Skirts Books

I had been avoiding this book, as I really do NOT need any more books on making things - I own about everything ever published and had promised myself no more. Then I saw it in a store and leafed through it - and bought it! I will not kid you - you would be nuts to make any of these skirts if you are any larger than a size 8 - maybe a 10 for one or two, but only a couple. And my size 8 days are longer ago than most of the people who might buy this book were born! However old and pudgy I may be, I still make unusual clothing out of recycled clothing from thrift stores, and I thought this book had some inspiration and ideas worth enjoying. I'm glad I bought it and like leafing through it periodically.

That said, I would like to rant a minute: all the books about making clothing out of recycled thrift clothes with odd styling and peculiar decor are aimed at teeny and tiny sizes - and young and younger ages. Believe me, those of us who were both those things in the 70s and loved doing that very thing then, are still interested. Well, some of us are! I make skirts, shirts, and dresses out of mens shirts, linen calendars, neckties, cut up overalls, machine felted sweaters and vintage dresses - and have been doing it for decades. People stop me on the street and tell me they love my clothes, and occasionally someone asks me if I sell them - I don't. I get peeved at the assumption that women my age and size aren't into recycled couture books. I may not be emphasizing my hips - or even acknowledging them! - but I still make and wear some pretty fun and unique clothing. It wouldn't kill the publishers to keep this in mind - and might well increase sales if they do.

Okay, enough said on that subject - until I review another book about recycled clothing, anyway. However, I would recommend 49 Sensational Skirts as a fun approach to making and remaking garments.

The title says it all 'sensational skirts'. the ideas, designs and techniques presented by the artist are fun, beautiful and clearly explained. Book production is quality engendering enthusiasm for skirt creations from beginning to end.

I was actually a bit shocked at how very, um, "creative" these skirts are. You will definitely get attention if you wear one of these creations! I bought it because I enjoy beaded embellishments and because I was so enjoying this book:

Sew What! Skirts: 16 Simple Styles You Can Make with Fabulous Fabrics

...that I thought I would look for more of the same. This is NOT the same or even in the same universe.

Perry Mason books are great "pick up, put down" reads, and for the most part this novel was that. Part of the mystery deals with multiple murder weapons and that seemed to get so confusing to me, the reader, that I stopped trying to understand it. Otherwise, a nice visit with fiction's greatest lawyer (apologies to Atticus Finch).

The 'Foreword' is dedicated to Nicholas J. Chetta M.D. Coroner of New Orleans. The ultimate function of the autopsy is to protect the living. The cause of death in any obscure case may be of great importance not just to surviving relatives but to society. Dr. Chetta has modernized the coroner's office to aid law agencies in determining causes of death.

This story begins with details about the bathing-beauty contest racket. Beautiful girls win a free trip to Hollywood. But then they are discarded and stranded, forced to seek a living anyway they can. [Too much pride to go back home?] Ellen Robb consults Perry Mason to complain about her firing from a gambling casino after she refused to spy on the cards held by a sucker. Rowena is a small town with a sleazy reputation. There was an alleged shortage after Ellen worked as the cashier. The owner of the gambling casino owns the justice of the peace, the chief of police, and has friends in high places. Perry Mason calls George Anclitas and will defend Ellen Robb against defamation of character. Mrs. Helman Ellis shows up to complain about her husband's losses at gambling, and ask for a return of the money. Impossible? Perry Mason cites California's community property law which can be used to recover money lost at gambling (Chapter 3).

In Chapter 6 Perry Mason explains how to date a gun to determine when a bullet was fired by it. Ellen Robb found a pistol planted in her belongings, and brought it to Perry Mason. He inspected it, then returned a pistol to Ellen Robb. Is there something being planned? There is more conflict between Helman Ellis and his wife due to Ellen Robb. Do gamblers have a need to lose (Chapter 7)? In Chapter 8 we find out why Mrs. Ellis couldn't be found. The police arrive to question Ellen Robb about her whereabouts. The facts and problems in this case are reviewed (Chapter 9). Perry learns some shocking news! The Preliminary Hearing discusses the two bullets found in Mrs. Ellis. Did they both come from the same gun (Chapter 10)? One gun was traced back to Perry Mason, the second gun was not the one given to Helman Ellis. Questioning a witness, there is an outburst and confession in court. Perry's client is freed, so Perry won't face any charges. Perry notes the significance of eyewitness testimony that can't be corroborated.

