Mystery Solved

Wasn't the Mystery blog hop fun? I realized somewhere along the way that making guesses is not so easy! So i don't know about you, but i can't wait to see what some of the items were...still scratching my head about a few of them. Be sure to head over to the Jolly Jabber to see if you're a winner! Again, so many thanks to everyone at Fat Quarter Shop for sponsoring this.

So i thought i'd share a little more about the item i picked out. When i thought about what "vintage modern" meant to me, i couldn't help but think about the cycles of trends in fashion and how they come and go and define a certain point in time. You know that old adage "what's old is new again"? I think that about sums it up. Maybe just add, "and will be old again, eventually". I was a teenager in the '80s and would have to say there are lots of trends i hope never come around again (think Flashdance and genie pants — i think i had a pair in every color)! How about you?

Just to refresh, here's the "clue" you had to guess about:

When i was digging around in my closet for something vintage-ie, i came across a pair of wraparound polyester bellbottom palazzo-ish pants. The search was over! Definitely vintage, but oh so modern. They were given to me by my Mom who bought them in 1968 (when Lyndon Johnson was president) at Henri Bendel in New York City — which would make them 44 years old — older than my sister and me!

The vibrant colors have not faded one bit in all these years thanks to go ol' polyester (and probably all the time they've spent in the bottom of my closet). The poly is that soft silky kind, not the jumpsuit kind à la Charlie's Angels. And the "wraparound" feature is...interesting to say the least. First you tie the back pant panel(?) around your waist and then tie the front panel(?) around to the back...at least i think that's the way it's supposed to work!

I can't believe i'm going to share this with you, because i much prefer to be on the other side of the camera, but here is a dorky picture of me wearing them:

In honor of my Mom, who wore her hair in braids all the time, i figured i would too. And i'll even admit that i actually used to wear them out (yes, in public!) when i was in my 20's. That was over 20 years ago and this was the first time i tried them on since then. Happily shocked to say they still fit!

But the weirdest thing that occurred to me when i pulled these out of the closet, was how much this print looks like the Pond Garden print i designed in Good Fortune! Could it be that somehow, somewhere in my visual memory banks there was something about this pattern that embedded itself in there?? Maybe that's how something vintage becomes modern again...hmm...

And here's a little Franny fur to end the week:

 Have a wonderful weekend!

xo,

katehttp://fatquartershop.blogspot.com/2012/03/winners-2012-designer-mystery-blog-hop.html

Seeing Spots and Dots

 I love dots. In our bathroom alone, there are dots on

our shower curtain:

on our bath mat:

and in a framed doodle i painted using a strong brew of tea:

I love them so much that i think i could design using only dots and never tire of the possibilities!

Are you familiar with Yayoi Kusama? She is one of my favorite dot artists. Recently, she did an interactive installation called "The Obliteration Room" at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Australia. It started out looking like this:

 Then over the course of two weeks, each child visitor was given colorful dot stickers and was invited to collaborate with the space. After thousands of visitors, the room soon looked like this!

 There is a wonderful series of photos that shows

the progression over time on Colossal.

Another of my favorite dot artists is Georges Seurat. Long before pixels, his pointillist paintings are composed of small dots of pure colors that are placed next to each other. For instance, blue dots next to yellow dots that when viewed from afar, our eye actually mixes the colors so we perceive them as green. Amazing! Someday, i hope to stand in front of this one at the Art Institute of Chicago:

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884

And then there's artist Paul Klee, who once said, "A line is a dot that went for a walk". It was my high school art teacher who shared that with me and the humor in it stuck. I think of that every time i open my sketchbook and touch my pencil point to the paper. So i like to think of a drawing as a dot on an adventure...and each collection of designs as a journey. Packing now. Bon voyage!