Wrapping up gifts and birthdays Winter 2016/17

I made pajama bottoms for the men

I finished the quilt for my friend

Finally made myself tights (pattern taken from a pair that fits)

Almost finished my McCalls vintage blouse but can't bring myself to put in the pleats on a shirt I won't get to wear for months and months. And yes, the plaid match at the front is PERFECT. There's an overlap and buttonholes there.

City maps available on www.spl.org website. I love the library!

I made a lot of tea towels out of fabrics I made the designs for on Spoonflower and didn't take photos of the towels. Or the awful scarf I made for my sister. Infinity scarves are not my forte.

Two hats from one sadly felted sweater vest.

The pussy hats will get there own post later, when I have the photos to prove it. Although I have a feeling that getting fashion photos is not on her agenda during the Women's March in DC this weekend. It was a gift, not a photo op. I'm good with that.

lousy photos I know. The dress has left the building.

I knocked off a dress for my niece

My niece is transgender, and has a lot of unrelated agoraphobic issues about shopping, leaving out the whole 'nothing is going to fit you because you're not a size  0 - 14 so you should just disappear' thang.  On top of every other thing she's dealing with, that is a crappy thing to discover that everyone else knows about it. "What? There's no size 40 A cup bra? You're not rioting in the streets?"

Eh, no.

Anyway, my sister and my niece were walking out of Macy's and saw a Michael Kors dress in the window and Niece pointed and said Yes to that dress.

So they found it in the store, got one that mostly fits, and I made a straight copy, different color, of it for her over the holiday.

Since I am trying not to swear quite so much, I am making up a profanity for use regarding this fabric.

Cotton stretch sateen is a snurbswobble. The lowest rung of hell kind of snurbswobble.

It was a perfect rectangle until I ironed it.

So many puckers and bubbles. But the exposed zipper was a breeze for once.
I guess you give up a lot but you get one back.

 It won't take a hard press, it has just enough stretch to pucker and pull when you're topstitching, and this dress is ALL TOPSTITCHING. 

There is an epic tragedy under that wobbly patch. Actually less wobbly in person, but still tragic.

There is an entire roll of Wonder Tape in this snurbswobble, and even that wouldn't quite grab enough to stop the shifting. I couldn't press hot enough to fuse the fusibles. I pinned the nonsense out of this mother-snurbswobbler!

Wouldn't it be cool if that multicolored fuzzy thing was the sleeve extension? It's a purse I made almost ten years ago that hangs on the wall so I will see it and figure out how to make it functional. It's taunting me.

There will be no modeling yet. Aren't there yet. Looks good; she picked out the fabric and the notions, and while the fabric is a demon from hell, it's a good choice for the item and a good color for her.

This is my sister and that's the best view of the Space Needle from a pizza restaurant you will ever see. It's even better from the bar of that restaurant; the bartender has the best view in the house. For a change!

I had a birthday on Monday, I'm now roundly and soundly 58. Every day above ground is a good one.  Thing One turned 20 as well (same day) and he got snowed out of his Whistler skiing trip. It was his prepaid birthday present from me, so every penny he can get back from that is still his gift. Sorry sweetie. The irony is strong with this one.

And my favorite card. So favored, I could not give it to its intended recipient.

See, we can cross borders and boundaries in sewing with humor. Or the other thing.

Dad jokes forever!

"Miss Petite, under 5'4" without shoes"

I'm trying to figure out what I should/would like to be wearing as I wander between sizes.

I don't care for leggings, I think the lagenlook is aping little girls (skirts over pants?), but what the hell, it looks comfortable and camouflage-y. A tunic, a statement necklace (that doesn't make noise when I move), some leggings, Birkenstocks with socks...

I live in a family of thin men, and they shop vintage in person and Uniqlo online for skinny stuff.

God bless 'em for putting real measurements of clothes up on the web, but according to this

Uniqlo size chart - they do a separate chart for each clothing item

my 43" backside is too big for XXL.

