She included a note that, if you can’t read it in the photo, says “I found this little book at a thrift store and it makes me think of the little guy on your patterns! I love his mis-buttoned sweater. I hope you enjoy it!”

Here is a page from inside the book. S and I loved reading and giggling over the poems:

And even the endpapers are cute:

Thank you, Katie. A little package is making its way back to you. We hope it makes your day like you made ours!

This would be especially effective on a neutral-colored print (like the blouse shown) or on a solid color. It brightens up and highlights the mother-of-pearl buttons that were used, too.

If you’d like to give it a try, click here to sign up. You can follow my Pinterest pins by clicking on the new Pinterest link in the sidebar of the blog. Let’s share our inspiration with each other.

I wrote about LeDray’s show, workworkworkworkwork, at the Whitney Museum, over on disdressed. If you have a chance to see the show, it’s definitely worthwhile.

It’s clear that you’re not just picking out a pattern and then selecting a random printed fabric to make it. You’re really analyzing the specific style attributes of the design and then thinking about how you can create an interesting collaboration between the silhouette and a fabric in order to maximize the impact of the final garment. Where do you find the inspiration that helps you do this so well?

I grab inspiration wherever it comes from. I sketch it out lengthily and watercolor it, debating color, fabric and modifications. It usually starts with books. And ends in a museum!

I’ve gathered kilograms of books on art history, theatre costume and fashion design, costume institute catalogues, historical and folkloric dress, and fabric. If I could, I’d spend my life haunting the likes of the V&A and the Musée des arts décoratifs. To touch that eighteenth century brocade! Damn the glass display case!

Back in the day when I was just a shallow and covetous fashionista with no sewing skills, I amassed some exquisite, mommy-incompatible pieces that have provided inspiration along the way. Rifling through a closet, yours, someone else’s, window shopping, street gawking, and patio side ogling can jolt innovation and the creative process in strange and unexpected ways!

Yves Saint-Laurent and Courrèges are always good muses with their simple shapes, clean lines, perfect cuts, and impeccable design. What more can one ask for? When it comes to touch and architecture, Japanese designers are surefire stimulation. Kawakubo Rei, Yohji Yamamoto, and eccentricities such as those of Hussein Chalayan always make me smile. You might not use it but it will trigger something.

Speaking of inspiration, you made a Bubble Dress a while ago that began from a pretty interesting jumping off point.

The Titania bubble dress! A Midsummer Night’s Dream must be one of my least favorite of Shakespeare’s plays. I never quite grasped the pixie flutter although I was spellbound by the headstrong character of the fairy queen. Inspiration here was literally literary.

An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds, field dew and sweet peace. A silk chiffon shift dress from Sportmax’s 2008 Spring/Summer collection covered in circular embroidered and sequined appliqués provided supplementary inspiration, and when I stumbled across this dusty rose silk and cotton appliquéd fabric on a German website, I thought its use on a Bubble Dress might quite possibly lead into the delightful world of the wood nymph!

One of the things that I find so interesting about your work is that you avoid prints and allow texture to do all the work of providing visual stimulation.

I am in awe of highly audacious colour combinations and almost hysterical histrionics such as can be found in collections by Kenzo and Christian Lacroix, but I am shy when it comes to pulling it off myself.

For the moment, I’m comfortable working with subdued color palettes where texture has the predominant role. A bit like in Italian tailoring, I like to let the fabric speak for itself. It always will if it’s well chosen and showcased.

Texture (more so than color) means depth, plays on perspective, the tantalizing theatre of light and shadow! How fun and exciting is that?! I have one dress in particular up on a pedestal when I’m thinking about texture in a neutral tone, Madame Grès’ Antigone dress at the Met Costume Institute. And one painting in mind, Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s La cruche cassée in the Louvre. Oh! The classical, not so virginal, bouillonné and twists of loveliness!

Tell us about the Puppet Show Tunic you made. There’s so much of interest going on in this garment, but there’s no print and no color.

