Bernice recently left a comment on my “Crash Course on Dart Moving“.

Hi,

THANKS

I like taking questions from the audience, and I like being able to help people who are struggling to figure something out. If anyone out there has questions, please ask them. It may take me a few weeks for me to get back to you, but I will get back to you. I can’t give a 100% guarantee that I know the answers to everything, but I have to be getting close to knowing everything. (Right? Right? C’mon, somebody back me up here!)

Okay, this explanation is going to be on the long side, so bear with me. Because the first thing I’m going to talk about is the whole reason or purpose for darts.

Here’s a sheet of paper. We’re going to pretend it’s fabric, because like fabric, it is flat.

(That’s my brother’s mouse, and my brother’s speaker.) And here in this next picture is a can of Parmesan cheese.

(And that’s my brother’s mess. I take absolutely no responsibility for that mess. It’s all his.) The poor, abandoned cheese container has no clothes. But we’re going to fix that.

So we take our fabric and wrap it around the container. Perfect fit, right? And no darts! This is our “guy” example. His clothes need no shaping. He doesn’t understand why you always get so grumpy about clothes not fitting, because how complicated can it be? You just wrap some fabric around yourself, and you’re good!

We will try not to do violent things to our guy example, even though he has no empathy or understanding and thinks everyone in the world is just like him.

Here’s a girl example:

She has curves.

If she takes a piece of fabric and wraps it around her, it’s not going to fit her the same way it fit the guy. Here’s a cutaway example so we can see what’s happening:

The fabric fit our guy example the same way all over. There was nothing complicated about that situation. But in our girl example, the fabric covers her just fine at the largest point, and it’s loose everywhere else. In order to get the fabric to fit her the same everywhere, we need to do this:

We’ve pinched out the extra. What does this look like when we take the paper off?

Darts!!

So, darts are shaping that is made by taking away fabric where it is too loose. Generally speaking, anyway. That’s the idea; tuck it away in the back of your head for the moment—we’re going to talk about something slightly different now.

Here is another mild-mannered piece of fabric/paper:

Hello, fabric. This fabric has no shaping. It has no darts.

Here I’ve drawn on a 1″ dart. So now this fabric has a dart, but it is an “unsewn” dart, so there is still no shaping. Let’s “sew” this dart.

Now instead of laying flatly on the table, this fabric has some shaping.

See what I mean?

Now what happens if we make the dart bigger? Here I’ve made the dart into a 2″ dart.

And when we tape it up, the shaping is even greater.

The larger we draw our dart,

The taller our shaping becomes.

Some people phrase this as “The bigger the bump, the bigger the dart.” I think of it as simply the difference between two measurements. You have to take as much as necessary out of the bigger measurement to make it equal the smaller measurement.

Now let’s move on to a real life example. Here’s me. In an old t-shirt. A Land’s End boys’ t-shirt, to be exact.

(The mess is all mine, but I still don’t take any responsibility for it. I have lots of good excuses, but they take too long to type.)

Since it’s a boys t-shirt, it has no shaping whatsoever. Somebody has sewn together two flat rectangles, and put sleeves on it. It’s meant to fit our cheese container, which needs no shaping. It’s all the same anyway on a boy. But I am not a boy, and this means it doesn’t fit me the same everywhere.

What this means is that there are darts when I wear this t-shirt, but they are un-sewn darts.

Remember in our examples? When we put the flat piece of paper on the curvy speaker, suddenly there were these big gaps that weren’t there when we put the same piece of paper on the cheese container. And do you remember in the second example, when we drew the darts but didn’t sew them?

Well, this is what happens when you put the unshaped fabric on a shape. It tries to make darts.

Did you see them before I pointed them out to you?

This is what we call “un-sewn darts” or “fullness” or “extra fabric”. If you put an un-shaped piece of fabric on something that has shape, there is “leftovers”.

So here we “sew” the dart. I’m pinning out the fullness; I’m “creating” a dart; I’m shaping the fabric.

And in this extremely blurry picture, you can see it’s still all loose and unshaped on the left side.

So that’s what you call a bust dart. This is what happens when you put in a waist dart:

Since my nickname is not “Miss Skinny Through the Middle”, I find these waist darts to be hugely unflattering, and in real life I’m not going to use them. But if you were a guy, “waist darts” are the only darts you’d ever use, and even then, probably only if you were working on a jacket/sports coat/etc.

So shaped on the right side,

unshaped on the left. The shirt is the same. It’s just that one side has “unsewn” darts, and the other side has “sewn” darts.

You can also shape the side seams. Notice the unsewn darts on the left?

In real life, I would use the bust dart and shape the side seam, but I wouldn’t use the waist dart. This is now seriously into sausage-casing territory, which I call “Not a Good Look.”

In general, you can always use smaller darts. It just means you will have “less shaping”, or your garment will look more like the paper on speaker. But you can’t really make darts bigger, beyond a certain point. Could we have made the darts bigger on the paper on the speaker? No! Could have we made them smaller? Yes, but it would have been a looser, less shaped fit.

So what does any of this have to do with anything? Well, to answer Bernice’s questions:

(1) Your pattern probably does have darts, they’re just unsewn and undrawn. You can put them in. Probably pin-fitting a muslin would be the way to go (just as I pin fit my t-shirt), simply because it’s the most straight forward. Putting in darts will change the fit, though, so if you already like the fit, don’t bother with the darts.

