I Spent Valentines Day Making The Most Matronly Nightgown In Existance

I haven't been around for the last two weeks because I was moving my entire life into my parents garage. I have far to much stuff, especially fabric, and even if I get a flat reasonably soon I'm going to have to jettison a good deal of it. Most is stuffed behind the futon and piled up high so it literally hangs over my head while I sleep.

It doesn't look like much but it'll do the job just fine and I don't have a load of uses for blue gingham. My dad saw it and though school uniform just like I did. I don't think anyone who's gone through a british state school wouldn't.

My next project will be my new pattern of the month, a nice, simple shirt. I counted my patterns today and found out if I keep doing one new pattern every month the ones I have should last me well into 2016. That's a bit sobering. Maybe by then I'll have worked through half of my damn stash?

Navel Gazing (Belly Button Staring?)

All the upheaval in my life at the moment have gotten me thinking about the future. Not just what I want to make and wear but who I want to be. Where do I want to be in ten years.

It's a rollercoaster of joy and depression, and I definitely haven't come out the other end yet but every time something like this has happened to me I've come out of it wiser but a little bit more separated from what I think of as the expected route. If it keeps up at this rate I'll either end up like Bill Gates or the movie stereotype wise crazy homeless person.

I'd prefer the Bill Gates one.

When you're looking for a job you find yourself in the weird position of trying to sell yourself. What would make other people want you and want to be around you. Are you a good leader? Can you type? Heal people? Burp the alphabet? What do you have to offer someone else that's so good that they're willing to pay for it?


I often think of myself as someone with a lot to offer but no proof of it, and that's what I'm trying to change at the moment. I'm trying to be social and it's a new thing for me. It's hard and confusing and people don't make much sense.

I spent some of yesterday sending off applications for volunteering positions, doing fundraising and simple admin for charities, to see if anyone would take me. I even sent off one for a Young Carers support group that I used to get help from as a teen. I'm starting to understand that my actions and my history are the only thing that people have to judge by, they can't see what they need to just by looking at me.

This may not be a big revelation to you, but I've been catching up from behind for a long time now. Things like this come from theory of mind, your ability to understand what other people think and feel, and I've always been lacking. I believe I'm high functioning autistic, but arguing with doctors and getting a test is so much personal interaction and hard work for something I already know, just to prove it to other people who may just mentally label me 'retarded' or rude and move along.

Autistic spectrum disorders mess about with the temporal lobe.

I've learned a lot with my intellectual mind that other people were born with, I rarely accidentally insult people any more any when I only have to deal with one person I'm almost normal, but if there isn't instant feedback I could live my whole life without understanding. I'm starting to think most people fall into this trap.

I think we consider what people will think of us in the short run far longer than the big picture they get. We consider first impressions and often don't think beyond that. Don't get me wrong, first impressions are important, but if you sell yourself as something you aren't then trying to keep it up might well destroy you. You need to present yourself as a condensed, polished representation of yourself, not a totally new person who'll dissolve when the pressure of real life hits. I'm starting to see that more and more lately.

If we want to change the way we are perceived in a radical way, we have to change ourselves in a sustainable way. Find a new passion if you feel like a one trick pony, learn to take a bit more joy in life if people think of you as no fun to be with, and maybe stop expecting people to 'see through to the real you' when you don't even try to look at it from their perspective.

And, of course, learn when not to care what other people think.

Undocumented Progress

I did really well this weekend and got all the pieces for McCall's 6614 traced off, but since I left my camera at home there's no pictures. Imagine a big pile of pattern pieces curled up to look like scrolls and you're there.

I went to see the people at the jobcentre today and signed an agreement saying how much I had to do towards getting a job. For those of you who don't know, to get the benefits, a whole £200 a month, you have to spend 35 hours a week looking for work and making yourself more employable. That's 7 hours every work day sending off job applications and practicing my touch typing. Heck, at this rate I might be employable at the end.

Obviously that cuts down on sewing time, but if I find someone willing to pay me for 40 hours of my week then that'll be well worth it.

My Relationship To Food, Part 2

I'm guessing my last post was a bit boring. Don't worry, this one should be a bit more relevant and the next one is about a dress, so we're back to the sewing.

