I remember years ago visiting the Iliad Bookshop when it was on the corner of Vineland and Lankershim blvds in North Hollywood. It always has been a wonderful used bookstore. In looking for the link for their homepage I was reminded why they are named Iliad, not because of the great Greek story, but because they were located next door to Oddessy Video. So the name was a play on words. 
About 10 or 12 years ago they lost their lease and moved further east to Cahuenga and Chandler Blvds. A much larger space. I have often driven by here, why it took me so long to walk in, I don’t know. Probably because I’ve been seduced by online stores, as well as the Kindle and even the ability to check out ebooks from the library.
I finally rectified that mistake. I went in. First of all, the exterior is beyond wonderful, look at these books.
These are just a few of the murals on the outside of the building.
The interior is so gorgeous!!!!
Do you see the pile of books on the floor? While walking by, I saw a paperback by Josephine Tey, I have read a number of her books and really love them. The Daughter of Time is her most famous, debunking the story that King Richard III was an awful person. Anyway, she died in the early 1950’s, her books are still in print. But how fun to find one of them here, perfect for this weekend when I will be sitting next to a pool and don’t want to read on my Ipad.
Like all good bookstores, they have cats, I saw at least two. They do allow small dogs on leash into the store, but do ask that people give them a chance to corral the cats if need be.
There is a Disney section and a very large section about every aspect of the film world. From biographies, to manuals on filming or how to get into the business. Of course aside from a very large room dedicated to fiction, they have every other topic you can imagine. All very well laid out, it’s not just a jumble of books.
If I were still designing fabrics, I would have grabbed all three of these books. I actually already one book on fabric from the 50s, these are an incredible resource. They don’t have a lot of craft books, but boy did I luck out.
Look what I found on the $2 table! Yes, I love an excellent book on quilt history, this is one of them. What a great example of early 20th century Crazy quilt. My mother had plenty of art books, really good ones, to ship them back here from Israel would have been quite a chore. And to be honest, as much as I love art, I have more of an affinity to crafts these days.
These three will be part of a birthday gift for Eyal, so what if they are gently used, they are gorgeous books. They have quite a collection of beautiful childrens’ books, I will be back.
Outside on the sidewalk they have boxes of books for free. 
This book was published in 1978, which means that many of these Painted Ladies in San Francisco may not be standing anymore. Once again, for me, this book is an inspiration, in color and design.
Have I mentioned how much I love Los Angeles? So many treausres right in my backyard.
First off, the lapped zipper. This is something you hardly see anymore, even on fine clothes. It’s the details that take simple cotton from plain to a really lovely dress.
I have so many dresses with a separate bodice and skirt, it’s nice to have one with princess seams.
A very nice party dress, not too fancy, but if I make a little Bolero style jacket, it will work in colder weather as well.
In the pattern instructions, the inset is supposed to attach to the bodice with snaps. I bought the snaps, but didn’t feel like that was a good solution. So I just sewed it in place, I think it looks fine. I did double lace. Wasn’t too sure about the color, but this greyed down blue works really well. Just another small detail that makes a big difference
Here I am, admiring a mosaic bird I made a few years ago, I keep on thinking I’ll make more for this wall. I really should.
And now, lets see the skirt in motion! 
It looks lovely, clothes are meant to move. Who knows, I might be dancing in this, it should swish well – and it does.
The great thing about being in a workshop is seeing how the same pattern comes out so differently depending on the fabrics that are used.
What is so nice about You Tube is she showed a number of versions and she was very explicit about using a drappy fabric like rayon. There are a number of interesting features, like a half stand collar. So I ordered the pattern and taped the pieces together. Then I went to Michael Levines and looked for rayon.
I found this print, fun, my colors and it works! Sewing with rayon isn’t easy, it is a slippery fabric. Lisa is right, had I made this out of cotton, it just would be one big box, because the rayon drapes, the shirt has a lovely shape.
So yes, I will be ordering more patterns from Sew Over It. Lisa really knows what she’s doing and I’m seeing original designs, not the same old same old.
I could have put in an invisible zipper, but I want to elevate this dress, make it more ‘couture’ so instead I lapped the zipper in the back and as you can see, I’m tacking it down with tiny stitches.
I love the rayon lining, gives the dress more body as well as being very breathable and comfortable.
I lined the complete dress, something I rarely do, I just serged the lining but used lining lace on the dress.