(2) Once you “put your darts in”, you can’t really make them bigger. That’s just the shape you are. But you don’t need to make your darts bigger in order to put in pintucks.

All darts disregarded (either sewn or unsewn), all you need to do to add pintucks is slash-and spread.

Let’s move on to little pattern examples, of which mine are unfortunately very poor quality. I apologize, but I’m running out of steam here, and I really want to get this answer to you this weekend. Otherwise it’s anyone’s guess when I’ll finish it.

If I had a “dartless” pattern that I liked, and I wanted to add decorative tucking down the front, I’d mark off the section I wanted to tuck, like this:

Then I’d slash right up the middle of that section, and spread it apart as far as I needed it,

and tuck it.

Now if I had a shaped pattern, and I wanted decorative tucks down the front, I’d arrange my darts like this:

Mark off my area I wanted tucked, like this:

Slash right along the straight line and add my extra fabric, and tuck:

Now I think what Bernice was talking about was doing “functional” tucks, using tucks to take in the fullness instead of darts. In that case, you can leave the darts without having a perfectly vertical line, and simple tuck out the fullness at the top and the bottom. This will mean the tucks won’t make as straight line down the front of the shirt, but rather will end before reaching the bust.

And that was my rather pathetic illustration of the origin of darts, where they came from, how they got there, what they’re doing there, and what happens when they leave. If I was being paid to do this kind of stuff, I would have taken the time to actually have unblurry, focused pictures. But as it is, it has taken me 5 hours to do all of this, and everything else I was supposed to do this weekend is calling my name. So as far as picture quality, I guess you’ll have to take what you can get. As far as understanding it, however, please let me know if you have any other questions. I will keep working at it until it makes sense for you!

Why on earth did I decide to make myself jeans? Here I am, having just completed bodice and skirt sloper that could be used to make me any skirt, shirt or dress I can dream up, and all I wanted to do was make pants. What is wrong with me?

Well, nothing is wrong with me. At least with my reasoning skills. The problem is that there are no jeans to be had, for love or money, that properly fit me. The non-stretch jeans have such a long rise they go up to my armpits; this is because I am very short waisted. The stretch jeans—besides the afore mentioned unforgivable sin of being stretchy—will have a perfectly fine rise for me in the front, but in the back do not cover near as much of my backside as I would like. And none of them give me enough room to maneuver and all of them are at least six inches too long, and most of them more than that.

So, jeans. Yes, I drafted my own pattern for jeans. Yes, it was a headache, a nightmare, exceedingly tedious at parts, but I drafted them and sewed them. They actually came out pretty good, although I can’t possibly make another pair without tweaking the pattern (partly for greater ease of construction, partly for continuing to improve the fit). It was enough of an effort that I don’t really feel like talking about that part just now. Suffice it to say, I made a perfectly acceptable pair of jeans; all that remained was to install the metal button.

The metal button. You know, it’s on all of your jeans. It’s the kind you pound in with a hammer—it has a nail part and a button part, and whence the two are joined together they shall never, ever separate, and all that. They’re sometimes referred to as “bachelor’s buttons”, because you don’t have to sew to install them. I ordered a hundred of them in bulk (for Pete’s sake, you didn’t think this was the only pair of jeans I was ever planning on sewing, did you?), from a small family owned store in California.

I, by the by, am in a completely different universe, because I live on the East Coast. In the North.

Which is why I spent as much getting the silly things sent to me as I did on actually buying the buttons themselves.

But never mind all that. The button, the button.

I am sufficiently experienced with Murphy enough to know one must at least do a test run, both for the button, and the button hole. It went shockingly smoothly, both the button and the buttonhole. Okay, the button might have been a bit crooked, but that was just because I was sufficiently experienced with hammers to be a little more generous than was needed on a pound-in button. But still. That’s what trial runs are all about.

So I repeat the process on the actual-factual pair of pants, except being a bit more gentle on the pounding end. It comes out very nice. Life is good.

I wear the pants.

Life is still good.

I put the pants through the washer.

Life decides it can’t be good all the time.

The button comes apart.

How can this be? You pound it together, and whence joined, it never, ever separates. Remember? Remember? REMBEMBER?!

I push the button back over the nail. It goes on very easy, and comes off just as easy. Perhaps I didn’t pound hard enough. I look at the nail. It is blunted now, so I certainly pounded it hard enough to start trying to come through the button part. I take the nail out of the pants, and send them through the dryer. Maybe it was just an odd fluke. When they are dry, I’ll try again.

Or maybe Murphy is out to get me again. I try it on my sample again. Just in case, I get out my “anvil” from when I set snaps. It is hard. It is metal. It is just the right shape for cradling the button head.

Pound, pound, pound.

Ah, there we go. Nice and snug. Now I will button it through my test buttonhole. . .

. . .ker-plink, plankety. The button falls off of the nail.

What on earth? I look at the button. I look at the nail. There are no teeth on the nail to grip anything. The only mechanism inside the button to grip anything appear to be going the wrong direction. I look at another one of my 100 buttons. They all look the same. What gives? Am I supposed to pound so hard the tip of the nail flattens out so much that it can’t come back up the hollow stem?