Recently new (or new to me) research confirmed what most people know, that dieting may work for a little while but your chances of putting the weight back on and more besides is very high. It turns out that your body seriously resists loosing weight, which makes sense if you live in a hunter gatherer society and not having enough calories to maintain yourself is a very bad thing, but humans weren't designed to live in a world where food was abundant and eating too much was more of a threat than eating too little.

Dieting makes you obsessed with food. Your brain telling you louder and louder that you NEED food and no amount of mental strength can hold up to that onslaught. To make it worse, your body has an idea of what your normal size is, and it's much easier for it to go up then down. Once it's gone up it gets even harder to get healthy.

Currently some scientists believe our best option is to develop better appetite suppression drugs and combat our cultures obesity problem, but that's a long way off for most of us. Until then I need another plan.

My plan? Vegetables. I'm thinking I'll pack the fridge at home with bags of carrots and celery and when I feel just a little bit hungry and I get tempted I'll grab some and munch away to my hearts content. I have absolutely no idea if it'll work but it's worth a try and even if it doesn't it'll be much more fun that eating pizza and hating myself for it.

My Relationship To Food, Part 1

I'll be the first to admit that I have issues with my weight. I was one of the big kids at school, or at least I felt like one. I wasn't huge but I hung around with skinny girls and small girls and that kinda skewed my sample.

I ate for emotional reasons mostly. I didn't know how to ask for attention or connect with people emotionally so I always felt left out and neglected. It wasn't the fault of my parents or friends, I just didn't know how to ask for what I needed.

I thought about dieting, but I had very little control over what I ate. Mum made breakfast, packed lunches and big dinners. We were told 'you won't get your dessert until you've cleared your plate'. School dinners were even worse, because we had to take a certain amount and got in trouble for not taking the amount they thought we needed.

I can't leave food on my plate, but I don't know if that's nature or nurture. When I was young I would fight for what I thought was rightfully mine because I always felt short changed. Give me the option and I will choose more. Give me a buffet and I will eat until I puke. Literally.

When I moved away from home things got a little better. My first flat was in a village with no food shops. Restaurants? By the bucket! Need a bridal shop? Have three! But it was a mile bicycle ride to the supermarket for food I could take home. My dinner was a chicken breast and a serving of rice, cooked with a carton of chopped tomatoes and at least two kinds of frozen veg. Breakfast was a simple bowl of cereal and I barely ever found myself going back for more. It was paradise! I don't know what I weighed but I had a healthy relationship with food.

In my second flat it was harder. The shop around the corner sold biscuits quite cheaply and it was easier to binge than to cook. Plus my bike was falling apart so going to get a weeks shop usually involved walking. Frozen food defrosted and fresh was expensive. I turned back to junk food.

I can't pretend that boredom and loneliness wasn't partly to blame as well. I wasn't seeing family as often or getting out as much and was feeling depressed watching my brother go down hill. The highlight of my week was going to roleplaying games where sweets and fizzy pop were the norm. I deluded myself into thinking I was being healthy if I hardly ate the rest of the week.

When I was loosing weight through the beginning of 2013 I attributed it to slimfast powders and force of will, but I think I was partly wrong there. Sure, it helped, but I think what really got me through was my snacking. You see, I love carrots. I love them, and you could get a 1kg bag of ugly and weirdly shaped carrots at the local supermarket for £1. Whenever I snacked, I started to snack on vegetables and I could eat whenever I was hungry. I think that was the key. If I tried to hold back through willpower then I just got hungrier and hungrier until I went and bought a bag of cookies with that same one pound.

As the year continued, however, I got depressed again. I stopped leaving the house and the boyfriend moved in. He couldn't live on salad. We agreed to try and get healthy together, him being quite overweight, but every time he went and spent £20 he didn't have on junk food or bought a footlong subway I gave up a little. It was like he was saying he didn't care as much as me. I don't take it personally now, I see it for what it was, but when he complained about the healthy food I made it hurt.

I want to get my love of healthy, yummy food back, but moving into my parents house means I'm going to have to think long and hard about how I'm going to move forward. I'll talk more about that in part 2.

Change Of Schedule

 I'm afraid I don't have a progress picture of my dress to show you, but I'm not where I was expecting to be. I thought I'd be sewing in front of the TV at home tonight then heading off to Rugby in the morning to apply for jobseekers benefit, but my dad came round today to pick up some stuff and I ended up coming too. I've got to be at the jobcenter at two tomorrow and I'm going to stay for the rest of the weekend and tracing sewing patterns. I've got a skirt one to help fill out my wardrobe and two jackets that I can probably get done before it gets too warm to wear them. It is England after all.