This sort of works like horsehair, it doesn’t give as much body as horsehair would, but just enough so the skirt has volume. Next post, me modeling the dress.
This project results in a 60″ x 60″ quilt. For the workshop I decided to pull fabric from my stash and see how I like this before investing in new fabric. Here is one find. When working with transparency, it’s not the the light to dark that matters, it’s also keeping it all in the same colorway. Not an easy thing to do with purple. These are all old fabrics I found at a garage sale, the quality is poor, but the colors do work.
I chose to go from dark to light, because I like the dark print best and really wanted to showcase it.
Scott did the opposite, he had cut everything before hand and I think had even done a lot of the sewing at home. Btw, I have no doubt this came from his stash, my stash is tiny compared to his.
Anna pulled from her stash, it just happens to be
My block, finished, I am very, very pleased with the result! It’s hard to tell sometimes when looking a pile of fabric.
Yvonne did the math and shrunk the block down from 30″ to 15″. Yes, this is considered a transparency because the floral print contains both the blue and the green. 
My two blocks side by side.
With Gregs’ block.
Scott finished his top quickly, I really like this layout.
Anna’s finished top is stunning, Cherrywood fabrics are very expensive but so worth it, especially for such a graphic design.
Block by block, this quilt is growing.
Top is now done. Most of the blocks are very similar, with differences in placement of color. There are some other shape differences as well, but not much. I love scrappy, I don’t like rainbow.
I started a new knitting project, this is the swatch.
It will be another cardigan. I know yarn stores are having a very hard time surviving, the big knitting craze of 10-15 years ago is over. So most stores carry specialty yarn, not the basics. Sure, I will be ordering basics online, but that does make it hard for me to support my LYS when I can’t find what I want. Because this is a very simple shape, the kettle dye look works, but I do miss just finding Cascade yarn at my LYS.
I have a wedding this summer which gives me an excuse to make a cute party dress. Yes, this is very simple, and yet it is lovely. I went to Mood LA and saw my friend Kay who now works there. We both agreed that the option on the right isn’t very accurate, it would take so much fabric to get those very large elements to look like that, in reality, they’d be chopped up.
So I ended up with the blue cotton print, a pretty lace for the inset and rayon lining. By fully lining the dress, I will give it more structure and that will help elevate it from a simple cotton dress.
This time, I made a muslin, I want the dress to really fit right. I have a long torso, so I did add to the length of the bodice before making the muslin.
It fits the dress form.
More important, it fits me, no on to actually sewing the dress. Although it is a simple pattern, I’m not rushing anything. I want to get this right.
The office is still very sparse, they only recently moved in. I had heard of fireplaces in the offices. Here is one.How cool is this, with a wall between, these two are simply a two sided fireplace. Not functional anymore, but oh so beautiful.
Another room had this beautiful exposed brick one. There were a few employees, as well as a lovely Golden retriever, sorry I didn’t get his picture.One of the office doors, looking back out to the landing. These are strong massive wood and literally, go from floor to ceiling.
Another tall window, it may be a little hard to see how wavey the top pane of glass is. Glass isn’t a solid, it’s somewhere between solid and liquid and this 120 year old pane is getting the wave look old glass gets. This is because gravity is slowly dragging it down.Out on the landing, more wonderful details. Look at this firehose reel. Although it is no longer functional, they have kept these on display – once again, design and function working so well together. In the 1950’s one of the elevator operators was in the building late at night and fire did break out, she called the fire department and saved so much of this building.
More wonderful terra-cotta.
Another newel post, this time cast iron.
The floor, another beautiful element.
An angle only workers and visitors to the offices get to see.From one of the midlevel landings. This really is one of Los Angeles’ treasures. One of the big payoffs for these years of volunteering was the ability to see more details of the wonderful landmark.
Blacks were never denied burial here, you’d think they would be segregated out. The Tombstone is new, although Biddy was a pillar of the community, she didn’t have much of a gravestone until the 1980s. It is wonderful to see that a granddaughter, who lived to 100 is buried with her. I need to ask my son in law to do some Ancestry.com research for me, I’m pretty sure a lot of her family is still around. For more info on her, come on my historic downtown tour! Biddy was an incredible human being.