Much vigorous pounding later, on a brand new button, I’m pretty convinced that is not the answer. Despite the “anvil” there is now a little out-dent on the front of the button. The stem of the button has been squashed down along with the nail. And the button and nail still merrily separate.

I am confused. There where no instructions with the buttons, but how hard can it possibly be? I know I did this once before; my first test button stayed in fine. I turn my sample to examine how my first and only success that ever happened.

Ker-plink, ker-plankity. My first and only success turns into yet on more failure. What. . .what. . .what? This just does not make any sense.

I search online to see if maybe there are tales of “what to do when your jeans buttons refuse to be happily married” or “what to do when you can’t even figure out how to install a bachelor’s button, for Pete’s sake”, or “how to keep your jeans buttons from falling apart at inopportune moments” or “please tell me you can get these things to stay together with out using a blow-torch or a sledge hammer” or “CAN ANYONE GET THESE STUPID THINGS TO WORK?!” The closest thing I can find is people recommending you “pound them gently but firmly several times”, that the button is installed when it “can no longer turn within the button”, and that if the button stem bends that your “nail is too long” (or your fabric isn’t thick enough), and you can cut it a little shorter (ha, yeah). No one reports their buttons spontaneously falling apart like poorly constructed bridges.

I send an email to the company out in California, because maybe I am just denser than a fire brick and I am just seriously not getting something.

The very nice company sends me back an email very promptly, telling me to please call this number and ask for Roberto. You will need to have the style number handy.

I don’t have time to call before Thanksgiving, because I am making blueberry pies. (You must please remember that California being 3 hours before us, there is some inflexibility as to when I call.) I did want to wear my jeans on Thanksgiving.

I gently tap in a button on Thanksgiving morning.

It comes out with in 20 minutes.

I get annoyed and give it a few very annoyed whacks.

It stays in all day.

I put it through the wash.

It stays in.

Now I am in the horns of a dilemma. I can pretend that the first 5 buttons were all flukes and that my remaining buttons will all be saintly and co-operative, or I can call Roberto.

I do not want to call Roberto.

Because the facts that he lives in California, didn’t email me himself, and is named “Roberto” all strongly suggest that he may not even be able write English, and almost certainly speaks with a heavy accent.

Now, please do not misunderstand me. I do not have anything against heavy accents. I do not have anything against people who can’t write English. I do not have any problems with people with people who can’t speak English or write in any language.

The person who has the problem is me.

Because, you see, I talk very, very, veeerrrryy fast. My family, who has to put up with me all the time—they only listen to every other word, at best, and make up the rest. My friends, who don’t have to be around me all the time either just smile and nod and pretend I make sense or ask me to repeat myself. Slowly. With space between the words, please.

And these are the people who not only speak my language, but know me personally! And they usually already know what I’m going to say before I say it!

So I do not want to talk to Roberto. Because I already know what he will say. He will say “What? What? I cannot unduhstand you. You haf no hammuh?” In a heavy accent.

I try to get help from my brother. He verifies it looks like it doesn’t work. He pushes one together with his bare hands. Well, I think he used his chin, some, too. His chin is like an anvil. Or something. He keeps stopping part of the way through to see if it’s stuck yet, but it never is. When he gets to the part where he blunts the nail and it still doesn’t stick together, he labels them all as cruddy pieces of junk.

I dread phone calls in the best of circumstances, and this isn’t even that. I am about 99.9% certain that I will have an awful, contorted, humiliating conversation with Roberto, wherein I try to explain to him what I am doing, and how it isn’t working, while he tries to understand and be helpful, but mostly tells me to do exactly what I’m already doing, and assuring me that if I follow his instructions it will work. And then I will have 100 buttons that don’t work and the instructions that don’t work to go along. A cute matching set.

To make matters worse, one button is still in place. I don’t know that it will still be in place, but it opens up the horrifying possibility that even if Roberto was 5 minutes down the street and I brought the buttons over in person, Roberto could still do the exact same thing I’ve been doing, and it would stay in. At least, for 5 minutes, until I got home. Or for five hours, until I was out in the middle of shopping, and suddenly ker-plinkety-ker-plankety loosing my pants button.

But because I am a good little girl, and I like to think that some how I can’t actually predict how these things will go, I called. Today. At four o’clock over here and one o’clock over there.

The first person who answers the phone is a very pleasant, perfectly normal, maybe-he-is-just-five-minutes-down-the-street-even-though-his-address-is-California type person. I ask to speak to Roberto, as my email instructed me. I am very pleasantly transfered. And then a pleasant voice says, “Dis is Roberto,” with an accent so thick it would put the Great Wall in China to shame.

At some point, you have to decide whether life is a tragedy or a comedy. Somewhere between verifying that no, I was not looking for jeans buttons, I had already bought them from him, and they were not staying in, despite being pounded into mauled bits of metal and his wondering confusion of how this could possibly be, I decided it was a comedy.

“Hm, dis is ve-ey odd. No udder customehs complain of dis. Do you pound it on somesing hard?”

Yes, I pound it on something hard. Very hard and very hardily, I have pounded this thing on something very hard. Don’t worry, I didn’t phrase it like that to him. But I did go over all the facts of the case.

