The coolest mistakes I've made last decade

"You have your first set of build plans, and then you have the plans from after you've built (it) "
You make a thing, and then you make it right.

December 2019 Popular Mechanics, page 8

I cut the sleeve too short because I used the lining pattern piece rather than the fabric pattern piece.

I have made this V1664 Miyake as a shirt to great happiness, using a totally traced off pattern (so no original landmarks). As a completely finished moleskin jacket, it really would like full length sleeves. To resolve this expensive and time-intensive jacket, I inserted extra purchased moleskin fabric.

Is it a bug or a feature?

 Inserted upside down. Very subtle error here, which I cannot stop myself from pointing out. Must stop doing that. Is here the place to start? No. You aren't strangers in a crowded elevator (or maybe that's what this blog really is).

I cut one piece cross grain, for visual interest. Yes, I preshrank. It still has a lot of shrink left in it. Shrinks and  fights with itself.  The point where the hem is slanting up is the seam where the fight is happening the most.

Now, these pants look really cool. They feel great, but you can see where this is going. Keeping them out of the dryer does not prevent them from shrinking. 

I cut the pants out of  overly lycra'd stretch woven fabric that won't stop shrinking.

Found this photo, aren't they great? SO GAUDY.

I got this fabric from Fabric Mart, there were no fiber contents listed on the website besides cotton. Came in with 8% lycra, and DAMN. I no longer have these pants, as they moved from "too short with too much elastic in the fabric" to "every time I wear these, I don't need to shave my legs and OW that hurts". Which is a shame because that print was WILD.

It was made of silver grey cotton with a silvery leaf pattern woven in. Yes, I dream about this fabric.

(sorry, no photo)

I cut a Burda without adding seam allowances.

This one stings. 1980. One of the first things I ever made of a Burda magazine traced pattern, with some super spendy Italian shirt cotton I purchased at  The Stitch, a lovely fabric store on University Way. I had made this shirt once -  perfectly - out of a bedsheet. And the next time, I forgot to add the seam allowance. Now, I hung onto this, and yes, I did fit into it some years later. I had been ill and lost a bucket of weight. But I did wear it. Once. Just once. In 1995. And I did let it go, so it would stop laughing at me, my mistakes, my chubb arms....

Stay safe, kids

I am working at work

My job is talking to people all day. It's phone customer service, nothing special, but a lot of our customers are old people.

That was also the case for the last job. most of that was coaching folks over the phone on how to  use their computers to access our product. Which turned into teaching them about the Internet.

This job has turned into counseling old people on not living in fear.

One quick and entertaining piece of advice:

Be Max Brooks.

https://twitter.com/maxbrooksauthor/status/1239624352305303552

As for me, I come home from work, play solitaire, pet the cat, and go to bed.

I'm exhausted from talking people down from their fears. At least ten of those people hadn't spoken to anyone else all week And that was just today. 

I'm not doing much sewing. I will again soon, I do have some stuff I need for work, but I'm just worn out.

What I feel I am doing that is necessary is talking to people who are worried and need someone who isn't a family member to express their concerns to.

Some of the concerns are petty. That's cool

Some are profound. That's pretty damn cool.

What I want to leave you with:

don't judge people for their feelings.

They get those. They need those.

Judge yourself on your actions.

Examine what you really need.

If you can share, do.

If you are in need, ask for help.

What brings us together makes us better.

We will meet again on the other side of this, and I want to know that I was the best person I could be in the duration.

In the meantime, call your family. Check in with your friends. Call your neighbors.

They need to hear your voice.

I know, because they told me so today.

The Coolest Ensemble I Messed Up

This was going to be a post about adding pockets to the Turner, and how shifting the side seams forward shows how brilliant I am. And that was a good idea and worked out well. The pocket shift worked at least.

December 2019 Popular Mechanics, page 8

This sums the rest of last year, maybe the entire life of this blog.
I made a thing.
It was okay enough.
But THIS is what I learned from that, and will do that better the next time I make one.
See, I love this magazine.

So,

When I make something that I've made successfully before, changed one thing and BOOM it's a fright show.

I really wanted a stretch velvet leopard print dress. And I had made the Cashmeretter Turner to great success, except the neckline was too wide and deep for my comfort.
So, armed with that data, I hunted down the fabric.
This was a several year process.
I wasn't having any luck, until a clerk at Joann's suggested I look at online sites that specialized in gymnastic wear.
Spandex World came through.

I bought a swatch. I never buy a swatch.
I was doing this right.

Hmmm, lots of tum exposed there.

The Cashmerette Turner in stretch leopard print velvet

Original dress, traced off pattern (too lazy to reprint pdf)

The fail here is that I cut the pieces just right,  but out of the wrong material.

The first version of this Turner dress is made of 4 way stretch, so the bodice lengthens with the skirt weight.

(see, the piece matches the original dress. No I am not going to model it today, you will trust me when I say that the Spoonflower modern jersey will stretch that much to hit my high waist, vs my almost covers the rib cage)

This stretch velvet doesn't really stretch lengthwise, and the tricot lining I used (the pattern calls for a double layer in the bodice pieces) has absolutely no longitudinal stretch.