Erle Stanley Gardner does a better job is describing civic corruption, in fiction, than his contemporaries.

"The Case of the Singing Skirt" is one of Erle Stanley Gardner's eighty-five Perry Mason books. In this case, the famed defense attorney undertakes to help Ellen Robb, a cigar-and-cigarette girl who works at a local gambling club. Because she refused to help the owner swindle a gambler, Ellen finds herself framed for the theft of a certain amount of money. Mason quickly defuses that situation, enabling the woman to keep the money and threatening suit against the employer for defamation. Events escalate soon, though, when Ellen turns up with a gun in her possession that she cannot explain. Mason suspects that another attempt to frame Ellen is in the works, and he takes steps to thwart that attempt. When a woman turns up dead, though, Mason must defend his client on murder charges--and himself against charges of being an accessory after the fact.

"The Case of the Singing Skirt" is really a novel in two parts. The first part deals with the machinations of the various parties before court, and the second part puts Mason in his element--the courtroom. As a legal thriller, "The Case of the Singing Skirt" is passable, though not particularly exciting. Mason spends a great deal of time deflecting his opponent's thrusts, but only in the last few pages does Mason go on the offensive. As a result, this book is not the best forum for Mason's considerable legal expertise. As a mystery, there is little doubt who the murderer is. Once one starts with the premise that Mason's clients are, as a rule, innocent, there is little more to figure out. Still, eighty-five books with a single character do not come about by accident, and there is a fair amount of charm to "The Case of the Singing Skirt."

This book follows part of the story from a Tubbies episode in which each Tubby gets to take turns dancing in a fluffy tutu. While Tinky Winky does not want to give the skirt to La-La, Dipsy does not want to wear the skirt when his turn comes, and is very happy when it falls off.

My toddler enjoys this book, and asks to read it frequently. The only improvement I think could be made is to make it a board book. The paper format has not stood up very well to being handled by a 2-year-old.

My 17 month old daughter loves this book. She asks me to read it to her every day, over and over. I have had to tape the pages together because it has gotten so much wear. I have only had the book for about a month.

My 4-year-old child didn't seem to enjoy this book very much because she didn't really understand what they were trying to say because the author makes teletubbies talk like babies. It would be more educational to make them speak PROPER ENGLISH!!

I liked this book and found the instruction section to be very informative. The skirts are nice and I love the reuse/recycle of other clothing. The bags are cute, and there are several I would love to make. What I didn't like was the limited sizing on the skirt patterns, although with a little guidance they could be altered. There isn't a lot here that I couldn't find in other books that I already have or on the internet, so I will be returning it.

This book is perfect for teens and twenties. If you like to rehab old clothes or make your own trendy clothes, this is the book. One of the freshest sewing books I have seen! I looked through it at a bookstore, and plan to put it on my wish list so I can make some of the items for my kids.

It's always great to have new handbag making books - this one is OK, not earth shattering.

Fourth grader Miata learns the importance of friendship and the need to act responsibly when she realizes that she has left her mother's prized folklore skirt on the school bus. Since she needs to wear it for a Sunday performance, she sets about to break into the bus-encountering various difficulties. Gradually she realizes what a tangled web she has woven once she chose to deceive adults, instead of requesting their aid. Soto understands and explains the lifestyle of Hispanic-Americans, but he lets his protagonist do it on her own, skirting the truth. Without a confession to relieve her private torment, Miata never makes things right with her parents, who remain in suspicious ignorance. This short story might send a divisive message to children trying to make their way in the adult world.

