Today I’m rounding up my favorite bits from the interwebs this week, things that I’ve found interesting, useful or simply entertaining.

• Jen’s review over on Grainline Studio of the Fabric for Fashion books definitely caught my eye. This set of books (sold separately) includes Fabric for Fashion: The Complete Guide and Fabric for Fashion: The Swatch Book. While I’d love to own both some day, the swatch book is going straight to my birthday list. One thing I certainly miss out on by being a self-taught seamstress instead of a school-taught one is all the instruction about different fabrics and that’s something I’d really like to know more about.
• I’m loving the shirt length versions of the Marianne Dress that Amber over at Fancy Tiger Crafts made for Selfish Sewing Week. I’ve got a few single yards of jersey that I could definitely throw together to make some super cute tops.
• I can’t even handle how fantastic this Minoru jacket it. Purple is totally my color, the sheen on the fabric is gorgeous, and Birgitte has added some awesome details.
• This post on Sew Mama Sew about printing your PDFs at a copy shop caught me at just the right time. I’m definitely a PDF pattern over printed pattern kind of gal. As much as I don’t enjoy all the printing, cutting, and taping, I like not having to trace patterns and I like knowing that I can always just print something out again. But I balked a bit when I saw how many pages I’d have to print out for the Minoru jacket I’ve got planned. 61 pages feels like an awful lot of cutting and taping, especially when I already feel like I don’t have enough sewing time. I’ve got to do a little investigating to find the right place to print my patterns but depending on the pricing I may start doing that regularly with all the patterns that offer a copy shop version. This article certainly gave me the info I need to check out this option.