Score!

...as a young fellow with whom I used to work would say.  Yesterday I "scored" big while cleaning up after the fund-raising second-hand book sale at the Library.  This beautiful tome was mineminemine for our going price: twenty-five cents!

Thanks to my recent subscription to The Quilt Show, I'd purchased a past show featuring Virginia Avery -- and I was smitten.  Her work is beautiful, her sense of humour is terrific, and her sense of style, even more so.

Collaged Autumn Vest

 A few years ago I made a vest in fabric collage style of Rosemary Eichorn.

Sashiko collar - started

 Percolating in my brain for the past year has been a design for a coat, and right now, on my sewing table is the hanten jacket I'm making my son for Christmas, so this book couldn't have landed in my lap at a more opportune moment!  I've set out to read it cover-to-cover today, interspersed with working on said jacket, attaching the collar (the sashiko embroidery thereon is finished now).

The pattern for the hanten is from a beautiful book, Jenni Dobson's Making Kimono and Japanese Clothes, given to me last year by an elderly friend who's no longer sewing.  This book will also provide the pattern for the base garment that I'll use for the 'percolating' coat, tentatively titled "Garment of Praise".

It would seem that I am combining my sewing roots (garments and embroidery) with my more-recent quilting skills...for a new aspect of art quilting.