A month on the road.

"Maybe we should just drive...?"

Faced with the daunting task of packing sewing machines and costume accessories for our flights to Los Angeles for this year's Costume College — and the equally daunting task of getting bolts of fabric purchased in the garment district for Lee & Pearl™ Fabric & Trim Kits (more on that later) back to the Lone Star workroom, "Lee" uttered those five innocent little words.

A month, and many wonderful classes, new friends, added skills, a once-in-a-lifetime fabric shopping opportunity (seriously, MORE ON THAT LATER), gorgeous sunsets, flat tires, prickly cacti, pine forests, trading posts, museums and museum gift shops, family get-togethers, a new American Girl™ doll debut and one amazing total solar eclipse later, we are back in the workroom, fired up with inspirations and ready to set to work on all our fall projects.

Come along as we take a quick tour through everything we did, saw, learned, bought, made and plan to share with you!

Costume College 2017

The outbound drive from Texas to Southern California was a pleasant introduction to the next few weeks. We were favored with brilliant blue skies and clear highways for the long hours on the road, as well as beef jerky in the center console and Audible eBooks on the stereo.

Once in Woodland Hills, we settled in for some serious learning at Costume College, an annual convocation of costume and cosplay professionals, educators and enthusiasts of all types, levels and ages.

This year, "Pearl" signed up for courses on the nitty gritty of Georgian construction with both JP Ryan and the ladies from American Duchess.

We've been wanting to create some 18th century patterns for girl dolls, as well as more patterns for boy dolls, to go along with our popular Pattern 3052: Pirates, Patriots and Princes. These courses were perfect introductions to the crafts of 18th century dressmaking and tailoring.

The many talented costumers who graced the Costume College halls in 18th century gowns provided even more inspiration. Wouldn't you just love to dress a doll in one of these glorious outfits...?

In another favorite course, Pearl learned how to make easy reticules (handbags), out of interfaced fabric shapes and gathered strips. Bags like these were popular from the early 19th century era right on up to the 1940s.

How cute would one of these be on American Girl™ Caroline's arm? Or Molly's? We intend to find out!

Pearl also loved a course in electronic applications, and was mesmerized by former Cirque du Soleil costumer Jez Roth's demonstration of lightweight cosplay prop and armor fabrication, using stretch fabrics (like the "mystique" metallic lycra below) interfaced with double-sided Peltex, instead of heavy, expensive thermoplastics or layers of foam and toxic foam glue.

But we love thermoplastics and foam too! At our last Costume College, we took a course on KobraCast® that inspired our Dread Pirate Roberts Halloween cosplay for 18 inch dolls. This year, Pearl took a refresher course on Worbla fabrication, while Lee took an advanced course on foam armor patterning and construction.

Here's Lee's resulting foam Cyberman helmet (which back at home has became the favorite hiding spot of her son's new kitten).

Silk, sunset — and then more silk

We heard a rumor at Costume College that the largest and most deluxe decor fabric store in the Downtown Los Angeles textile district was selling off its entire collection of silk fabrics at once-in-a-lifetime liquidation prices.

As soon as College ended on Monday morning, we headed to the district to see for ourselves.

The rumor was true. Extraordinarily true. UNBELIEVABLY true. An entire two-story collection of gorgeous, amazing, scrumptious, buttery silks was on sale. Some of the most expensive bolts were marked down to 10% of their original retail tags!

We weren't the only ones from Costume College who heard the rumor. A busload of fellow costumers arrived soon, sending clerks flying about the store. We rolled up our sleeves and joined the melee, as we don't want our Lee & Pearl Fabric Kit customers missing out on such amazing materials!

We pulled down every doll-scale and doll-weight bolt of silk in that store. We found Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian and modern party dress-appropriate taffeta stripes, dots and checks, as well as double-sided silk satins, elegant striés and even a few glorious silk velvets — perfect for our Pattern 3001 medieval cloaks and gowns.

We draped, we measured, we considered weaves and textures, we compared colors and placed the bolts together in pairs, we made a new inspirational board on Pinterest...

And then we filled our car with silk.