“Dis ve-ey strange. It should be just the easiest ting,” he says, greatly confused.

“I thought they would be,” I say, “That’s why I bought them!” We both laugh. We are both greatly confused.

“Vat ziti are you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Vat ziti are you?”

“I. . .um,” All I can think of is the pasta “Ziti”, but I am not it, and it doesn’t relate to jeans buttons. “I, ah, I don’t understand your question.”

“Vat. Ziti. Are. You.” he says, very clearly.

Long pause.

“Vat ziti are you; you know, are you Lozzanglis?” Ah, Los Angeles!

“No, no. What city am I in? I’m on the East Coast!!”

“Ah, dat is what I thought. . .” he trails off.

We discuss that it is a hard surface. We discuss how thick my fabric is, but he says it is not too thick.

“Well, I not know what to do, because you are over there and I am over here!” We laugh. Yes. Life would be so much simpler if I could walk down the street, and he could show me how to do it in, and it would stay in for all of five minutes.

He suggests I use pliers. He suggests I have my very strong brother who puts them together with his bare hands to try the pliers. Yes, try that and see how it works.

I am about ready to tell him he is out of his mind, pliers won’t fix the problem, but the fact of the matter is very clear. He can’t help me. Because it should be working; no one has ever had this problem before, and he is over there and I am over here. So I say okay. And he says if I have any problems, ask for Roberto, and hangs up.

So now what do I do? I know perfectly well it doesn’t matter if I use a hammer, pliers or my brothers bare hands; I currently have about a 20% chance of any of these buttons working. I could email the person who first responded to me, and say “Roberto no can help me, because this never happen to his other customers. The buttons will cannot stay together; please ship me better ones or give me my refund.” But I don’t think they have any different buttons that don’t work like these ones, and if they give me a refund, it’s still only half my money back, on account of how much I paid in shipping (metal buttons are heavy when you ship them clear across the continent). And if I claimed all 80% of them were defective, I would have to ship them back to prove it. Then I would be out my shipping money and my buttons. (I should be clear here that I am predicting what will happen; they have no stated policy on jeans buttons that don’t work. But I would like to note that so fare my predictions have been eerily accurate.)

I feel bad for Roberto, because he wasn’t able to help me, and I feel bad for me, because he wasn’t able to help me. I have a button on my pants, but I don’t know how long they will stay there, or if I will ever be able to install any of the remaining buttons. Everyone at the company tried very hard to be helpful, but no one on the other side of the universe can figure out why my jeans buttons hate me. It’s of no use to me to get more jeans buttons if they all want to fall off without even a half-way reasonable excuse.

Did you ever hear of pilots landing their planes with “a wing and a prayer”? I would like to give you something to ponder. You know the age-old question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Well, now in your post-Thanksgiving jeans, how about you ponder how many angels are holding onto the button of your pants? Because apparently that what jeans buttons depend upon to stay put.

Still to be neat, still to be dressed,
As you were going to a feast;
Still to be powdered, still perfumed:
Lady, it is to be presumed,
Though art’s hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.

Give me a look, give me a face
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free:
Such sweet neglect more taketh me
Than all the adulteries of art;
They strike mine eyes but not my heart. —Ben Jonson

Sometimes I need to be reminded of this. I’m not sure how it happens; it’s always very sneaky and insidious. It happens just a little bit here, and a little bit there, and one day you wake up and realize you keeping thinking about how to make your clothes look nice, how to make your house look nice, how to make you look nice—and that somewhere along the line, you forgotten or misplaced the fact that it isn’t those things that matter at all.

For me, it starts sneaking in when you supposedly see supposedly perfectly normal people who supposedly have it all together (sometimes you know better on at least one of those counts, if not all three, but that’s where it starts anyway). And for me, the place where it all comes crashing down as the nonsense it is is when I look through fashion magazines. Not that I have a lot—one time I got a one year’s subscription to Burda and one year I got a subscription to Vogue Knitting.

In some ways it is so fascinating to pick apart their sets. How do they get these garments to give the impression of the theme they want to give? Mostly, the garments don’t have much to do with it—it’s the accessories or the locations, or the way they painted the models. I can spend time wondering how and why they chose that accessory, or marvel at how they can make a perfectly plain sweater look amazing by wearing it over a breath-taking dress. But the more I look at them, the more it all crumbles away.

Have you ever looked at artwork from years past, or old photographs? And when you see a beautiful woman, what do you see? I can never remember their clothes—but their faces can make a huge impression on me. Their eyes and their lips, mostly, and they are alive. And you see the eyes and lips of the models, and—besides being covered in gobs of makeup—they look haggard, tired, sad, empty, dead.

They’re supposed to be the beautiful ones, but the more we look at the them, the more we pull back. When we look at pictures of someone who is really alive, like a young child having the time of their life, it’s different. The more we look at it, the more we are drawn in. The first has been carefully arranged to strike our eyes, and the other rings true in our hearts.

And there is another thing that makes me sad about looking through these magazines, every single time I do it. They assume your only goal is to catch the eyes of every and any man. Can that really have any appeal? No, wait—let me change that. It’s not what I meant. Can that bring any respect? Can they have any respect for one who presents themselves as so shallow, one who wants to take nothing but the eyes? Can they have any respect for someone who acts as though the ones they are trying to catch have nothing worth catching except the eyes? I don’t really need an answer to those questions, because I know the answer for myself.