This Puppet Show Tunic was made from an Alice + Olivia organic striped cotton and silk voile. The more opaque stripes are soft and slightly raised like on corduroy, leaving almost transparent and thinner stripes in between. Snap buttons covered with flat cotton mouliné buttons were used instead of buttonholes which I thought might weaken the delicate fabric with use.

The col claudine and puffed sleeves make this piece highly adorable and the pattern is one of my favorites. The fabric is soft, light and airy and I thought it would be interesting to use a somewhat “evanescent” cloth on a pattern with strong and well-defined elements, all in the name of contradiction.

You’re clearly unafraid to use high-end fabrics which is somewhat unusual for someone creating children’s clothing. Where do you find your fabrics?

I’m a fabric hound, constantly on the lookout! I spend a lot of time pouring through catalogues, and when I was still living in France, I made frenzied trips across the Channel.

Stragier in Belgium and MacCulloch & Wallis in the UK have true finds, although the price tag can quickly become quite steep. The US  has some great shops (Emma One Sock, Waechter’s, Hyena, Gorgeous Fabrics) when it comes to finding affordable high end fabrics. I have a list of my favorite fabric and haberdashery suppliers in the sidebar of my blog listed under the heading “Fournitures Couture.”

I’m quite squirrelly in that I like to gather and collect items from everywhere around the world, oftentimes ending up with a very international garment. France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, England, Germany, India, the US, Canada. It’s all over the map. High end fabric, quality fabric, interesting fabrics can be found. You just have to dig for them and snap them up once they comes along as there isn’t an abundance of it that trickles out of the Ziploc of haute couture.

One is tempted to believe, based on history, savoir faire, and reputation that France must be a treasure trove full of lovely fabric. True. But it’s not available to the larger public. As with most things in Europe, the best is as hermetically self-contained as might be dandruff in Lagerfeld’s starched white coiffure. Open air markets, web shops, fabric boutiques, vintage clothing shops, estate sales, auctions, eBay, great-auntie’s attic, the remnants of your mother-in-law’s moth-eaten Chanel jacket. All and any of it can lead to the perfect find.

I only choose fabric with natural fiber content and use cotton and silk thread. To me, natural fabric feels fuller, richer, more real, and closest to life and I like to think that it’s a greener solution to man-made fabrics. Sometimes beauty can be very simple as long as you’re betting on quality. Do more with less, or so goes the minimalist motto. But maybe I’m too much of a purist.

Some of the high-end fabrics like these don’t lend themselves to the everyday wear and tear that most kids exert on their clothing. Are these garments you’ve been making more for show than for wear?

Most of the garments I make would be labeled “heirloom” or “special occasion” although that’s not my goal. I think it’s possible to dress children in things we’d initially like to think they shouldn’t wear, like silk and cashmere. Surprisingly or not, these fibers are quite hard-wearing. Sure, sweat suits are practical; throw them in the washer and you don’t even have to iron them! But they ain’t very pretty are they? If you’re wary of damaging clothing in your washing machine, then it should probably be washed by hand or handed over to the drycleaner. Better to spend a little time or money than ending up with a ruined garment.

Spot cleaning is also a good solution, especially on woolens. We often over-wash our clothes when sometimes a good airing out outside (also especially good for woolies) is quite sufficient to get clothes smelling of sunshine. (Please excuse the Stepford moment!) Natural fibers have a distinct smell that some people can find displeasing but that’s all part of the arrangement. Mother Nature has an olfactory label on her wares.

The boy things I make are for my son Félix, and it’s wholly endearing to see him out and about in something I’ve made. But my hands have always itched to make girly things, skirts that swing and oodles of dresses.

So my friends with girls get lucky around birthdays and Christmas! But I’m also looking at starting a small home business to sell the pieces that I make. It’s a way of gaining closet space and supporting my new-found sewing craze. Possibly, hopefully, soon there will be an e-shop.

You can follow Marie-Michelle’s creations on her blog Rastaquouère. She also contributes to the French language group blogs Oliver + S Lovers, C’est Dimanche Addicts, and Défi 13.