This book is a great book because it teaches you some lessons because Miata Ramirez lost her skirt and she was going to wear it the next day for her dance called folklo'rico. But her mother told her not to take it out of her closet because the skirt was important. I reccomend the book the teachers to read it to their class so they could enjoy the book like I did. Miata Ramirez was upset and scared because she thought she had lost the skirt forever! But she didn't she found it in a public transportation bus! She almost got in trouble because the skirt was in the bus and the bus was closed. Her father almost found out that she had lied to him about the skirt because she told her mom and dad that she was going to her freinds house But she didn't she went to look for her special skirt. Gary Soto is a great author because hr writes interesting books.Read his books because they are creative. Almost all of his books that I've read are Mexican folk storys. Read it Please!!!!!!!!

If you know Soto's work, then you can rest assured this is another excellent example of the magic he creates with the written word. The Hispanic family is representative of the culture and values. Fifth graders (even though the reading level is lower) in my classroom, and especially my ESL students, enjoy the book. Soto has packed the book with colorful similies and this lends well for Writing Worshop.

I read this book four or five years ago when it came out and enjoyed it . . . my wife read it, too. If you like Anne Tyler, you'll like Agnes Rossi. She strikes a fun balance between character and plot. Here, it's two women from divergent backgrounds who learn about each other, shed some demons and get a better idea of all the pain they caused. Agnes Rossi, if you're out there, hope you're still writing.

Rossi's novel brings together two very different women in the milieu of a jail cell. Mrs. Tyler is introduced first. She is a woman of considerable means, in her fifties, married, and the mother of four grown children. Despite all these factors, or maybe due to these factors, she gives into her compulsion to shoplift.

A night of bad choices ends with an arrest for drunk driving and drug possession for twenty-seven year old Rita. Rita has a job, a husband, and two stepchildren.

The chapters are short narratives alternating points of view. Each chapter reveals a highly personal story that provides insight to the reader, the listener, and the speaker. The pace of the novel is quick. Rossi's descriptions are never cumbersome. The character's background stories are interesting and meaningful. The reader may be as surprised as the characters when it is discovered how much these two women have in common.

The time frame is three days and what can be taken away from this book is a seventy-two hour peek into two women's lives. It is a look just beyond the surface, not a total discovery of self.

I reccommend this book for someone who wants to read something light and enjoyable. It is a book to take on an airplane or toss in a beach bad.

Put you money into a small company out of Chicago called CytoCore that is going to revolutionize the PAP test. Stock symbol CYOE.

Huge and I mean huge market potential. Will become the "standard of care" in the cervical cancer detection industry.

Get in now and watch your profits grow.

The first problem I had with this book was the incredibly condescending attitude by the writer. Just because *she* was completely clueless about their family investments doesn't mean the rest of the *housewives* in the country are. She continually talked down to her readers and spoke absolutely horribly about her children. Whether she was joking or not, I found her style extremely offensive. This breastfeeding, clothing diapering, homeschooling mother who happens to love her children didn't fit into ANY of the stupid examples she used.

But I muddled through those first few chapters to get to the meat of the matter - The Chicks Dozen. This is the all-knowing formula that one must run each potential company through before buying the stock. The problem? It worked fine when the bulls were running full steam last summer and they went with primarily tech stocks. Now? Their portfolio is a total loser and they were hit hard. I mean HARD. I notice they don't even publish the numbers on their site any longer.

As it is now, I don't think ANY company would fit into their standards and, in fact, they've changed strageties completely (I mean a COMPLETE reversal!) and are now going with mutual funds. There was page after page in the book BASHING mutual funds and now they've realized that putting all your eggs into single stocks in this bear market just doesn't wash.

They may have beat the men on Wall Street for ONE YEAR, but they sure aren't clucking now. So save your money and check out their website to see their current strategies because they've changed their tune. You'll also notice that one of the members has already left.

Didn't anyone at the publishing company *read* this book with it's hogwash advice before publishing it?

Like all flash-in-the-pan popular "investment books" this one had a lucky run, until....errr, uhhhh, ......the portfolio began to stink.