Now I know my brands: I wear a ladies XL in t shirts from American Apparel, a L from District, and so forth.

But I was wondering how these numbers stacked up in sewing pattern numbers.

There is, generally, way more ease in sewing patterns today.

Had to dig down past searching the website for "size chart". Who writes this site's code anyway? The Microsoft /Apple help desk teams?* Make this site searchable, dangit.

Roll credits

It's there. Needed a better data shovel. My top is a 14, my bottom is a 20. Usually I only span adjacent sizes.

We've yapped about sizes, sizism, and marketing a lot on the sewingnets, and as much as I dislike a vast conspiracy (no one is that organized), there is a great desire for standardization across the shopping globe. Americans are bigger than Europeans (check the Ted Baker US/UK size ranges - my spouse is a "1", which does not exist in the American range) and certainly bigger than the Japanese size range. So the Uniqlo range makes sense.

Unlike the American Apparel range.

I am trying to compare apples to apples here. Note there is no hip measurement on this chart. It's the same on the jeans chart. It's a case if "if you have to ask, it's not for you".

I had a friend who sewed for AA, and she joked that none of the sewists could possibly fit into the clothes they sewed (being average lady people).

I had an email exchange with an OLD and VENERABLE workwear company about posting the measurements for their ladies jeans, and their response was: Why? We use a standard size.

Whose standard?

And damn, I'm a 0 at Torrid!

Now THAT's a curvy chart! I'm actually within the 0 size range, waist AND hip! Let's go shopping!

(ed: I did. Those are the leggings. In the jeans, I'm still too big in the waist. SAD)

from the very very fine NewVintageLady website. Go read this article!

Also worth checking out is a  very nice Vintage knit sizes and style overview

Styles change, so do sizes. It's worth reading about. Hey, you're already on the 'net!

CurvySewing Collective: how we talk about size

Fashion Incubator: the myth of vanity sizing

NYTimes Plus Size Wars

*It's now official: in the inhouse Windows/Apple style wars, I hate them both.

Grading up vintage patterns: proportion and preservation

It's beautiful! It's everything I want in a dress! It's a vintage 16 and I am...

bigger.

Tanya on Curvy Sewing Collective just covered the basics in a very clear tutorial

photo from Curvy Collective, Tanya http://tanyamaile.com/

But what about smaller pieces with darts and seams and connections to other pieces?

Let's say, a bodice with an angled collar. Like Mail Order 9213

I am going to trace the original pattern piece and cut that piece up, preserving the first one. I can trace and shift, but I get lost and forget where I've traced and shifted, and slicing the pieces gives me a chance to play around with proportions. And I've covered myself in the very likely event I make a hash of it.

The green lines are the ones I can mess with and no real design change will occur. The Red is super caution and the yellow needs thinking about.

The blue lines are sort of a standard bodice slice. Through the bust point vertically and horizontally, at the front edge and through the armsceye. I never want to add all the width at one point. Ever. It will look awful.

I measured myself vs the pattern's size measurements. I am assuming the pattern takes wearing ease into account, and won't get into the precise nitty gritty of fitting ME and MY SPECIAL ISSUES until later.

I need two inches all the way around, checking by my waist and upper bust #s. So, one inch in the whole front bodice; I want to add a half inch to each side of the front.

What I want is to keep the high angle of the collar. I don't want it floating as a little collar in a sea of bodice (which will happen if I just add width through the shoulder seam), and I don't want it suuuuper wide on either sloping angle. So I want to add a little here and a little there.

It is easier to manage adding the width first. Adding the same width to each cut keeps it even. So if I'm adding half an inch to this piece, each cut is 1/4 inch wide to keep things about the same. I tack this down with a little tape (usually there are strips of tracing paper flying around the table for backing purposes) .

Don't draw lines yet.