I can't believe it's the 9th of the month and I'm about to start my sixth garment. Stash busting extreme!

I was hoping to make my trial run of this pattern out of a lovely white and grey striped fabric that I've had in my stash for a while, but when I got it out I found out I didn't have enough! There's probably enough for a nice shirt but I'm not up for that yet.

I went digging for something else that'd work and found this lovely red poly-cotton. I love red! It's probably my favorite colour to wear, even though purple is my favorite overall, and it fits into my wardrobe like a key in a lock.

If this dress comes out looking good I'm going to make a lovely white version, but I don't think it'll be done for the Little White Dress challenge over at Pattern Review. I'm just too into stash busting to get stuck into one long project. Oh, well. It's not like they won't have more competitions.

Success!

I've got two complete tops! The white one and the blue one (that I'm currently wearing) are finished and the gold, silver and green ones only need their cuffs sewing on.

I've got a load more that I'm going to sew together with black tread when I get the overlocker rethreaded, but I think I need a break from making the same pattern again an again, and I don't mean just the darn tidying.

I'm currently trying to pack my life into a series of plastic crates and trying to get rid of everything I don't need or don't use, and there's a lot of it. I'm a clutterbug, a hoarder and a mess.

At least if I cut things out I can leave the scraps behind.

T-shirts And Studdies

I was a bit late getting this out because I spent most of the day with my older brother. Me, him and his boyfriend went to wetherspoons and talked about what I'm going to do this year. I've got to get on with researching universities and talking to everyone about what my options are but I'm feeling pretty good about it now.

I did manage to get quite a lot of work done on my t-shirts. I cut out four more and sewed the shoulder seams, as well as the back center seam on the neck band. I had a go at chain stitching (I think that's what it's called when you leave hardly any space between pieces) to save thread and make it go quicker. It worked pretty well and I ended up with the hideous neckband garland. You probably can't see but that things got 30 sharp pins sticking out of it.

The next thing to do will be sew the neck bands to the tops and sew up the sides. I think I should be able to get them finished by the 7th, and then I'm going to try making a wearable muslin of the dress I traced over the Christmas holidays.

First Projects Of The New Year

Yesterday I managed to leave my purse, with my train ticket, money, and house keys in it, at my parents house when I went to go home on the train. I managed to get on the train before I even realised and ended up having to pay again (well, dad did) and sitting for over an hour surrounded by a loud family, trying to read but unable to because of the noise.

When I finally got home I was tired, hungry and feeling a caffeine withdrawal headache coming on. Add on to that a growing feeling that I'm studying the wrong subject and managing to make dinner only to spill it on the floor and it felt like a pretty bad day.

I ended up talking to my older brother about it. We're going to meet up tomorrow and he's going to help me look at my options. I'm going to finish this year at the OU but it's not what I want to do in the long run. I wasn't expecting the new year to lead to quite so many changes.

After that I felt better. I did the washing up and even felt up to getting on with sewing! I got a blue velvet T-shirt cut out and I'm going to do another four before doing them all production line style with white thread. Then I can change to black and do the rest. :-)

Slow Progress And Future Plans

I'm getting on with tracing NewLook 6150 at a steady pace but it's still going slow. Faster than I would at home but not as fast as I was expecting. That's mostly due to laziness though.

What's more important, to me anyway, is that I've finally got my housing situation sorted for the next few months. I was hoping to move back to my home town but trying to find a place and then only being able to give my months notice when I have somewhere to go is both annoying and expensive.

I'm going to pack my stuff up and stick it in storage instead. Move onto Mum and Dads futon, where I've been staying this week, if I haven't found a place by the middle of February and be able to look properly for a flat. I'm feeling a lot less stressed about it now and edging into excited. I've still got to declutter a lot more but I can live with that.

Hats Off To Christmas!

Hey there guys! I hope you're having a great Christmas and getting to do something you love, whether it's spending time with your family or indulging in a rare pleasure. I'm going to be spending the morning with the grandparents and then settling in at home with the parents and siblings for presents and dinner. I think it's the first time the five of us have been together since last Christmas.