The people that fill me with respect are the people who catch the hearts of all who see them. No one cares what they look like, but everyone wants to be with them. The writing that I enjoy is not the carefully-honed-for-public-presentation, not the songs that have been carefully formulated to become hits—but the ones from the heart. The ones that look at themselves and life without flinching, and are honest when they speak of it. The ones that don’t really care about the way they’re supposed to be, but who really care about the way things are.

And everyone admires these people, the ones who strike the heart, but most of us just don’t have the guts to do it. We admire the ones with character and love and life graven into their faces, and yet we pursue whatever means necessary to keep ours young and smooth and line-less. We love the houses full of warmth that doesn’t come from a heating system, houses with no pretension and no scorn—and yet find ourselves trying to mimic the ones that are neat and “just so” and void of life.

Like so many things in life, I think it comes back to the illusion of control that we all want to cling to. In our heart of hearts, we’d like to just be the way we are, and be loved anyway. But we’re pretty sure, if we open up our hearts like that, no one will like us and it’ll hurt an awful lot. At the same time, we somehow think that if we can make people like what they see, they’ll like us. Or approve of us. Or respect us. So we hide away the heart, which is too risky and too dangerous, and carefully present ourselves to the eyes. Then, we think, we can control what people think of us.

But it is only an illusion. We have no more control, no more safety. I know that lots of time people will tell you this–that beauty is only skin deep, and about truth being more important than appearances. But we just don’t have the guts to say “I don’t care what people think they see. I don’t care what people think about what they see. This is life.”

And it goes so much deeper than just the clothes we wear or how often we sweep the front steps and whether or not our drinking glasses have chips in the rim. People will give you the lip-service—they’ll tell you the best things in life are free, that no one ever wished they’d spent more time at the office. But no one really believes it. The things that cost money look good; the time in the office looks like the way to get ahead in life. The people who’ve had it all and done it all are the only ones who mean it. They took what looked good, and found it still left their heart empty. They try to tell the people who come behind them, but the people who come behind can’t quite bring themselves to say, “I don’t care if it looks like I’m wasting my life. That looks good from over here, but I know it’s just a painted face.”

Because the people who say the best things in life are free aren’t really quite right. It’s closer to the truth to say things like “freedom is never free.” You don’t get the good things in life without a cost. You can’t live the life you admire and respect without giving other things up. Maybe it is money, maybe it seems to be the admiration and respect of others, maybe it is giving up the illusion that you know what you’re doing and where you are going. But there is a cost for the things that are worthwhile, and you will have to pay it. There will be no defaulting on this bill; you’ll be looking it in the face every day of your life.

But people—they don’t make a conscious decision, usually, to follow the eyes and never mind the heart. It sneaks up on them, in some insidious sort of way. They kind of don’t realize it’s happening, until maybe one day they wake up and realize they wound up where they never thought they were going. We some how get it into our heads that the important choices will be huge and looming, and announced with sirens and bright lights: Here is your important decision. For the right way, go that way. For the easy way, go that way.

We never really suspect that it’s the little choices that matter. Are you going to eat the right thing, or the easy thing? After a hard day at work, are you going to treat your family the right way, or the easy way? Are you going to go to bed at the easy time or the right time? We can imagine the life we love, all right. But we tend to forget that it doesn’t just “happen someday”. How we live our todays is how our somedays happen. Our somedays can look pretty cool in our minds, but until we’re ready to pay the price, it never happens.

And we all like the picture in our heads of lives touched by our lives. Of people gathered on your funeral day, saying how you inspired them, you helped them, you changed them forever. Of people saying you didn’t play follow-the-leader, you always did what you thought was right. People saying you made them sit up and take notice when you showed them what life was really about. About you being a breath of fresh air, being vibrant and alive. Bringing a smile to people’s lives, having a spark dancing in your eyes. You took their breath away—you were so honest. You said the things they felt, but never had the courage to say. You meant the things you did, meant the help you gave.

Everyone wants to hear that spoken about them, but we don’t usually have the guts to pay the price. We don’t have the strength to rock the boat, so—we’ll just try to make it look like we know what we’re doing, make people like us or respect us or admire us—we’ll just try to keep things neat and under control. We’ll strike the eyes of those of us around us, because it seems so much easier than striking the hearts. But in our own lives, we tend to forget the charm of those that strike the eyes, and carry with us the impact of those that touched our hearts.

Yet in our own lives, we tend not to live it. Not because we don’t want it, but because it seems so much easier not to. It seems much too hard to look to where you want to be, and go where no one else goes. It’s just too easy to be swept away with the crowd. And then you look over your shoulder, and you see someone off to the side, away. And it looks really good over there, but you’d have to fight so hard to get there, and maybe someday you will. Maybe tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes, it’s always today, and today it’s easier not to think about it.

And that’s when you need a splash of cold water, whatever that means for you. Looking through a fashion magazine, or finding again a poem you knew spoke the truth, and realizing that what you live today is what you’ll live tomorrow. If you have a someday painted in your head, you have to start living it today. And if there is anything in life that you admire, you’ll have to pay a price for it. For me it is the reminder that if one wants to strike the heart, one must forfeit concerns of how one strikes the eyes.

