After a few days on Grand Cayman, I was starting to get a feel for the place. It was very civilized, but it felt a bit forced. I’d seen only one other interracial couple since we’d been there. Portraits of the Queen and Prince Charles hung at the airport. I’d made a joke about tea time one day only to have one of the Chaplain’s friends casually mention meeting someone for tea the next day.
When we got off the plane on Grand Cayman, we were greeted at Customs by lines of white people, wearing beachy clothes and smelling of laundry detergent and sunblock. Lots of families. At least one person in each family group had a shirt touting a destination from a previous vacation. These were professional tourists. The kind that go on vacation to the Caribbean.
I go on vacation in the Caribbean, too. But I’ve never done it as a stranger. Our many trips to Trinidad and Tobago have been met with family at the other end, and our trip to the Cayman Islands was no different.
Since the Chaplain’s friend had arranged our accommodations, we didn’t know the address of the place where we’d be staying – something you need to provide at Customs. The Customs Officer called the Chaplain’s friend on his cell to find out the address, while we waited at the counter, hoping the friend would answer a call from an unknown number.
I’ve made five pairs of pants using the Arenite pattern, and I saw on Instagram that Meg of Sew Liberated had made one of her pairs of pants into shorts. I was looking for a couple of quick makes before our trip to the Cayman Islands, and this Arenite shorts hack came together in just a few hours.
This is a choose your own adventure post – for posterity, I’m going to include the instructions for how to make this skirt in the post, but if you aren’t interested in the details, feel free to scroll for pics instead.
We had a wedding to go to recently, and Three asked me to make her something. I’d picked up some traditional African block print fabric this spring and thought it would be the perfect thing to use for a skirt for her.
I kept this pretty simple – it was an afternoon wedding, and I started the skirt that morning.
When you make a pattern a number of times, you start to know what you want to change before you even begin working on the next version. You know how to get a little closer to perfection.
By the time I finished my first two Metamorphic dresses, I had a plan in my head for a last, “ultimate” Metamorphic dress. It would be the perfect colors, and the perfect length. I’d use everything I learned from all the other makes I’d worked on this past spring and it would be amazing.
And it is. But it isn’t perfect.
