A Panel Print Shirt by Friday, Nov. 7th?

Friends, do you remember this panel print fabric I purchased last summer at Elliot Berman Textiles? (I was with Laura Mae, who was emptying out the store so I had to buy something.)

Well, I'll be attending a Pattern Review event there (for PR Day and PR's 13th birthday) this Friday evening and I thought, wouldn't it be great if I could wear something I'd made from my most recent purchase there?

The theme is "Dress for the Era -- Past/Present/Future" (basically, wear ANYTHING) and initially I envisioned sending Cathy done up as a Mack Sennett Bathing Beauty, but she wasn't hearing it. So I'm going alone.

I'm trying to decide how to lay out my panel print fabric for a long sleeve shirt. Initially I thought I'd have the fabric light on top and darkening at the bottom, like so:

Then I thought, well, that's too predictable; instead, I'll have the fabric darkest on top (which eliminates my chronic fear of ring-around-the-collar) and lighten toward the bottom, like this:

But now I'm thinking it would be even more interesting to have the fabric darken from one side to the other (and which would be mirrored on the back), either left to right....

Or right to left.

(So one sleeve/cuff would be very light -- on the light side -- and one sleeve would be very dark.)

If you have an opinion about this, please let me know. I won't be cutting my fabric till tomorrow (Thursday) morning. I think I have enough fabric (two complete panels) to carry out any of these ideas, but only one.

In other news, did I tell you I'd ordered a new Olfa cutting mat? My old one lasted me five years solid -- not forever, as I'd hoped, but still a long time. And I know I'm responsible for at least one of the deep cracks, since I once sat on a chair that was sitting on the mat and, well, you can imagine.

I feel kind of bad about dumping the old mat, which will no doubt exist for eternity, but what am I going to do with it? It's a mess -- so deeply cracked in so many places that it couldn't do its job effectively. My mat is something I use for every single sewing project and I do try to take care of it.

I found my new mat on Overstock.com. I usually avoid that site but the price couldn't be beat (mine is 24" x 36").

I also treated myself to a teflon foot. I found that sticking scotch tape to the bottom of my presser foot wasn't quite as effective as I'd originally thought: the tape gets rubbed off over time. This should help me to complete my vinyl python jacket which I do hope to have finished by decade's end.

And that's it. I'm pretty sure I can pull this shirt together by Friday evening -- here's hoping....

Have a great day, everybody!