(And that’s why I’ll never be a fashion designer. I’m too pig-headed about doing it the way I want to do it, and “never minding” how other people want it, how it would sell, and how it’s supposed to be. I know it seems really odd to write something like this on a sewing blog where I’m all about making clothes, but that’s kind of the point. As soon as I start compromising on how I think things should look, I start really not liking what I’m doing. I can’t do it the way it’s supposed to be. ‘Cause someday I’m going to be an eccentric old lady, and the “old” part is the only part that will take care of itself. If I don’t be my eccentric ol’ self right now, I’ll always be bending to how other people think I should do it. Me is me.)

Do you know I was the cutest kid in the whole wide world when I was 3? No, really. I’ll show you.

See?

See? I told you so!!

So what happened between then and now? I don’t know, but I’m counting on it to happen to Deirdre. Because I have taken to telling her “See, when I was your age {technically, I was younger in those pictures than she is now—she’s six}, I was cuter than you. And now look at me. So when you’re my age, you’ll look even uglier than me!!” This infuriates her, but she has no come-back except to say, “Yeah, well I’m not yet!!”, to which I laugh evily. (Isn’t evily a word? Maybe I have to say wickedly. If you ask any 6 year old, I’m sure evily is a word.)

Yes, she is cute. She has been cute since the day she was born, and she continues to be cute. And everyone tells her so, so she knows it. Which makes me have to do horrible things like let her see a glimpse of the future in me. And laugh evily. She is not only cute, she knows how to dress herself, when she puts her mind to it, proving that Mr. Sartoralist is looking in all the wrong places for his fashion shots. He should come out to out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere to see the real deal.

This picture was taken at the end of last January. No one in their right mind would be wearing a sun-dress, but, undeterred, she found not only blue-striped tights but a perfectly coordinating blue-striped shirt, with silver shot though it. And then accessorized with green clogs, blue hair bands and two braids. And a yellow necklace for accent, and who told her that yellow is the official accent to blue and green? I didn’t even know she owned half this stuff.

But she, apparently, knows her stuff, and will not be stopped by things like inclement weather. Here, she decided she would wear her getting-smaller-and-wrinklier-by-the-minute princess dress that I made her several years ago. That it was April and frigid and the dress was short-sleeved was immaterial.

No one even noticed the shirt she was wearing under it wasn’t part of the dress. . .though if the bodice hadn’t covered the perfectly hideous decals someone who manufactured shirts thought was stylish, it would have been painfully apparent.

But of course, you can’t see, and it looks perfect. And she looks stinkin’ cute, but don’t tell her I said that. And on her feet she wears. . .

Those striped blue tights again, which I never knew striped tights could be so versatile, but the just go with so many different shades of blue. And her blue sneakers, which also match.

And none of this was deliberately bought for the occasion or the outfit. She just puts things together like of course that’s what you’d do.

I am pretty sure that maybe we aren’t related.

Anyway, Deirdre has come to kind of sort basically take my sewing for granted, without realizing the difficulties involved. I can seemingly make up dresses in no time, but she doesn’t realize the effort that goes into them. Here’s a picture of her and her cousin, last December I think. I made them stop playing to snap this picture, so don’t expect them to look all put together.

In about the space of two weeks, I realized it was nearly Elizabeth’s birthday, and set about making her a dress, which, if you ask me, was a very clever feat. See, someone had given me a half finished project (why is that people say, Oh, you sew; here, have my half-finished projects? Exactly what do they suppose is the appeal of someone else’s half finished projects? Don’t they suppose I can make my own half-finished projects?). It was a very ugly project, I am sorry to say. It was hideous. It was a women’s dress, barely knee length. It had poofy darts at the waist. It buttoned down the front. It had a long, deep v-neck. It was made out of polyester and some awful coral/cantaloupe color, or at least I color that looks awful on me. I nearly chucked it in the trash, but at the last minute I changed my mine. I don’t like that color, but surely there is some little girl in the universe who would like that color.

So when Elizabeth’s birthday came around, I remembered that ugly, hideous, half-finished dress. I had this princess pattern that someone had given me, and that was my starting point. I’d scan it in for you (it was Simplicity, and I’m sure out of print), but I’m lazy. You can see a picture of the pattern here. I was sooo clever. I had to piece those puffy sleeves from the sleeveless bodice of the hideous dress, though you can’t tell it from here (and alas, I only have a few pictures of this dress, most much worse than this). I used a different fabric for the bodice (which has batting in between it and free-motion quilting), a very versatile fabric that I actually used some of in Millie’s original fancy dress (but I am too lazy to dig up a link back that dress, so either you remember it or you don’t). I didn’t quilt the sleeves, though the called for it in the pattern, because that made them stiff and ugly, and you need to feel like a princess. You can’t see it in this picture, but the sleeves come down to a point on her hands. I just gathered the original (hideous) skirt, so it wasn’t as full as the pattern called for, but it was as long.

I was so please with my turning this awful half-finished monster into a cute princess dress for a cousin.