Later, we picked up Lee's husband and son at the airport for the family-road-trip leg of our journey, had dinner at Santa Monica Pier, watched the sun set, got a good night's sleep, moved a few things around in the car...

...and went back downtown in the morning to get even more silk.

Over the next week, Pearl will be test-sewing, photographing, and cutting generous lengths of these glorious fabrics for posting in our Etsy store as the Lee & Pearl Silk Sale.

If you are not already on our mailing list to receive notifications, sign up here. You do not want to miss this sale. These are prices we will never be able to match again for heirloom-quality fabrics we may never see again.

Homeward bound

We took a lot of fun detours on the drive home, which became a family road trip with the addition of Lee's husband and son. Some highlights of the trip included...

...Route 66, the Route 66 Museum in Victorville, CA, and the endless, beautiful stretches of the Mojave Desert north and east of Los Angeles...

...the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, AZ (with one of the most breathtaking gift shops in the country)...

...the red rocks of Sedona, AZ with a storm brewing behind them...

...this Apache cap, and all the other marvelous artifacts and crafts at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ...

...Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West...

...the Arizona Museum of Natural History in Mesa, AZ...

...sunset (and a 50-degree drop in temperature) on Mt. Lemmon, high over Tucson, AZ...

...the San Xavier del Bac Mission Church on the Tohono O'odham San Xavier Indian Reservation south of Tucson, AZ. Lee made the top picture using a watercolor filter, to emulate the sort of painting American Girl® Josefina might have made of the church, which was completed in 1797...

...and finally, the Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita, AZ. We highly recommend a visit to this site: the tour guides do a phenomenal job, and the director of the museum was herself a missile crew commander when the silo was part of the Cold War front line. History does not get more real than that.

Workroom flyby and a Total Eclipse of the Sun

We made a quick stop back in the Lone Star workroom to unpack the silks and prepare for the last leg of our month on the road.

Happy to be back with her machines and drafting implements, Pearl set to work on a quick pattern project — re-sizing our Pattern 1001: Unisex T-Shirts for 16-inch A Girl for All Time dolls, and 14 1/2-inch Wellie Wishers as well. Look for these new sizes to appear in the Lee & Pearl Etsy store soon.

Don't you love those eclipse heat transfers on the T-shirts? The solar graphic came courtesy of NASA, provided on a page of free, shareable Eclipse images and infographics. Thanks, NASA!

For your dolls who love science, we made a PDF printable download containing all three of those heat transfer sizes, in both regular and reversed versions. Enjoy!

CLICK HERE to download the Solar Eclipse 2017 Heat Transfer PDF document.

The day before the Eclipse, we packed the dolls and drove north, peering nervously at a cloudy sky all the way.

A slight haze remained the next morning, but it had mostly burned off by the time we reached the park outside of St. Louis where we planned to watch the event.

Time to break out those goggles...!

We made our doll's black eclipse goggles using the safety goggle pattern in our Pattern 1025: She Blinded Me with Science, which is our FREE GIFT to mailing list subscribers in 2017. If you're not already a mailing list member, SIGN UP HERE to get your own copy of this fun pattern!

And then, it happened...

Okay, this is a photo of the eclipse starting to happen. We'd love to show you our photo of the totality, but apparently that sort of photography takes practice.

We promise to be in much better form when the next total eclipse visible from North America tracks directly over the Lone Star workroom!

Here's a collection of amazing shots of the eclipse from photographers who were better prepared. And here's a time lapse satellite view of the eclipse shadow passing over the continent — cool, huh?

Hello St. Louis and welcome, Nanea

After the Eclipse, we took advantage of our very last evening on the road to soak in the beauty of the Gateway Arch — and make a flying visit to the St. Louis American Girl store to say "Aloha" to new historical doll Nanea Mitchell® on her release day!

And then, just like that, our month on the road was over.

We're back in our respective workrooms now, working hard on our Fall/Winter 2017 and 2018 plans. And of course, we're also photographing and packing up all that wonderful silk.

Don't forget to check your email inbox for news of the SILK SALE. With holiday gifting season almost upon us, we expect these heirloom fabrics to sell quickly!