On Christmas Eve we got drunk over board games and played with hats.

Dad wore Mums hat:

The brothers wore Dads hats:

And I wore my brothers hat (the one on your left):

Mum wore one of her many rainbow hats but no one took a picture. :-(

Holiday!

Tomorrow I get to go home to my parents place and spend ten days sleeping in the dining room on a futon. I'm looking forward to playing board games, staying in a heated house and slogging books that I won't get around to reading there and back.

 But what about my sewing and this blog? Well, even though my mum has three sewing machines I don't know how many of them are working at the moment and I'm concentrating on knits anyway. I'll just have to wait till I get back home to my overlocker.

Also, I just wanted to point out that the stuff in the picture isn't all of my stretch odds and sods collection. It's about half of it, but the rest is just more velvet in a huge range of colours I don't wear at the moment.

I can, however, get on with copying off some of the patterns I haven't tried yet. I just have to find out if I'll have to bring my iron with me.

If I just fill this blog with pictures of the copied off patterns then it's going to get a bit boring, so I'll try to carry on with the (hopefully) interesting musing on various sort of related subjects.

I'm also going to take the opportunity to get measurements for my family so I can make muslins if I feel like it and bring them home the next time I'm going. (I might move back to the town before I get around to it but that's beside the point.)

Hope you guys have a fun Christmas!

The Work Of Deborah Cook

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I'm in love with little details in clothing and miniaturisation in general so the work of Deborah Cook just gets to me in all the right ways. She's a costume designer who works in stop gap animation and is responsible for the clothing worn in both Coraline and Paranorman.

All the garments are hand sewn so that they can work in tiny detail, even making a map for visible stitching so that when the film is expanded to the size of a movie theater screen it looks consistent. They might have 40 versions of a costume in use so it really does matter.

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In 2010 Deborah Cook did an interview with the FIDM Museum Blog that's really worth a read. I found it really interesting to learn about their use of fabric and how the size of the puppets made an impact. Because the figures are so small it's not realistic to use the same fabric you would use on a lifesize person, but they wanted it to look the same, so they had to source a good replacement that looked close enough that would stand up to scrutiny. They even examined it with magnifying glasses!

The costumes in Coraline are gorgeous and if google is to be believed then the main characters yellow raincoat is the most popular garment in the movie, among cosplayers at least, but I'd have my own starry jumper if I could pull anything out of the computer screen. It's pretty and feminine but it looks so comfortable that you could wear it almost all day, every day and not get bored.

Maybe when I've cut down on my fabric stash a bit I'll go searching for the right sweater knit and the right silver fabric? It wouldn't be that hard to put together, even if the stars might be time consuming. What do you think?

T-shirt Work In Progress

I've spent the last two days sewing time tracing another t-shirt pattern, Newlook 6230, and it's at times like this I wish I just cut out the damn tracing paper. I know I'll use this one till it wears out so it's worth it to trace it but it really gets boring after a while.

It's almost ready for me to start cutting the fabric but I'm about to head off to my parents for the weekend and I won't be bringing it with me. Fingers crossed I'll get my Biology work done, though. :-)

A Long Overdo Goodbye

When I first started this blog I spent weeks cutting out a toile for a jacket from an old curtain I got from my
mum, and then put it aside after sewing one or two seams. All the parts are still in my spare room somewhere but they got lost in the mess.

Now I'm cleaning up my house so that it'll be easier to move back to my home town after Christmas, and I'm coming across the bits and bobs that I haven't payed attention to for months. I don't really know what I was thinking. Not only am I not really a toile person, I find it hard to sew things I AM going to be able to wear at the end. I don't want to spend ages sewing something that makes me bored. If I don't fit into it at the end I'll just have to find someone who does.

I have two other projects that need a decision as well, my bed-sheet dress and my gingham dress.

I only have two dresses in my wardrobe, neither of which I wear. It's not their fault, really. One's an airline hostess costume in quite horrible, stretchy fabric, and the other is my 40s dress that needs a summer event to shine and a petticoat (that I don't have) to hang right.

I'm afraid I'm chucking my bed-sheet dress. I know I was never going to wear it and the fabric was on it's last legs to begin with. It was dark from being used, like a carpet that's been walked on every day. It never would have coped with having butten holes put in it because of the weave, either. I'm kinda sad I didn't realize before I cut it up. Maybe I could have made some cushions by using the side that was on the inside, but it would have always looked weird. At least I learned something from this.