This is where you can play a little. I don't need adjusting in the armsceye, but I do need a little in the bodice below the bust point (usually I need to shorten this part).  I am NOT doing a bust adjustment in this manuever. I would lengthen by 1/4", but if you know you are a long torso from previous experience, measure yourself and do that deed NOW below the bust point.

If I think the collar has just gotten too small, I can grab it and move it. If I want it smaller, I can cut that section up and move the pieces around WITHIN the boundaries of how big the bodice needs to be.

(this is why I make the copy. I like to play with my toys!)

Redraw lines. The shoulder seam got a little longer, the collar a little longer and deeper.

 Time for one more think over on the v neck collar. I'm going to cheat it down a little in the center. I am a modest gal, but I like the sharp angle at center.

You will, eventually, retrace this on new paper. Move the marks (seam marks, bust point, original darts) to where they should be on the new piece. You should mark the bust point by trying this piece on you. That's when the bust adjustment happens (that is, I don't have one)

Keep in mind that if you add height to any seam, the other piece of that seam (a sleeve, a back bodice) will need to be adjusted similarly. This is where it works to do these pieces at the same time.

On a big table

I did the slide method for the skirt until I realized the waist yoke pieces were getting lost in my wiiiiiiiide new front piece. So there're a whole set of frankenpattern photos that follow this one. I'll just keep that to myself.

It is easier to make mistakes on paper than fabric. You will make a few truly huge boneheaded errors, from which you will become brilliant.

Thinking about trousers: the FBumA Alteration

I keep seeing people talk about doing a sway back alteration on their pattern as they work for fit, but...I never see a 'big bum alteration'.

Could we call it a FBumA (playing on the full bust alteration formula)? It would have similar alteration issues (opening space between seams).

When you're adding to a pants pattern, the back piece is all you have to deal with. If it's a jeans alteration, the seam between the upper yoke and the main back piece IS the dart you're altering on. However, let's just stick to trouser style for the moment.

Assuming you started with a pants pattern that was perfect enough in the waist (A) and thighs, just needed more in the back, adding width (B) and a dart (red v-shape) above that width gives you more in the thigh and leg (C) than you wanted.

I'm not fond of slashing entire pieces by length to get what I want, so if I could avoid it, I would.

Version D is throwing off the grain line on the side seam and that's going to get weird in a hurry. 

So we go towards the back center line with E. 

 I have nipped off a little at the back waist and the side hip, because that is what I end up doing. I am bigger in the back than the front and I need all that width through the meaty part.  Essentially all I've added in the crotch is the equivalent of a gusset (which has been an alteration staple of my pants wardrobe for years) while adding who knows how many inches across the back. I could make the back crotch deeper as well, lengthening the center seam upwards to make the seam longer

(version F).

I confess I work the other way; identify the sizing from the butt and taking in the other parts. And I always have issues with how pants fit through the waist in the back. I am reconsideing this in light of reading about pattern adjustments; getting the fit right through the shoulders is trickier than getting the bust to fit.  But you'd buy a blouse pattern based on your chest measurement, which would tend to throw the rest of it off.

Perhaps the moral of this story is: you gotta make a muslin first.

Author's Message!

There's been a valuable conversation going on in the Colette Patterns blog about body, image, self-image, wardrobe. Whatever I may think of their patterns, the conversation in the comments has been brilliant (and it really has been a conversation, not just a series of position papers).

I figured I had better own my own part of it. This is (lightly edited for content) what I wrote:

I know from experience how cruel the world can be to girls (anything that does not meet the 'standard' = deformed).  My mom taught me how to sew; I had no idea she was teaching me how to control my own destiny.

I don't think I am overstating this.  I did not realize that it would be my only way to dress myself, that my sewing would be my shield against pain, my rallying cry. I wear every insult, well meant or not (thanks Dad. It IS a shame about my legs) as defense and offense. You think my clothes look funny? Does my ass look big in this? Yes, because it is. In stripes. Horizontal.

