Sewing for Everyone's Body: See It, Be It

New to sewing?

Welcome to the Pride Edition of: If You Want It, You Should Wear It.

I am very Team "See the Thing, Make The Thing Fit You". If you see yourself as Princess Aurora, you should dress as Princess Aurora. Or Glinda. This is why cosplay is so attractive, and why most of my IG feed is cosplayers.

 So Much Creativity. So Little Judgement.

See It. Be It.

Here's me:

Are we clear? Good. 

It's easier to find a pattern and make it fit you than make you fit the pattern you think you are supposed to want. This is why sewing is a superpower, because we can see how to make the thing work for us. And we all know how powerful the image we present to the world is.

Even if it's really goofy and too warm. And nobody got it.

Look in all the pages of the pattern books. You never know what will spark joy.

If you have ambitions bigger than your present set of talents, there's information galore to bridge that gap.

Some times we go back to the classics so we are reminded of what we thought we knew. I will sit down and watch 'Singing in the Rain' and read 'Better Dressmaking' and the collected works of Kenneth King to remind me what I'm doing and why I'm here.

But on the interweb of sewing, when you want that reminder,  those classics are this:

http://www.ikatbag.com/2014/03/subtelties-in-drafting-sleeves.html

original idea at http://www.dellacivetta.org/lorenzo/techniques/drafting-sleeves/

There are many tutorials on sewing and drafting on their site, but this is the beginning introduction to Ikat Bag's gifts I point people to. It's friendly and really sums up what you are going to get: a clear eyed and friendly instruction in how to make this pattern stuff work for you, with incredible common sense presentation. 

And the other thing, a set of well considered generic patterns so you don't experience unwanted nudity, is located at:

https://freesewing.org/

Come for the patterns, stay for the community. They aren't kidding. Join the fam!

Key to this site: there's an instruction set for how to take your measurements. Please follow this, take your time, do it right, and it will all be sugar and happiness. Or jalapenos and happiness. Whichever.

Don't let anyone shame you into thinking you aren't good enough; how will you get better if you don't screw it up?

No One Sees Themselves As The Villain In Their Own Story

 

Wanda does the perp walk into Westview

This is what I wear to work. This is a down cardigan. The mask and scarf change, the rest does not

I have been writing this post for months, with this same title all along. Watching Wandavision, and it's twisty tale of 'who is the villain here?' and overwhelming grief shoved me into finishing it. Since then, it's taken me weeks of debate about posting it.

2020 stank for everyone. I don't think that's putting too fine a point on that issue. There are times when one part of the world is down, the other up, or when one group is visited by catastrophe and others rally to help them. This pandemic year, everyone has been struck, everyone has had something awful befall them, and collectively we as a species have watched each other burn and rejoiced. It is horrifying.

Yesterday the spouse and I starting planning the divorce. I'm going to need some time to work on that. I'm not planning on not writing, but I know I won't hit the once a week goal I've been aiming at.

This is a blog about sewing.  This is not a post about sewing. 
I am not sewing much besides more masks and pants because I eat my feelings and I need bigger pants.
Luckily, I can sew myself bigger pants. 
I don't have a lot to say about the relationship for public consumption. 38 years is a very long time to be with one person and not stay together for the old part.
I don't know the way out of this situation except through.  I am doing my best to keep my physical and mental head above water, but it's hard and I am so very sad. Something died and there was no funeral. Mourning is never easy no matter when or where you are and the harder you try to hurry it along, the worse it gets. 

I am not Wanda Maximoff, but if I could have built myself a functioning fantasy world to salve my pain, I damn well would have. And apparently for many years, I fooled myself into thinking mine was real.
But it's like the title says. For someone, I am the villain. 

-----

Adding this, for those without D+

https://youtu.be/mkOBDOAg_1c?t=567

Amanda sums it up nicely from this point in the video

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