Deirdre was rather blase about the whole thing, because, well, of course. That is just what I do, I make dresses out of nothing on short notice. Big deal. She has taken to coming into my sewing room and saying “You’re still working on that?!” Which is so annoying, because for one thing I agree with her, and for another, what does she know? She doesn’t know how hard it is to make things, or at least make them come out well.

So when Millie’s birthday started inching squinching closer, I began plotting. First I was just thinking I’d make a dress, because little girls’ dresses are so much easier to make, and it would go very fast. And then I thought, what on earth? Millie is Deirdre’s friend! Deirdre should be putting some blood, sweat and tears into this. It’s about time she stopped taking for granted every stitch that I sew.

Naturally, I didn’t phrase it quite that way to Deirdre.

And naturally Deirdre took the bait.

First I picked out a pattern. It was one of those “9 great looks in one pattern!!” deals, which means you had the same dress nine times with minuscule differences, which means you can offer a six year old a choice without really offering her a choice. Brilliant, that. It was a very simple dress, so that we could actually make it in time. It had a perfectly rectangular skirt, gathered to fit. It could be either sleeveless or have ruffles at the shoulder, but none of that fussy-sleeve setting business. Simple, yes?

But you see, Deirdre is related to me.

She didn’t want to make it simple. She wanted to make it fancy. I wanted this dress to be from her, so I didn’t want to over-ride her artistic choices. Some how, we agreed to put a ruffle all along the bottom of the hem in this synthetic suede. And she did want it to have pockets. I was afraid she would pick the curvy, hard-to-sew heart pockets, but was hugely relieved when she said she was not going to do the heart pockets, because she has some pants with heart pockets and it’s way too hard to get your hands into them. (Yay, she has some shared practicality with me!) But the pockets, too, must have ruffles.

It started off well enough. We prewashed the fabric in the sink. She learned why we prewash as one of the fabrics bleed dye profusely and refused to stop (well, hey, I’d bought it off the $1/yard table at Wal-Mart. You get what you pay for). In had been almost a velvet; when we ditched that was when we decided to use the suede. Guess why I had that on hand?

It’s leftovers from a dress I had made her when she still needed help to stand! Since it doesn’t ravel, it was the perfect choice for the ruffles so we wouldn’t have to hem them. Some of the other fabric was the same as what I had used to make clothes for Millie’s piggy last year, and some of it was a coordinating print to go with fabric I had used for Millie’s piggy. So it was all come along oh so perfectly.

Deirdre helped cut out. She did the square and rectangular shapes, and I did the bodice and the ruffles. And that was all for the first day, which pretty near burned her out.

We sewed a little bit here, and a little bit there. It worked best, I found, to have her sit on my lap. We both guided the fabric, and she put her foot on top of my foot, which was on top of the pedal. She got to make it go and stop, but if she inadvertently “stomped” on the pedal, I still had veto power and could keep her from sewing through her finger. And we sewed.

We sewed some here, and some there. We used the iron. She was amazed by the wonders of turning things out, like lining the bodice, and turning the ties. Ruffling the sleevelets was just too cool.

But we were running out of time.

And she was finding it more and more and more tedious.

Finally, there was the last day. And we were not done. And we MUST finish. Deirdre clung to images in her mind of Millie’s face when she opened it, much the way I always do when I slogging through the worst of a project. We were making progress quickly, though. We put in the zipper; we finished the edges of the seams with a zig-zag stitch so they wouldn’t fray. We put the pockets on.

But then we came to hem ruffle. Oh, the hem ruffle.

First of all, it was about sixty-three miles long once it was pieced together. Holy moly. But we bravely forged on, and put two rows of long gathering stitches into that whole long snakey thing. And then we gathered it. And we gathered it. And we gathered it some more. And then it started snagging, and we started hearing very scary snapping noises. The synthetic fabric was seriously abusing the gathering thread. We didn’t have it gathered anywhere near enough, and our thread was threatening surrender.

This turned it from a very tedious gathering project to a walking on eggshells disaster. If we didn’t gather it enough, we couldn’t attach it to the skirt. If the thread snapped, the altogether too much time we’d already spent gathering it would be wasting—precious time we couldn’t lose, because it was now three o-clock in the afternoon, we were supposed to be there sometime in the early evening (6 o’clock?) I had yet to take a badly needed shower, we still needed to eat supper, and of course there was the 45 minute drive out to Millie’s. We could cut our losses and just drop off the ruffle. But that was the fancy part, and we’d already put so much work into it. And we were nearly there, it’s just that the last 20% needed to be very gently eased along, tiny bit by tiny bit.

Deirdre and I tried to hold onto our patience, but it was rapidly getting as frayed and worn as the thread. Hurrying would undoubtedly undo all the progress we’d made, but how could we not want to hurry with the second-hand sweeping around the clock with alarming speed? There really wasn’t much Deirdre could do with such a delicate situation, so she finally delicately suggest she might play outside until the gather part was done. It was a wise request, and probably the only thing that saved us from inter-personal disaster. Plus it meant I could focus my few shreds of sanity upon the uncooperative ruffle.

After what seemed like more time than any earthly ruffle ought ever be allowed to consumed, I did finally manage to get the ruffle gathered and pinned onto the hem. I called her in, and we sewed it on.

