On With the Sew

Readers, thank you so much for your many words of support regarding my mother's injury.

She asked me to send along her thanks as well.  My mom's doing somewhat better: eating (not enough but some), pushing through her exercises with her physical therapists, and even -- this is a big one -- accepting phone calls and visits from a few friends.  I see her most days and I'm actually enjoying the trips, believe it or not.  Being able to bicycle to the hospital (well, near it) helps too.

But life is not all fractured femurs, thank goodness.

Today I managed to squeeze in a visit to the fabric store in preparation for my next big(gish) project, which I believe will be a men's raglan-sleeved overcoat -- a style known formally as a balmacaan.  I'll probably use a pattern from Ryuichiro Shimazaki's men's coat pattern book, the one I used last year to make my peacoat(s).  Hopefully I can complete a muslin this week.









I set out for the store thinking solid navy or gray for this coat but stumbled upon this dusty rose melton -- I'm calling it "light liver" for now -- which I love. This was was of those popular institutional colors in the 1950's -- think church basement linoleum and school lunchroom trays.  (I grabbed matching thread at Sil Thread.)





Longtime readers may be reminded of Cathy's 1940's topper, which I made from a vintage blanket three years ago.  Cathy and I have very similar coloring so I'm hoping what works for her will work for me too.







In other news, I received another color-related book (actually, this is more of a color guide) which a number of you had recommended, Joen Wolfrom's Ultimate 3-in-1 Color Tool.  What I like about it is that it's compact and portable (it even comes in its own plastic case) so you can easily tote it to the fabric store (the cards are all attached at the bottom right corner).











The back of each color card lists the colors that match best.







I have lots of other topics I hope to address this week.  These include:

1) Why is it so hard to find a good quality men's cotton turtleneck shirt these days? (They were ubiquitous when I was in high school in the 70's.)

2) Are perfect-sighted people who choose to wear glasses just for the look of it hopelessly vain?

3) How many Singer Featherweights does a person really need?

Don't respond to these now -- save your thoughts for later.

Have a great day, everybody and, once again, thank you for your support.  I'm off to the hospital!