Once we realized this, we had to know more. And we thought you might like to know more too.

Marie-Michelle Melotte, the person making all these beautiful pieces, agreed to answer some questions about her sewing projects and her approach to finding and selecting such wonderful fabrics.

Why don’t you start by telling us a little about yourself.

I was born and raised in the Canadian prairies at the foot of the Rockies in Calgary. My parents were francophone Mauritian immigrants (thus the French name) and I spent the better part of my childhood, when not sliding down snowy slopes or indulging in a pony obsession, amongst the pots and pans of the family restaurant.

With adulthood came the thirst for new geography, and I’ve spent the last couple of years gallivanting through Europe, a young boy cub of five years named Félix, in tow. Our little family has relocated back to Canada for the next few years, although the heart quietly yearns for a swift return to French life. When I’m not sewing, I can usually be found writing scathing short stories in French, baking pies, making seasonal jellies, and slaughtering magazines for collage work.

You’ve made some astonishingly beautiful garments from Oliver + S patterns. We were smitten by the Bubble Dress you made recently. Tell us about it.

That Bubble Dress is constructed from a beautiful piece of Oscar de la Renta silk matelassé. The fabric was substantial which allowed for first-rate draping and proportions at the bubble hem and reminded me of a pair of cotton brocade curtains I had in my room as a child but without the dreadful weight–which got me thinking about The Sound of Music and the scene where the Julie Andrews character transforms bedroom curtains into the Von Trapp children’s play clothes. (Yes, inspiration is strange, wonderful and musical!)

The subtle, raised, butter-colored paisley pattern on an ecru background provided good visual and tactile interest and it got lined in a plain cream cotton poplin so as not to detract from the main theme of the dress. The only modification brought to the pattern were snap button closures covered with Belgian flat cotton mouliné buttons.

What about your Sunday Brunch jacket?

This is made from chunky Italian wool covered with a fake cable knit crisscross. Since the fabric is quite bulky, although malleable enough to be a pleasure to work with, I chose to do the inside pieces with plain cream cotton poplin to keep the Michelin Man effect out of the picture. The rough-hewn buttons are from the good folks at Wildwood Buttons in British Columbia who use salvaged tree cuts to great effect.

I’ve long been infatuated with one of my mother’s wool coats from the sixties she had bought in England before crossing the Atlantic thinking that her tailored European woolies would be tough enough for a Canadian winter! The ample cut of the Sunday Brunch Jacket combined with its Mao collar were dead ringers for the vintage coat, and I added the yew wood buttons to shake up the classical look and add a touch of pure Canadiana. I also enjoy how the faux cable knit acts as a throwback reminder to the strong checkered pattern of the über-Canadian lumberjack jacket.

You’re not timid about using high-end fabrics and taking on a serious sewing project. When and how did you start sewing?

I used to be deathly scared of sewing machines. In junior high I avoided the Home Ec room like the plague. I would’ve preferred being strapped down to a chair making toothpicks all day in the Industrial Arts lab with big, brawny boys! A combination of temporary psychosomatic aichmophobia and past frustration at being unable to thread a machine made me tell myself that I just couldn’t sew worth a damn and never would. The years went by careless and needle-free.

In university, as a lit major minoring in drama, a compulsory design course and too much time spent in wardrobe storage rekindled an old love for drawing and moreover, drawing costume. So much so, that I was soon spending more time doing character sketches (like these Madwoman of Chaillot costumes) than Saussurean semiotics.

Pursuing costume design would have meant relocating to the other side of the country or across seas and unfortunately, I’ve always been a bit of a lackadaisical stay-at-home. As luck would have it, I got married to a Frenchman, moved to France then to Cyprus and back to France, had a baby, usual story.

