Woo hoo hoo! Shoe hoo hoo. EDITED TO ADD: Aw poo poo

EDITED: Ain't happenin'. These shoes really are sold out. What I loved about them was the mix of leather and the canvas touches, plus the look of leather wrapping around the sole. Even similar KORS shoes with the leather wrapping around the sole are sold out. Oh well. Wish I knew how to make shoes.

Happy-happy-happy dance. I may soon have the shoes from this Stylin' polyvore in my hot little hands and on my hot little feet:

I've been watching them since, what, March? They're now on big discount because the summer season is nearly ovah. But there's just enough time remaining for me to do my own New Dress A Day transformation and accessorize it with these sandals. A month ago, I picked up a size 6 looooooong beige skirt (same color as the fabric in the photo above) at Macy's for $11. It was so cheap I felt guilty buying it.

Now there's a few problems though. The skirt is dowdy as heck. And I'm not exactly a size 6 for the time being. For the time being. Because been there, done that, ain't opposed to doin' the size 6 again. Ha. But for $11, we can overcome.

Positive points are, it has a fantastic flare and swing. And if I hike the waist up over my bust, the skirt actually fits! It skims over my waist and down the back and the flare and swing swirl just above my knees, very flatteringly all around. Wow. This dowdy skirt can easily become a cute dress. I need to fashion some shoulder straps and the skirt will need to be worn over a T or blouse. And I also need to add triangle shaped wedges at the waist, in spots that will now be the underarm points, to give the clearance for a bust. It's a full bust adjustment, actually.

I will post this New Dress A Day refashioning soon. With the fabulous shoes!

But don't count on any more posts like that. It will likely be the Only New Dress A Day.

New Dress A Day Blog

Many of us in the online sewing community are well aware of A Dress A Day blog.

But have you heard of the New Dress A Day blog? I heard of it through an email my sister sent. Must say, very impressive!! She sews a dress a day. And not only that, she sews a dress a day from $1 garments that are beyond their glory years. In fact, many of them never had any glory. Somehow she has the vision to make them glorious. Truly.

Check out a typical transformation. From this:

To this:

Yeah, incredible vision. Plus she puts the time into photographing the steps of the transformations and writing about them. We appreciate!

Sewing in the News

It's been an extraordinarily busy summer. But during snippets of downtime, I surf the NYTimes app on my iPhone and read the free articles. I enjoyed these stories:

A Return to Basics, One Stitch at a Time
Published 8/9/10 -- FLORENCE — When Sara Checcucci opened her atelier in Galluzzo, a southern district of Florence bordering the Chianti hillsides, she was astonished by the number of young people who would stop to gaze at her through the window as she worked. Later some of them came in and asked her to teach them her skills. So she arranged a series of evening courses, and was even more surprised when her pupils included young men. ...

Fashion Tries on Zero Waste Design
Published 8/13/10 -- YOU wear organic T-shirts. You hang your clothes to dry. You recycle your unloved suits and dresses. But frankly, that’s just the tip of the green iceberg. Today’s truly fashion-forward have a more radical ambition: zero waste. That may sound more like an indie band than an environmental aspiration, but it’s a new focus of top fashion schools. ...

Is Italy Too Italian?
Published 7/31/10 -- “THIS tradition is finita,” says Luciano Barbera, as he opens the door to an underground warehouse. Dozens of large wooden boxes are stacked to the ceiling, containing nearly 80 tons of colorful thread, wound in spools and idling like sunbathers at a beach, absorbing moisture in a cavernous room kept naturally cool and humid by a creek that burbles under the floor. ...


Plus, is Elaine Benes style (remember Seinfeld?) now "in"?

The New Adventures of Old Elaine
Published 8/18/10 -- ON a recent August night, young women in stilettos teetered precariously through the cobblestone streets of the meatpacking district in Manhattan. Appropriately for the neighborhood, they were squeezed into minidresses that were as snug as sausage casings. But a few blocks south, far away from the blare of Hummer limousine horns, at the fashionable opening of the Algus Greenspon Gallery on Morton Street, a more demure look prevailed. Like a modest Robert Palmer-girl army, the women mingled in floor-length print dresses and brown lace-up boots with their hair in messy secretary buns. The genesis of the look could have been those unforgettable images of fundamentalist Mormon women that dominated the news a couple of years back. But if you squinted, what you saw was a sea of Elaines. ...

Image from NY Times

You gotta be kidding me ... I hope ...