Sewing: B&W&P dress finished!

Here it is!

Okay, it's actually been done for a couple of months. And then it got cold, and I'm pretty much a wimp when it comes to voluntarily being chilled merely for pictures. So, you'll have to be satisfied with a non-human-modeling of the dress.

It turned out pretty cute. Perhaps it's a little high-school-dance-ish, but maybe I can get away with that look for a few more years (or not, and I'll look like the crazy middle-aged lady who thinks she's way younger than she looks). Other than the now-realized-somewhat-obnoxious-print, it's a good experience in doing weird little seams, as well as the seam bindings. I probably should have done a more invisible hem, but I wanted it done and didn't see an easy way to hem it securely.

Maybe at some point, I'll get brave enough to try a grown-up pattern, like Simplicity or Vogue...

Baking: Thanksgiving

We do Thanksgiving... big. This entails inviting everyone who doesn't have their own friends/family thing to go to. This year was only 16 people, so smaller than other years (and larger than others), but we'll still take it. Besides the normal turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, greens, and so on, my bragging rights really come after dinner. Here's part of the reason I haven't been sewing:

The pear-pomegranate pie in front is mine. The next is a friend's pumpkin cheesecake, a bowl of fresh persimmons, another friend's pumpkin whoopie pies, and my (boring but requisite and tasty) pumpkin pie. Besides the amazing tastiness of the pear pie (it went away quickly!), a lot of people commented on the lattice top. I've never had a problem with doing a lattice (although parts of me want to do fancy braiding things with skinnier strings of dough... wonder if kumihimo is a possibility). I always wonder how people do the dough leaf-cut-out things, because mine never look like leaves, even if I follow a pattern.

You'd think that the plethora of orange food would have brought out our inner Oompa Loompas... fortunately no.

When I look through your eyes...

I've recently (mentally) dug up an old presentation: Art Theory for Engineers. I kinda irritated some co-workers a few years back, when I not-at-all-subtly suggested that their uninformative and over-stuffed PowerPoint presentations looked awful, and they'd actually be more effective if they thought about eye/brain intake and color theory. Which was true! They prompty ignored my advice and kept presenting ineffective slides.

I mean, yes, the school mascot is kinda funny to have in print and completely enhances all of your cool scientific data. Especially graphs. Totally helps on graphs and points out the pertinent information. And flying-in or swirling out bullet points? Very impressive, because no one else thought of using that.

Oh sarcasm...

Where does art theory come into slides? It's all in your eyes. What were your eyes designed to do originally? See stuff that thinks it's about to eat you. Pretty important. Therefore, your eyes (and brain) are fantastic at picking out fine movements (based on high-contrast light and shadow) and bright out-of-place colors. Bright color, fine details. Let's take a look at what makes ads effective:

image from Crate and Barrel website

Lovely turkey dinner, just in time for Thanksgiving! What's the first thing your eyes focus on? Probably the turkey. Why? It's the bright white fine twine on the leg trusses. That's detail and contrast. The second thing your eyes focus on? Probably the wonderfully fluffy mashed potatoes (and you know they've got the right of butter in there, along with the potato skins for extra contrast). They're the next brightest thing, and in close proximity to the string/turkey. Then you follow the shiny silver immersion blender across to the left, which leads you to the patterned orange and yellow dishtowel, up to a similarly-colored wine glass, and back to the turkey. On your second pass, you'll probably notice that the knife block points to a lemon-yellow cassarole pot. You probably still won't notice the bowls of Granny Smith apples or cranberries in the background, not to mention the colander of whole potatoes in the front right.

So, what are they selling? Obviously since it's Crate and Barrel, they want you to buy kitchen stuff. From the picture, it's mostly about the food that happens to be sitting in and around kitchen stuff. Food is a fantastic motivator (hooray for the primitive brain), so it makes sense to make you hungry for, uh, roasting pans.

Let's try another:

image from Banana Republic website

This one's actually pretty clever at moving your eye around. It wouldn't be nearly as effective if the lettering weren't there.