There is an iron rule for "popular" investment books: avoid them.

Instead, look at the easy-to-read books written by investment pros: John Train, Warren Buffett's annual reports (those are very inexpensive), Ben Stein, Joel Greenblatt, and Andrew Tobias.

If you are a frazzled housewife who wants to have an investment club made up of folks similar to yourselves and put together a market beating portfolio this book will lead you astray. For tips you can e-mail me.

Full disclosure: my wife also is a professional portfolio manager, mother of two, and is a better investment manager than me. What Professor of Finance would ever admit that? An honest one.

This book is written in a coffee klatch style, with great ideas and simple explanations. While there is a lot more chatting than content, it keeps the book from being dry and boring. And the content IS good, especially for those who are starting at the very beginning and need the basics explained. I recommend that you read the excerpts to see if her style is okay for you. If so then buy the book!

It sounds to me like people either loved or hated this book. I'm in the middle. The content was excellent for beginning investors. Even though the math may have been a bit elementary, sometimes a refresher is needed! Skip over the examples if you have just graduated from Harvard.
I am going to be starting an investment club and have read a few books on it now. This one is very light-hearted, even if you don't think her humor is. It does, however, allow one to read more than one chapter without falling asleep, a problem I did have with another book.
What is comes down to is this -- this book is full of IDEAS, a place to start. Some of us ARE middle-class stay-at-home moms and some of us aren't. It really doesn't matter either way. She is showing us what worked for her and her club. It is up to us to decide which information we would like to use and which information we could care less about.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in forming an investment club, or just learning a few of the ways to go about researching, choosing and following stocks.

This book critically addressed the idea of 'clash of cultures' as it relates to second generation South Asian immigrant girls in Canada. I truly appreciated the historical context the author provided. This is not simply a book about girls but about the ways in which mainstream society frames certain communities as 'backwards' and the ways in which identities are negotiated in this context. Bravo!

I follow books written on this subject quite ardently.

However, disappointment would put my reaction mildly. The South Asian women described in the book are predominantly 13-15 year old girls. Anywhere in the world, in any culture, confused or not confused, girls in this age group tend to show signs of rebellion; it is the beginning of adulthood. Can such an extensive study be based on such a fragile sample of people?

Most of the study has been based on Asian girls from North India or Pakistan. As a result, the title is very misleading. Yes, there is brief mention of women from Sri Lanka, but their inclusion in the study is only incidental. The discussion of music and dance in the Indian community is very stereotyped and represents only a fragment of Indian culture prevailing in North America. For instance, South Indian classical music has a significant influence on several South Indian women in the Toronto area. This shapes and certainly influences the attitudes of young women towards Indian culture.

Other than a good account of the history of South Asian immigration to Canada during the British Raj and after, I found this a very superficial study on the actual subject. The author does have a very impressive style of written expression but the lack of depth in the content was disappointing.

I was so excited to find a new book about sewing children's clothes, since most books were written in the 1970's and 1980's.
Basically, this is a book about pattern making for children's basics. The problem is you need to have a good deal of sewing knowledge before tackling this. Descriptions of the idividual sewing projects are very brief. There are nice color pictures though. The embellishing ideas are listed very briefly with no directions. There was so much potential here if there would have been more instruction of sewing details, variations and embellishments.

I checked this out from the library.

I'm very disappointed in the book. The skirts are cute. The problem is that the author vaguely references an unknown paper pattern in each skirt write-up. There's no pattern number included!

There are no paper patterns included in the book, just some vague tiny hand drawn schematics to show what I guess is the main pieces of the skirt. I have no idea what size to make the pieces based off this hand drawing, I'm not skilled at skirt making.

At the end of the book she credits McCall's and Simplicity for their patterns she used, adding which page numbers in the book are featuring their skirts. However she completely fails to let the reader know what pattern number to buy. I would rate this book a whole lot higher if I didn't have to waste my time trying to hunt down what pattern was used on page 88.