Thus adding the waist piece. Which bags. 

Yes, I wore it out, but only as a part of the Super Over The Top Ensemble for the Nutcracker ballet. Love that WilliWear leopard chubby! Also love those pony fur leopard print creepers.  This is as much of this as you are going to see.

But! you wail! That bag does not match.
Oh, but just you wait!
We have a leopard bag with a failed clasp to match.

 Spoonflower minky fat quarter

And the clasp broke before it left the workroom

It's just not meant to be.

The Lazy Susan Tools - Droog Style

I saw this years ago, and it stuck with me. Still haven 't built one for myself, but I made something from the idea that really works for me.

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/3578

The old drawers are encased in new boxes and held together with a freight strapping belt.

I took this idea when I put my sewing table, easy access tool rack together.

My belt is a re-purposed Lands End kids pants' elastic.

Still not to Adam Savage levels of First Level Retrievability 

https://www.tested.com/art/makers/536348-adam-savages-custom-tool-storage-stands/

Second Skin ? Cut My Cote? Author's Message....

https://witness2fashion.wordpress.com/2015/11/08/the-evolution-of-the-shirt-and-cut-my-cote-book-recommendation/

I'll say this right now: Witness2Fashion has put solid thinking into this topic, and you can just go read this post and stop here.

Of course, I'm not stopping there. 

I'm reading "The second skin; an interdisciplinary study of clothing", this edition, by Marilyn Horn, this edition dated 1968 (there is a newer one, but I don't have it at hand),

Hey, you can read it online for free (you gotta sign up and stuff, but finding an out of print book in a library gets harder and harder these days)

It's a doctoral thesis, 

https://archive.org/details/secondskininterd00horn/

A point of order: Cut my Cote is from 1993.

Most of it isn't really new, but after reading Second Skin (thanks Ithaca Maven from IG for the heads up), I am reminded how much of historical research depends on bad thinking following poor research.

Lookit at those happy Etruscans!

 In "Etruscan Places", DH Lawrence posits that the Etruscans were happy because their funeral markers have smiles on their faces.
Uh, no. Maybe. Maybe not.

One of my favorite moments in college was a presentation by a fellow student on the art of the Etruscans. At the end of it, our professor asked which book he used for reference, and when he did not answer, she said "You know, that Lawrence book is fiction, don't you?"

It took me years to read it myself, after that event, but I have enjoyed it. It is memoir and fiction from the end of a writer's life, not researched or vetted.

We wore our copy of this book out. I wept frequently.

 A prosperous city. A happy time, Roman Times, as it's shown.

And next page, what the book calls The Invaders 600 CE

The whole concept of the Barbarian Tribe differs on where you live and when the history was written.

I prefer the first era, as Romans had indoor plumbing.

Enter the peoples of what will be Europe. They are on the move (illness, advances in transportation, horse collars and horse shoes 6-900 CE into use, allowing horses to pull wagons and walk longer distances), they come through and we don't get indoor plumbing back for ....a really long time. According to this book.

This is a gap/assumption in research that bothers me. Partly because I like indoor plumbing, and potable water is a really great thing that makes or breaks a civilization.  Mostly because people tend to retain useful knowledge and not just dump it. I know from years of reading that the 'medieval period' has got a ton of stuff going on we just dismiss out of hand because shiny Renaissance stuff. 

My point? Research gets done and books get written within the world view of the authors. They write what they care about and what they know.
All of these books are written by people within their worldview.
Those on top, see progress one way. 
Those on the bottom, see it another.
So...Second Skin.
There's a lot in this book to annoy me, and it's going to get revisited to make points about how we think about clothes and culture now. Because our perspective has changed, will continue to change, should change to reflect the views of people who have been left out of the academic conversation. It's a big world and we gotta share it.

Second Skin posits that European clothing is cut to fit the body more closely than the kimono style so it can fit under armor.

Uh, probably not. Not everybody wore armor. Happy Etruscan?

Also, just because you didn't find needles doesn't mean they didn't sew

https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/stone-age-clothing-0013137

(This website is full of pop ups and click bait. Please use caution navigating it.)

This article goes back and forth on the time line and interrupts itself and contradicts itself - ARE THERE NO EDITORS?

But it's got some great photos, once you get down there.

"But what about the cold climates, ice ages, and the passing centuries? That’s when the first proper clothing items begin to appear. One interesting study of the common louse shows us that it split to a distinct form of the body louse around 170,000 years ago, which gives us a critical insight into the early development of clothing."

And then we never mention the louse again, but they tell us just as much about human habitation as gravesites and weapons.

Ah, my friend Otzi. He's all over this website.

Are we sure he wore short sleeved clothes? Check out that farmer tan.

This has the rest of it. Our boy was wearing altered clothes.

https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/5300-year-old-otzi-iceman-was-wearing-clothing-five-separate-animal-020953