The gingham dress will get made, partly because my boyfriend helped me with it and that makes me think of him, and partly because there's a good chance it'll be wearable, at least in spring. If it's not then at least I can give it to the charity shop without feeling embarrassed..

My absence

I've been away from my blog for a bit, and for that I'm sorry.

It's been hard for me to find the space to work in my horrible, messy house and even harder to find the mental and emotional energy. All my bills arrived at the same time and my relationship's hit a couple of bumps.

I did find something else to do that took a lot less space. I've been doing Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) that are 3.5 x 2.5 inch pieces of artwork that you can swap online.

I'm going to try and get back to sewing this week.

Planning for Cosplaying

I said in one of my first posts that my goals for the year included making a cosplay costume. (There's a few things on that list that I probably won't get done, but lets not talk about that.)

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I've finally decided which one I want to do first.

I'm a big fan of the Teen Titans cartoon series. It came out when I was in the right age demographic, they showed episodes at the right time so I could watch them at my grandparents, (we didn't have cable or satellite) and it turned into a gateway drug for the DC universe.

This costume has a couple of advantages that draw me to it. Firstly, as far as superhero outfits go it's pretty simple. There aren't any complicated emblems or insignia to trip me up. I might try them later but not on my first try.

Secondly, I finally feel like I have the figure to make it work. I know I shouldn't talk like that, a bigger cosplayer having loads of fun will almost always look better than someone the right shape who doesn't put the effort in and enjoy it, but confidence wasn't always my strong suit.

Thirdly, I probably have the supplies for the main clothes, belt, and broach already. That's an important thing at the moment because I'm completely skint.

Lastly, It's been done before and done well. It's always nice to be able to see what can be achieved and how it's been done by other people.

I'm going to try and get this together by the end of the year and then break it out at conventions in the spring, but I still don't know where I'm going to find the shoes...

Bodice

I got so little done on my dress since the 16th I feel ashamed. I cut out the bodice but nothing else and I still haven't started sewing yet.

I do have sort of a good excuse though. Those of you in England will know we've been having a bit of a heat wave lately, and I don't do well with heat. I've gotten used to getting all my liquids via having tea at home and just going without when I leave the house so I thought nothing of wandering into town for a slice of cake and wandering home (an hour each way) without a bottle of water. On one of the hottest days of the year.

To compound the problem I went to a party with my boyfriend that night and subsisted on rum and coke, i.e. alcohol and caffeine. I ended up seriously dehydrated and I'm only now getting over it.

I cut out the bodice for my Hawthorne dress and marked all the buttons and button holes. I did it by sticking a pin through the marks and drawing them on in pencil.

This fabric is slowly driving me nuts. Not only is the weave really loose, but it's taken a battering from being bedding for years. If it was on grain to begin with it certainly isn't now.

I promise I'll get more done for next time. Take care of yourselves and drink loads of water!

Fabric Patterns And A New Posting Schedule

The blog needs a bit of a revamp. I'm not changing the template or the layout that much because I'm pretty happy with them but you can expect to see some changes in the content.

Firstly, I'm planning on putting up a tutorial or two. I'll probably only do them when things come up organically but as I explore the world of sewing and fashion more and more things should come to the surface.

Secondly, as much as I love writing every day and it helps me keep motivated, I think I can produce better posts if I have a longer run up time. I'm just changing to posting on even days at the moment, and I'll have two days to work on things at the end of 31 day months instead of switching or doing two in a row. I hope it works out.

On to my other subject!

Have you heard of fabric printing services like Spoonflower? I love the idea! Just imagine, a pretty dress or shirt made of fabric you designed yourself! Or you can browse the ones that are already there by popularity or a colour you like. You can even buy a printed pillow that you sew together yourself like the one below, available here.

I've always liked scribbling patterns and playing with colours in my notebooks and it would be cool to upload them. They might sell if I do them with Paint Shop Pro and it would be cool if someone liked them enough to pay for them but I mostly just want to put a personal spin on my own clothes

On a random note, it's apparently 'Different Colored Eyes Day'. The combination of that and meeting someone at work who had one blue, one hazel eye sort of inspired me to doodle a pattern. It's not as creepy as it could have been.