After hip surgery a couple years ago, I can walk without pain for the first time in my life.  And I'm walking in jeans that I'm fine tuning the fit on.  In a Frida Kahlo print. I can't remake the world, but I can stop trying to make the world fit me.

Yeah, over the top for me. But I won't take it back. I am what I do. And it's about not trying to make ME fit the WORLD.  The man-made world should fit us: I can be very outspoken about handicapped access.  I swing a mean cane, kids!

Size-ism and Capitalism

Pattern blocks used to conform to this body model.

Ah, the firestorm of size-ism. The Colleterie site's "thoughts-on-sewing/grading-patterns-for-plus-sizes" conversation is intense.

As it should be. It's a big, personal, complicated issue. There's no way to contain all of it in one blog or letter or song or book.

I must apologize for throwing any hornets' nests into a small room, but sizing is, I believe, a cultural convention, and that sewing defies that in a political action.

Dress form of recent vintage. No hips on her!

I believed this long before Elizabeth Cline wrote "Overdressed"; she didn't go far enough by my lights.

Sure, our (choices define (commerce) defines our choices), perpetuating a feedback loop of "cheap and shoddy clothes that fit no one that are bought by everyone, creating more demand for cheap and shoddy...

You get the idea. Clothing is cheap because we expect so little from it. You get what you pay for.

This is the same thinking for sizing blocks for The Big 4 (the big 2:McCalls/Butterick/Vogue/KwikSew and Simplicity/NewLook). Two organizations, with remarkably similar basic shape assumptions. They've got a lot of product to crank out, in a standard that really fits no one, but has been accepted by the majority. We voted for it by buying it.

See the photos of dress forms for a few ideas about the "ideal" body type assumption. Was anyone that shape? No. Industrial strength corsetry made the first image possible. Each was the sizing block of its time.

18th C Wood/Iron dress forms: The back is swayed and the frames are for the skirts, which will stand away from the torso

This is my argument: if you expect free and cheap patterns, you will get the midrange house sizing. If you want more than that, you will pay for it. Your rate of exchange will either be higher priced patterns or your labor in adapting/redrafting those patterns.

In marketing and business, there's the idea that you can have something quick, good or cheap. You can have two out of the three, but you cannot have all three. You have to decide. And just letting the decision go is deciding that you don't care about it

It's not that patterns are too expensive, it's that they've been underpriced for years. See that $30 price on a Vogue Pattern? Did you ever pay that?* See that $22 on a Sewing Workshop? Ever pay that? Were your expectations different? Why? The same level of technique went into both; but one company is underwritten by a mammoth empire (the patterns are a promotional write-off) and the other one isn't. Those badly drafted 'plus size' patterns are a sop, designed to keep your business and keep you quiet. You can have it quick and you can have it cheap.....

The other house motto we have at Ernie Labs is: make it easy for people to give you money. If someone asks you for an item you don't sell (that would make sense for you to sell, like a grocery store selling cabbage as well as lettuce), you should try really hard to get that item in. You do NOT tell a potential customer why you can't; they will write you off and go to the next door/store/website down. Never say no; say 'soon.' 

On a personal note, it makes me very angry to see people giving away their hard work on Burda and Craftsy. I make myself mad at undercharging for my hard work because someone else is giving my patterns away for free. I compete with myself at the end of the day, and the only way i can beat that is by adding value to what I already have out. You stole the pattern, but you forgot to steal the instructions.

I keep going at it because it's what I enjoy working hard at.  It sets my brain on fire in a way that no other activity has. I'm okay at it,  but i will be brilliant someday, tenthousand happy hours later.

And when I get there, I sure as hell will not accept $2 for a pattern.



* I feel really badly for our UK/Aus/NZ pals who do pay something like this. Now and then, there's a Vogue that really does teach you something new in the construction and instructions, but I confess I wait them out for the deep discount sales at Joann's. And I do pay $22 for a Sewing Workshop pattern, because i know what went into it.