Fabric

Gyleen X. Fitzgerald scans the fabric pieces scattered around her studio. She selects some material, walks to the window and opens the blinds. She sits in a chair and threads a tiny quilting needle, working it with her nimble fingers through the blocks of fabric. "I hand-sew about five hours a day," the Churchville resident says as she turns her chair and props her feet on the windowsill. "I'm one of the few people that can't wait to turn 55. Eight more years for me, and I retire. Then my quilting business will be my full-time job."

No matter how long you study one of Chris K. Palmer's silk "Shadowfolds," its mystery never completely unfolds. Hexagons, squares and triangles intertwine, spiral and twist into ever more complex variations with indescribable grace. A Bach cantata comes to mind. So does a flurry of snowflakes, each unique but based on the same natural blueprint. You may spend hours meditating on these designs and still have no clue where Palmer started, how he painstakingly manipulated the silk into the three-dimensional, infinitely symmetrical shapes called tesselations or plotted the pattern's journey so it ventures ingeniously from one path to the next.

We're about to remodel our large family room, which also encompasses the kitchen area. The floor plan we've devised seems fine in most respects, but it has one major missing piece: kitchen cabinetry. Nothing that we've seen has been suitable to the room's transitional styling. The cabinetry also has to blend with the mellow finishes of the cherrywood furniture in the living area. The chairs, by the way, are covered with blue or natural-color fabrics. What do you think would be our best choice?

Bullets of water pelt down, gusts of wind whip and tear from all sides. This is a gale in the open ocean, a monsoon, a raging hurricane the likes of which are seen, well, several times a day.This is the rain room at the W. L. Gore & Associates facility near Elkton in Cecil County, where Gore-Tex parkas and pants earn their labels and super-serious product testing meets marketing genius, head on."If it doesn't say Gore-Tex, it's not," the company's recent advertising campaign proclaims.Behind that slogan are rigorous standards and years of product development, as well as the tacit acknowledgment that even as Gore commands 90 percent of the market for waterproof, breathable fabrics, competitors are appearing on the horizon.

Bullets of water pelt down, gusts of wind whip and tear from all sides. This is a gale in the open ocean, a monsoon, a raging hurricane the likes of which are seen, well, several times a day.This is the rain room at the W. L. Gore & Associates facility near Elkton in Cecil County, where Gore-Tex parkas and pants earn their labels and super-serious product testing meets marketing genius, head on."If it doesn't say Gore-Tex, it's not," the company's recent advertising campaign proclaims.Behind that slogan are rigorous standards and years of product development, as well as the tacit acknowledgment that even as Gore commands 90 percent of the market for waterproof, breathable fabrics, competitors are appearing on the horizon.

Q. My tulips did very poorly last spring, so I purchased some new bulbs and dug the old bulbs up last week. As I pulled them out, I noticed that many were rotting. Can I plant new bulbs in this same area? A. If you plant in the same area, you will likely have the same problem. Tulip bulb rot disease is caused by several soil-borne fungi that persist in the soil. The disease is worst in moist, poorly drained soils. I would prepare a new area for your bulbs that has well-drained, loamy soil.

Virginia Jefferson spent the past 65 years putting her customers in the dark. As the proprietor of an old Baltimore awning company, it was her role to spread the shade on the hottest of summer afternoons. About to turn 89, she is retiring and selling a business founded by her father in 1917. This week, she will leave an office that has never seen a computer and the desk where she has worked since 1946. She'll surrender her electric typewriter, carbon paper and ledger books filled with the names of the 500 people who have relied on her to screen their homes under one of her tentlike, custom-tailored enclosures supported by pipes and lashed with ropes.

The following instructions will make a double bow with long streamers, suitable for trimming a medium-sized to large basket:1. Cut two strips of fabric, each 8 inches wide and 54 inches long.2. Set aside the first strip, which will be used for the streamers. Then cut the second strip in half widthwise, to make two strips of 27 inches each. These will be used for the bow's loops. Then cut a smaller piece, just 3 inches long, from one of the loop pieces. This fourth strip is the connector, which will hold the streamers and larger and smaller loops together in the center of the bow. (See diagram No. 1, page 1C.)

Theresa Jakubik, an aspiring actress in Manhattan, recently went to brunch with some people she wanted to impress. "I put on these adorable little culotte shorts," she said. But by the end of the day, she didn't look adorable. The rayon culottes were so wrinkled, she said, "I looked like I had rolled out of a 90-hour flight."It wrinkles, it's no bargain, it has to be dry-cleaned, it spots easily and trees die for its birth.This is the fabric of the 1990s?Rayon, once considered a second-class fabric to be used in lieu of silk, is showing up in every kind of clothing for both women and men. Designers talk ecstatically of its drapability, of the way it follows the line of the body.

Ouch! Darn it! Missed one!One of life's verities is that whenever a man opens a new shirt, he finds a thousand straight pins -- or at least eight or 10.They are simply a fact of sartorial life, taken for granted except when a forgotten pin delivers a pointed reminder of its presence.Then it's "Why are all those*! pins in new shirts and how do they get there?"The pins are there because, industry sources say, no better way has been found to keep new shirts folded crisply and neatly, and they get there by the grace of people like Michelle Anderson, Agnes Green and Tina Bhatt, who emplace them -- by hand -- eight to 10 per shirt, depending on fabric and style.