fabric-buying aw yiss

[mandie_rw]

I meant to buy the light blue voile from FFC earlier to make the tea gown for Belvidere, as today was the last day of their free shipping coupon code, and I like to not pay shipping. Went on tonight and it was sold out, oops. Cue a mad scramble to find something else to make a wrapper out of - as usual, there was a certain amount you had to spend to get the free shipping, and I really wanted to get my Take Two of bathing costume flannel (the first one I bought is really too heavy...and also not terribly colorfast, apparently. I could have been practical and cheap and just bought the cotton twill that was on sale...but I really want to experience the flannel bathing suit in all its glory! I'm weird). This one promises it's lightweight. We shall see.

Anyway, said flannel did not get me up to the free shipping, so I really dug around through the lightweight cottons (nada) and the tropical-weight wools (aha!), and found something in the wools. Two somethings, actually. *shifty eyes* I found a blue and ivory stripe wool-poly blend that might work for the wrapper/tea gown - if it's too poly-ish when it gets here, back it will go, but currently I'm hopeful. I adore lightweight wools but why are 99% of the affordable ones black, navy, and grey?? So BORING! (Yes, I know, suits. People make other things besides suits from wool, come on!)

The other tropical weight wool I found and couldn't resist will be for my next early 1880s warm-weather dress. I have no plans to make it soon, but since natural form seems to be an established Thing for us now, I can tell I'm going to get tired of my one and only dress after I wear it at least twice more this year. Not to mention, it's all cotton, but it's a joann's printed broadcloth, so not particularly lightweight when you get all the linings and the overskirt and everything else on together. The cream/navy check I found is 100% wool so I'm fairly confident it'll be cooler than the cotton dress if it's really tropical weight like they promise!

Apparently I like blue today...hopefully I like blue still when I go to use all this fabric! The flannel is blue too... (And yes, this after complaining about the lack of color variety in wools...)

(I'm attempting pictures again. via Google, thanks to jenthompson 's help, but I'm too dumb to figure out how to make them smaller when using an embed code, so this will not be an ideal method when I have pics taken on a camera instead of pilfered from a fabric site, because then they will be GIANT EFFIN' PICTURES, so. Hmm.)

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Comments

[robinsnest]

Ooo I like the check! And when you wear blue you're Mary Poppins hee hee hee

[mandie_rw]

IT'S ALL GOING BACK

*cancels order*

*burns all blue fabric*

[robinsnest]

*listens for distant music*

JUST A SPOON FULL OF SUGAAAAR

[isabelladangelo]

I'm sure you are aware but double check all the fabric anyway - FFC loves to lie about what their fabric is made out of.

[mandie_rw]

They sure do! I've heard some horror stories, though thankfully the worst experience I had personally was them sending a barfy orange coarse-weave poly blend instead of a deep red wool one time, LOL! (Me: This is not quite as described... Them: Oooh, yeah, that's not even the right fabric! Wanna send it back? Me: Yup!)

[brickhousewench]

I adore my tropical weight wool gown. Thanks for reminding me to start lurking the fabric sights for tropical weight again.

[mandie_rw]

Tropical weight wool is just lovely, isn't it? No matter how much I read about it, I found it hard to believe WOOL really was that cool, til I made my 1920s housemaid dress out of tropical weight, wore it on a humid, 90+F day, and became a convert. So nice!