I'm a Tart! (But only when it comes to tartan - heh, heh, heh).

I saw this beautiful plaid fabric on sale about a week ago and couldn't stop thinking about it. (Alas, the pattern I thought I'd use with it was not on sale, so it'll have to wait). Still, I am having fun thinking about what I can make from this - it will probably be a skirt, but I'm thinking a jaunty capelet would be kind of cool (think Nanny of Nanny and the Professor, but not prissy - say more vintage Bonnie Cashin with leather trim and toggles). 

There is so much to like about this fabric. Not just the colours, all of which I love - soft mossy green and slate grey squares bordered by a warm chocolate brown, but the good feelings it brings, too. I can't see tartan without thinking of grade school and high school, at which time I pretty much always had a plaid skirt of some sort. Typically in shades of red with green, I'd wear it with woollen tights in the winter, tights which would usually pill, come to think of it. In high school it felt very 'Seventeen magazine'  September back-to-school issue to wear a plaid skirt, good for those days when I wasn't wearing my Lee corduroy overalls. 

My memories of grade school cannot be separated from colour or smell - the colour of my crinkly faux-leather, square-toed ruby red shoes, the diamond pattern in my nylon Tam o' Shanter vest, the one inherited from my cousin; the brown, rust and gold striped body suit with the snaps at the crotch I had to wear on gym days and rubber yellow slicker that fit loose over most everything. The smell of wet woollen mitts drying on the radiator, sometimes with a string and sometimes without, or of the cable-knit scarf still laden with clumps of snow. 

I will wear this tartan with a sweater - grey or brown, green or maybe a nice cream - and my comfy brown boots. I will wear tights that do not sag in the seat. And I'll really like that whatever I make, no one else is going to have the exact same thing, ever.

As it looked, still on the bolt.

Looks a bit too Fred MacMurray meets Julius Caesar.

Way too Rob Roy MacGregor - Mel Gibson with a mullet - all it needs is a sporran. No.

We're getting warmer! I love the way it's off-center (I'm dying to say 'off-kilter!') and the fabric gathers and tumbles down the side. It can't trail on the ground, though, not unless I'm having dinner at Balmoral. 

Cat just plain likes it any old way.