How Your Fabric Stash Can Improve Your Techno-Savvy, Increase Income, and Strengthen Marriage

It's not easy being a woman, and as if pantyhose, salpingo-oopherectomy, and unequal pay aren't bad enough, our better clothing lacks pockets.

Women have long complained about pocket deprivation, but today the stakes are vastly higher - pockets, it turns out, are essential to keeping up with the boys in technology (and therefore, pay), because that's where they keep their e-gadgets. My friend Teresa sent me this fascinating article called 'The Gender Politics of Pocket' in The Atlantic.

Solution: Use your quilting fabric stash to create and lengthen existing pockets! Or, Teresa found this site where you can buy premade pocket extenders: http://www.pocketforsmartphones.com/ - they're a cheap investment in your future, and the page has easy installation directions. Since I love polka dots, here's the one I'd buy:

) . 

And speaking of delightful fabric, your techno-savvy won't improve, but you will attract more brick-and-mortar friends if you wear disembodied celebrity heads. The maker, a creative young fiber artist named Erin Pearce, accepts commissions, and along with dresses,

...she also makes shirts and shorts from her custom fabric, and they're not too pricey. (Yes, that's Captain Picard of Star Trek.) I'd befriend anyone on the street dressed in early Picard (or Worf, or Cumberbatch).

What if your favorite celebrity is imaginary, and he's Superman? Make this.

Cindy, of Cation Designs, tells me she found the fabric from a thrift shop, and it was a....wait for it....bed sheet! (Obviously minimally slept on or laundered).  And - oh yes - it has pockets! (I asked!)

He wasn't exactly Superman, but I do have a lot of Elvis fabric, and I love making little scenes from it, like this one, blogged here:

But here's what I usually do with novelty fabrics: Make "Everything in the World" baby quilts. The top panel, among the clouds, has squares of sky stuff (planets, birds, cow jumping over the moon). There's all kinds of random things in the novelty fabric 9-patches below the sky - dogs, cats, elephants, berries, Mighty Mouse, Elvis, you name it.... 

And the bottom has sea-dwelling entities like ships and fish. 

Next, the story of an adorable husband and wife who dress in matching novelty fabric outfits: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/may/25/husband-and-wife-dressed-same-35-years.

This quirky habit adds depth to their marriage. Now if only I could persuade DH to wear one of these whenever I wear the other:

Left Worf and right Worf. With pockets, of course. Here's the matching quilt:

(Just kidding, I haven't made any of these things....yet....)