It’s funny how children make you confront things you thought were once done and over with. My former sewing terror got turned into a passion. With the help of my mother-in-law’s patience and her forty-year-old cast iron dependable clunker of a Singer I was making cushion covers and bunting flags for my little boy’s room and soon enough real pants with real pockets, real coats with piping, and real shirts with buttonholes! I soon realized that not having to shell out ten euros every time something needed hemming was pretty cool too!

All of my sewing is that of a dilettante. I’ve learned as I’ve gone along, bungling things, seam ripping, screaming, groaning, hair pulling and generally lacking poise. But the finished result has always led to dominant equilibrium. And a little cherub face saying, “My mommy made it” is the best sort of heart tugging gratification I can get!

In the next post: a Bubble Dress inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and where else Marie-Michelle finds her inspiration. Until then, you can see more of her projects in her Flickr photostream and visit her blog, Rastaquouère.

If I could read German, I could tell you for sure. But I think each issue includes a feature on real-life interior design. There are a couple very cute houses featured in both of the first two issues.

I love the styling of the kids’ fashion features.

And the magazine also includes clever projects for adults and children, highlights of unique and well-designed new products, interviews with people who I’m certain are very interesting and have lots to say, a feature about visiting different European cities, and a large sheet of printed paper to be used for scrap-booking, gift wrapping, etc. Or at least that’s what it seems to be. I can’t read German and really, really want to be able to when I look at these magazines.

I learned about Kleinformat when the editor contacted us to adapt our Principles of Fabric Selection posts into a series of three articles for the magazine. Now I’m wishing I could read every upcoming issue.

Kleinformat also has a blog, and Google Translator does a serviceable job of translating it into English.

I was thinking the contrast fabric might be a cute option for the pleats at the sides, too. But maybe it’s too much.

What do you think?

A few Hopscotch skirts and knit tops, to get you started.

This Hopscotch knit top was sewn by TribecaYummyMummy, who tested the pattern for us earlier this summer. This is one of the polka dot interlocks from our upcoming City Weekend fabric collection. And check out the coordinating Hopscotch skirt, made with Heather Ross’s Far Far Away II.

Here is another Hopscotch top and skirt, made by April.

I love the neutral palette and pops of orange she picked up from the print and carried through on the neck trim and the skirt buttons.

And one more Hopscotch skirt, sewn by Karen, another one of our reliable and dedicated testers.

A few School Photo dresses have also popped up. This one was made by Gail, who tested the pattern and is also one of our Boutique Sewer participants. (By the way, Gail says this is her favorite Oliver + S pattern ever.).

And yet another School Photo dress, sewn by the prolific and precise April, who made this with a heavier wool herringbone. (Warning: I don’t suggest that you attempt heavier fabrics with this dress on the first try. I think it would be rather challenging and was impressed that April made this work so well. And so beautifully, no less. Also, I think it was smart of  April to select a printed cotton for the ruffled collar and the sleeve binding, since the herringbone could be scratchy against delicate skin. The rest of the dress is lined, so it’s not such an issue elsewhere.)

And one more adorable School Photo dress, View A sewn by Katy Dill. Visit her blog to see a second version of the dress (View B) and for a chance to win a copy of the pattern.

So there you have it: a little additional sewing inspiration. Now, go have fun! I can’t wait to see what you make with the new patterns.

This past Thursday morning I went shopping in the garment center and visited one of my favorite stores, Beckenstein Men’s Fabrics (I don’t know what the whole “fabric czar” thing is; I still call them Beckenstein’s but maybe they changed their name?), where they have a fantastic collection of high-quality wool fabric. The shop is loaded with other inspiring fabrics, too: Scottish tweed, Italian suiting, seersucker striped cotton, and melton wool in a wide variety of colors. And it’s all presented in a suitably old-school setting, too. It feels like the shop of a thread-worn gentlemen’s tailor, and when I visit I always wish I could stay to curl up on a chair in the corner with either a needle and thread or a good book.

I was shopping for S’s school uniforms, which I’ll be blogging about soon. But despite the weather, I’m also thinking seriously about winter coats. Maybe this year I’ll do something with a plaid fabric.