Okay, breakdown time. You first look at her face. It's the only non-neutral color in her cheeks and lips, as well as the brightest part of the whole picture. Details make you then look at her eyes, which (cleverly) are reading the taglines! Because we read left-to-right, you then follow the last of the text over to the white part of the pattern in the sweater, which then leads down to her hands. Because her jacket is open, you follow the V-shape back up to her face via the bright strands of blonde-highlighted hair. Repeat loop. You probably don't realize what color her shirt is, or that it's even in the picture at all.

How's that? Impressed yet? Next time will be why some ads (and slide presentations) are ineffective.

Have you got any tips for effective presentations?

New kitchen lesser deity

In addition to my previous list of Kitchen Gods, I've recently re-discovered this blog: The Homesick Texan, who's happily stuck in New York City but missing the food of the South. While I haven't actually made anything from this scrumptious-looking site (I keep promising myself to make biscuits... arg!), the pictures and stories to go with the pictures are fantastic and drool-worthy (I'm sure she'd be horrified to hear "drool-worthy" as a descriptor of her blog).

Now, let me explain: I am a Northern girl. Very much so. I've never even been through Texas on road trips. I have no idea what Texan cuisine is all about. I do, however, have some idea of Southern cooking, having lived in Atlanta for three years. Not a lot, but some. I'm quite relieved to be back above the Mason-Dixon line, and don't intend on returning south except for friends' weddings or somesuch. But some of that Southern cooking really can be good for the soul (but not often for the waistline... eh... sacrifices). I'm not so hot on grits, but I'll take any variety of barbecue, stew, or cornbread.

Sewing: B&W&P dress inching along

It's so nice to come home from a long day at work, followed by the gym and tasty dinner, and totally crash for the evening. Which is why I've only done a little more on the dress:

Hey, check that out... forgot the purple sash. Go, me.

Obviously, I haven't shortened the hem of the lining yet. I figured it'd be easier to do once the outer skirt was done. It also looks a little shorter on the sides than the front. I think this is just a picture-image problem rather than a real-life problem. I think.

I ended up using that hem tape stuff after all. If you look reeeeeally closely, you can still see the dark/light layers through the seam, the hem tape, and the folded over (i.e. backside of the!) fabric. Doubling over the tape makes for a pretty hefty seam, but also gives the skirt some body and not-as-clingy look. We'll see if it stays that way once the lining's shortened.

New problem: If you know me, you know that I have very pasty-pale skin; the pictures make me look like I have a decent tan. I just realized that I already know that I look pretty bad in off-white. Huh. Why the heck did I choose a color that looks terrible on me?

Well, one more (major) seam to go...

Baking: More End of Summer

Even though the La Nina off the coast is determining otherwise, there was one last outing to the u-pick blueberry farm for jam ingredients. (Yeah, sometimes it's just hard to let go.) End of season berries still make good stuff:

The color of the contents of the jars are actually more like that of the top jar. If you look at them in the light (or with camera flash), they appear strangely pinky, like the bottom jars. Eh.

Now having made three kinds of preserved fruit goodness, here's the weird thing: I don't eat that much jam. What to do...

Sewing: B&W&P dress problems

Pesky dress.

The biggest hurdle in finishing the dress is that work has ramped up. And I just want to sleep when I get home.

Okay, another part of why I haven't had any progress on hemming the pesky B&W&P dress is the problem of see-through-ness. I've pinned up the dress (taking out about 7.5 inches, and it looks pretty good. Except when I tried to mock-up the normal rolled hem. The pattern was very evident. Too see-through. The twill tape I've been using on the seams is only half an inch wide, which would be difficult to manipulate into a hem. So, I got some 2" wide hem tape, which I assumed would be suitable for hemming. But I can still see the fabric pattern through it. Thinking about using a strip of the lining or something, but that would require more hemming of the strip. Or something.

Still working on it, but mostly in my head.

Any suggestions out there?