I just spent the last half hour trying to find the correct patterns for various skirts at the respective pattern company websites and have failed on all counts. The book is a huge disappointment because of that lack of information.

This book is very disappointing. You need to find and purchase patterns in order to make these skirts. This book would be better if it showed you how to modify a basic pattern into the various skirts. It is just good for ideas and should sell for less. I don't even think ideas presented here are original. You can get these ideas and more by looking at skirts in the store and a little imagination.

I saw this book at Barnes & Noble and I'm really glad I did before I made the mistake of purchasing. It only tells you how to make skirts with premade patterns and on top of that doesn't even give the pattern numbers.

Finally an instruction book inbetween the classic "Vogue Sewing" (a bible for serious seamstresses) and kiddie books explaining how to hand-stitch a felt teddy-bear. Stylish Skirts is a fabulous sewing-course-in-a-book for beginning seamstresses who want to make their own clothing...keeping n mind that not only do they not teach much sewing in "Home Ec" these days, but most young girls' moms only stitch flat items such as quilts and decorative pillows...no help if you need advice on how to choose a pattern for an item to WEAR.

Even if you could find sewing lessons for beginners, you'd love this book for reference, to review how a sewing machine works, how to measure your body for choosing the correct size, how to put in elastic and zippers, what you need hand-stitching for and how to do it.

The photos are the best I've seen in any sewing book, the spiral binding makes for easy handling since you can place the book FLAT while working with your fabric or pattern or hand-stitching, etc. The writing style is up-beat and approachable.

I bought this book for my 10-year-old....a whole bunch of her friends have asked for sewing machines for Christmas, so I'm going to go out and pick up a few more copies for her friends...a great birthday gift!

I wish they had chose a better title for this book. I would have called it "Learn to Sew by Making Stylish Skirts". If you are looking for a reference book for advanced sewing or fashion design methods, this is not the book you want. But other than that, I think this is a well-designed instructional tool for novice home sewers.

The sewing industry has had to wake up to the fact that young people haven't been taught to sew and don't think of it as an interesting activity. This has resulted in a lot of new books and patterns targeted at younger sewers. The challenge is to get their attention, and then give them information that is helpful and clearly explained-and that beginners can digest in short segments of free time. I think this book is one of the better ones I have seen. The layout and design of the book is bright and attractive, and the sewing information is accurate and clearly explained.

The book is written for beginning sewers, and assumes no previous knowledge. It covers all the basics that you need to know before starting a first garment project: how to select a pattern, how pattern sizing works, purchasing a machine, selection of sewing notions that are actually useful, etc. There is good advice on choosing fabrics that are easy to work with and that are suited to the pattern chosen. I am an experienced dressmaker who has taught beginners to sew, and I think someone who has never sewn a garment before could definitely complete a creditable first project with the help of this book.

The target demographic for the book seems to be young working or student-age women who would like to sew their own clothes, but haven't had access to a good sewing class or teacher. The author takes the approach that the learning experience will be much more appealing and fun if the student starts with something she actually wants to wear, as opposed to traditional beginner projects like pillowcases and (ick) aprons. (If you are a male wishing to learn to sew, you can still use this book even if you don't wear skirts yourself. Make some for your mom, sister or female friends, and impress them with your creative side). She also assumes that most of her target audience are pressed for time, so she doesn't burden the reader with too much information. Rather than have a total beginner struggle with pattern drafting or complicated fitting methods, the author advises selecting a commercial skirt pattern in a basic style as a starting point. Choosing skirts is a great idea. They are probably the easiest type of women's or girl apparel to construct and fit. Pattern styles are suggested, with tips on how to interpret a pattern envelope to be sure you are getting what you expect. As patterns go out of print quite frequewntly, no specific pattern brands or numbers are given. However, excellent patterns for skirts can be found in every major pattern catalog, so finding a good one won't present a problem for even the most clueless beginner.

The bottom line: an excellent textbook for a beginner's sewing class, or for motivated would-be sewers who want to do it on their own.