Needlepoint Book

I bought this book from the 1970s for $1. I haven’t ever done needlepoint, but I liked the patterns in it.

I like some of those geometric patterned pillows.

Here are some of the patterns in the book.

Bright Geometric Pullover Dress

I’ve made this pullover dress before—it was an easy dress to make and had wanted to make another one for quite some time. I finally got around to it. Since the pattern is so simple, I thought a more interesting fabric would be nice to use. For the bodice, I decided on using a bright geometric fabric that I got at a thrift store. For me, a little pattern goes a long way, so I picked a plain black crepe fabric I had in my fabric stash for the skirt portion to balance things out.

I didn’t run into any problems sewing the dress. But I’ll admit that I was too lazy to fix the seams where the pattern doesn’t meet itself properly. It was my intention to do it right, but I wasn’t paying too much attention when I was pinning the fabric together and sewing it. I realized my mistake after the fact, and truthfully didn’t care that much. I mean, how often are people looking at your side seams?

The one improvement I made was that I added pockets this time. The pattern doesn’t have pockets, so I took a pocket pattern piece from another dress and just added it in. It didn’t take too much extra time to do and was totally worth it.

Overall, I’m satisfied with the dress. I like the pop of color and interest the pattern brings—which is pretty vibrant in comparison to most of the clothes I wear. I also like the dress when I use a sash that I made some time ago (and is the same black crepe fabric as the skirt).

Pattern Stamps

Recently, I spent a chunk of time carving stamps. I did some sketches of different patterns and chose some of my favorites to make into stamps. The faster and less involved way would have been to have a stamp company make them for me, and that would have made the most sense if they were highly intricate or type heavy, but my patterns were fairly doable to hand carve. Plus, I really like the imperfections and slightly off lines that make the stamps feel handmade and unique. It wasn’t exactly fun carving all my patterned stamps, but I’m happy with the results. I think they’re quite nice. Simple. Geometric.