maybe it is just this Autumn-y time of year (its still really freaking hot) that has me thinking of cloaking myself (no seriously, I'm sweating) in layers and adding voluminous elements (to hide all the tacos I eat) to create a different silhouette (taco belly). Regardless I like the slightly mysterious "how does that woman use her arms" sort of feeling it gives. Answer: I don't. I'm typing this with my nose (see: witch). Plus, yesterday while at the Walgreens picking up the necessities and in full on drapey mode some fine gentleman, who wasn't creepy at all, stopped me and said, "You look so familiar, are you Russian?"
I didn't know if I reminded him of his babushka wearing grandmother or his mail-order bride who used him as a ticket to the U.S. then ditched his creepster ass. My thigh-high stockings and smudgy red lipstick leads me to think it was probably the latter.
xo
s.
p.s. I really am planning on giving ya'll (note: non-ironic use of ya'll) a post on things I am making very soon - since that is really what I want this blog to be about - not whatever asshole outfit I put together or my latest gripes about the 90's fashion trends. Okay bye!