The Chinese were not allowed to be buried here, or in any other cemetery. They came as single men to work the railroads and stayed, the thought was that without women, they would leave. The discrimination in very interesting, especially since until Roosevelt in WWII, The Japanese weren’t treated the same way – oh they suffered from discrimiation, but not like the Chinese. So for $10 a head, the Chinese were allowed to be buried in the Potters Field, at some point they wised up and simply created their own cemetary. Sad story, turns out, that most were buried in a mass grave that was only uncovered when the Gold line was built in the 90s. So There is a memorial garden from 1880 dedicated to the Chinese and this new memeorial and graves for the bodies that were uncovered.
One of the groups that started using the old Potters Field as burial grounds, were The Pacific Coast Showmen’s Association. This is an ongoing organization that offers burial as well as support for people in the ‘Circus’ industry. Back in the day, circus workers or performers often didn’t have a permanent home, they traveled. So they created this organization that helped with burials. What is interesting is men are on one side of the road and women on the other. I have no idea why.
A current section, where burials are happening today. Aside from the fake flowers that don’t die, pinwheels are becoming a thing on graves. Also, looks like some of the families come and water their loved one’s graves.
There is a whole history just in this tombstone. The daughter died first, then the mother, then the father. I wonder if Geraldine is Laptha’s daughter. I hope she is still alive today, if not, maybe she chose to be buried with her husband, not in the family grave. Also notice, people have been putting photographs on tombstones for a long time. Note that Gerladine’s is in color.
I only took the close up of this beautiful African American woman with her lovely feather fan. The photos are of the person at their best, so although she looks young here, she may not have been.
There is a wonderful old gate, the rest is surrounded by a simple Chainlink fence.
As you can see, we are right in the middle of a residential neighborhood, one that is experiencing gentrification. Alongside the little old houses are now newer modern apartment buildings. 
The original chapel, still used today.
This is a nondenominational private cemetery, today, everyone is welcome. In the past the Chinese weren’t and Jews always had their own places of burial. I find it interesting that the Japanese weren’t excluded and today there is a large Japanese presence, often just mixed among other graves. There were plenty of these kinds of graves, babies that died. In more modern Memorial Parks, like Forest Lawn, the babies have their own section.
Because this was an early cemetery, many of the important families are buried here. William Workman was very influential in the Los Angeles area in the mid 19th century. He is buried on his homestead, but other family members were buried here.
Not sure exactly where Nancy fits in the genealogy, I love how exact they were with her age.
Two more important families, The Gilmores bought the land where Farmers Market at 3rd and Fairfax is today. They discovered oil, had a baseball team and although quiet today, are still and important business in the city.
This family plot is dear to me, The Lankershims and Van Nuys families, the ones who really developed the Valley. 
June gloom in all its glory! I got there early on Sunday morning because by then, some of the images are finished, or close to it.
There is a process of voting, I didn’t take part, I just walked around, enjoying the artwork.
This one is so delicate with fine details.
I am drawn to the ones that look like oil paintings. This guy here is really blending the chack. In some cases, they grind the chalk into powder, add water and paint.
Plenty of cartoon characters, especially the Japanese Manga style.
Probably my favorite, I just love the Art Nouveau style of drawing.
Very appropriate to have this car here since at the same time there is a classic car show.
I adore these old cars, so loved and well taken care of.
Give me more of that Fire engine red, even if the original would have been a simple black. Everyone this year seems to have stopped at the carhop to get food and drinks.
Love how this couple dressed for the occasion! 
It was very busy, a chalk festival, antique cars as well as Aliencon, I was expecting to see more people in costume. Very few were, I saw one couple in white capes and antennae on their heads. I guess most people are really serious about these aliens, it’s not another comic-con.
In honor of my friend Becky, a 1947 Teardrop trailer. She owns a much newer one, but not a lot has changed. A very tight compact way to travel. It has everything except the bathroom. 
The best part about this one? A handmade quilt!
Rayon is so light and flowing, which makes it a little hard to sew with, but I make one little move and:
the skirt just flutters! 
There is some nice detail and draping on the bodice, but with the busy print, it’s probably not that noticeable.
I stepped out of the sun, you get a better idea of the print here.
Side view, later this week the temperatures will climb again and I’ll be able to wear this dress.
I needed a new knitting project, so I went to a new to me yarn store. They don’t make them like they used to, hardly any yarn and no books or magazines. So I sat there, went through Ravelry, until I found a pattern. Lucky for me, I do like this royal blue.
Maybe the yarn stores figure that everyone is buying the basics online. I actually miss Cascade or Brown Sheep yarn in stores. It is true, I do buy some yarn online, I guess I’ll just be buying more online.