Gibson and Widget were napping on one of the rocking chairs.
Timber was napping on top of the armoire.
I thought, here's my opportunity to cut out some fabric!
The fabric wasn't even unfolded before I had all three cats playing peek-a-boo as I shook it out.
I retreated to the front porch...
First cutting the yardage in half and then laying out my two pattern pieces.
The top is from, The Act of Sewing and the skirt is one that I self drafted.
I rounded the curve in the arm hole a little bit as I cut the first piece.
The first layer was used as the pattern for the second layer.
I've found that I like this top better when I use the neckline for the back on both sides.
***
This afternoon I've been listening to presentations for an online early childhood education conference. There was discussion on the power of making mistakes.
I thought about how many pieces of clothing its taken me to reach the point of being comfortable making clothes that I am happy with.
To reach the point where a pattern is a suggestion and nothing else because I know what I like and what works with my body type.
There have been a lot of things through the years that were cut up and used for something else or that are still waiting for me to imagine another use.
Thinking about how mistakes are only mistakes when we imagine a desired outcome, when we are expecting a certain result.
***
Thinking about this:
"Our culture has beheld with suspicion unproductive time, things not utilitarian and daydreaming in general, but we live in a time when it is especially challenging to articulate the importance of experiences that don't produce anything obvious, aren't easily quantifiable, resist measurement, aren't easily named, are categorically in-between." Ann Hamilton (found here)
And, from Neil Gaiman's book Fragile Things (which I am getting my own copy of as soon as possible!)
“600 professional dreamers would have been needed, to reveal the nature of things hidden beneath the roots of the trees and in the deepest mountain cabins and the depths of the seas for the map to be worth anything needed to contain the visible empire and the invisible.” Neil Gaiman Fragile Things Chapter 2
Professional dreamer...that's the job I want.