Sewing

First American Corp., moving to broaden its centralized database that streamlines title searches, has completed its acquisition of Credit Management Solutions Inc. in a stock swap. Credit Management shareholders will receive 0.2841 of a newly issued share of First American common stock for each share of Credit stock they hold--a value of $5.67 a share based on First American's closing price of $19.95 on Wednesday. Santa Ana-based First American will issue about 2.

If you tune into "Entertainment Tonight" some evening, don't be surprised to see female anchors wearing outfits made by Wet Seal Inc. The Foothill Ranch company, a retailer of trendy clothes for girls and young women, has been stepping up its marketing efforts, recently hiring a public relations firm to get high-profile exposure for its Arden B division's fashions. "We're dressing the female anchors," said Steven Strickland, Wet Seal's senior vice president of marketing and creative services.

Jerry Seinfeld, Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Steve Martin, Mel Brooks, Richard Belzer, Joy Behar, Ray Romano and Rob Reiner pay tribute to legendary funny man Carl Reiner on the two-hour PBS special "The Kennedy Center Presents: The Mark Twain Prize," which airs Wednesday night on KCET and KVCR. Taped last October at a black-tie event in Washington, D.C.

Kim Taylor scored with four minutes left in the second half to give Chaminade High a 2-1 victory over Harvard-Westlake in a Mission League girls' soccer game Friday at Chaminade. Taylor's 22nd goal of the season tied the school record set by Tara Donoghue last season. It came 20 minutes after teammate Jessica Kaczorowski tied the score, 1-1. Chaminade (15-4-2, 7-0 in league play), the No. 5-ranked team in the region by The Times, took sole possession of first place over No.

Hints of her academic passion are scattered among the usual clutter of papers and files in Carolyn Ducey's tiny office--an array of fabric swatches, antique quilting needles, a small Japanese quilt hanging on the far wall. Hidden in a corner of the University of Nebraska's home economics building, this is where Ducey works as curator of the International Quilt Study Center, the nation's only university-backed quilt scholarship program.

Volunteers associated with Valley Presbyterian Hospital are making coats for low-income youngsters to wear this winter at about one-tenth the cost of a new jacket. Not only are the coats inexpensive to make, but they require no pattern, just a sewing machine. Meyling Eliash-Daneshfar, the hospital's marketing and public relations coordinator, discovered on the Internet a simple diagram for making a jacket from two-thirds of a yard of fabric.

There were some tough decisions to make at last week's feminist art festival, Lady Fest. The six-day event, which ended Sunday, gave its 2,000 predominantly teen and twentysomething female attendees the opportunity to learn how to knit, play the guitar, start a grass-roots revolution, cook vegan, sing, sew, defend themselves, fix their cars, create alternative menstrual products, travel solo, launch businesses and swing dance. It was like one-stop shopping for the aspiring renaissance woman.

If the $40-billion global music business thought it had problems with the emergence of a revolutionary Internet tool called Napster, consider the now-terrified needlepoint industry. For years, grandmotherly hobbyists, hungry for doily-and-swan patterns, have forked over $6 and $7 for them. Without a peep of complaint, they have provided a steady stream of revenue to pattern publishers such as Cross My Heart and Pegasus Originals.