And then I quick took a shower and we ate supper very quickly, and in the car—-every true to form—I hand sewed the lining down (someone else was driving, honest!), and crammed it into a gift bag.

Finished! And in time! By about . . .5 minutes!! Yea, verily, I am teaching her to follow in my very footsteps.

The ruffle really made the dress. Perseverance pays off, although it does take blood, sweat and tears. Or at least sweat and tears; I think we avoided the blood, and even technically (and narrowly) avoided the tears.

And also, Millie always makes my (and now, Deirdre’s) sewing look good, as does Abby’s photography.

But!

Look. At. The. Dress!!

(I stole these pictures from Millie’s mom’s blog, because she is forever and never not sending me pictures. If I ever get better ones (higher quality files) I will try to fix the post.)

These photos were shot the same day as all the cherry-dress prictures I uploaded. We took a lot less pictures of this; I think it is because it the outfit suited me so much better it seemed less awkard. The lighting was awful though, because it was either too dark in the shade or far too bright out of it.

This garment is held in contrast to the cherry dress in other ways, besides what I mentioned in my last post. After taking such a ridiculously long time making the cherry-dress, I challanged myself to “just do it” for my next garment. Just draft it, cut it, and sew it. No muslins. No obsessing. No looking back. And that’s what I did.

The waist is not snug enough, and the skirt has a tendency to slide down. I didn’t make belt carriers, so I can’t properly belt it into submission. Because it slides down, it is a few inches longer than I meant it to be, which can be frustrating on stairs.

However, I’ve worn it more times than the cherry-dress, and I’ve loved wearing it every time. It is exceptionally comfortable, I find it very flattering, and it is incredibly warm. I always used to pity people who wore skirts in bitterly cold weather, as imagined the icy-cold drafts so easily slipping under the hem. Instead, I was far warmer wearing this skirt; I think it follows the same logic as why mittens are warmer than gloves, for one thing. The only downside to that is while I would be comfortable walking around outside, I would sometimes find myself breaking into a sweat inside of well-heated homes. And if this is a testament to the insulative powers of wool, then I think we should all go back to making the investment in wool clothing, from sweaters to long-underwear, and save about a gazillion dollars in heating bills during the winter.

At some later date, I’ll post pictures showing construction details, but I hope you aren’t looking for too much in the way of instruction, because I always forget to take notes and have to re-figure it out the next time. My only hope is that if I keep sewing often enough, I’ll actually be able to remember how to do thing from garment to garment.

Under the Willow Tree:

Deep red looks better on me than a lighter or brighter red.

Don’t ask me what I was looking at, because I don’t know. You don’t want to see my face anyway, because I was squinting in the harsh sunlight. You do know they predicted an overcast day, don’t you? I suppose that should have been our first clue it wasn’t going to be.

Yes, my skirt has pockets! Two of them! They came out very nice, but when it came to working on the next garment with pockets, I didn’t have the foggiest idea how I’d done them before. I’ll show you better pictures later.

Blotchy sunlight makes your face look weird.

Now I’m not blotchy, but it’s far too shady. And my hands are itching to work on something. Standing around doing nothing is counter to my nature. I should have taken along my knitting, or something, but that of course would have obscured the skirt, which we were attempting to document. So my hands hang awkwardly.

The End.

I believe in taking responsibility for my actions. No denials, no excuses!! So here’s what I was thinking when I made the infamous cherry dress.

I’m sure you were all hoping for something much more scandalous, but no. In my own quest to better my design skills, I have attempted to read all sorts of materials on design. Mostly, they don’t say what they were thinking; they just throw out vague mumbo-jumbo that roughly translates “you just kind of wing-it, and hopefully it comes out good”. Or else they apply such strained concepts and methods that the end result is something that would be worn down the runway, which is to say, no sane human being would ever willingly, mindfully wear it.

So I may not be any great, grand designer, but I can at least show you the thought process I went through as I made this dress. You may not ever want to make anything remotely like it, and that’s okay. The idea is to be able think more consciously about what you are doing and why. This is necessary when it comes to that all important step called “editing”. You will not be able to figure out what you need to add or take away from your design if you have no idea why you ever starting making it the way you did in the first place. An idea, that is, besides the altogether much too vague statement of “Because I like it.” (Not that such a statement doesn’t have it’s uses—it does, and I use it regularly—but when one is trying to improve something, one really needs to have much more focused thought.)

So, the dress.

I started with this pattern (note the “start”. I wound up drafting my own pattern from scratch, to my measurements).

I liked it because it had such clean, flowing lines. It was a neat fit at the top, but with a nice full skirt. It wasn’t fussy, though it could be elegant if it were made in the proper fabric. I liked how the darts in the back of the bodice turned into pleats in the skirt; I liked that vertical structural line, because I’m doing just fine in the “short” and “wide” categories, and I think it works better with my proportions to encourage vertical movement.

Short side note: Note I say “my proportions”. I am no proponent of us all looking alike—far from it. I don’t hold to an ideal standard that all women must aspire to. But you have utterly no artistic ability at all if you can’t differentiate between proportions that are pleasing to the eye and proportions that aren’t. Some people refer to this as “phi” or the Golden Ratio. Some people have noted that children seem to have an innate sense of balance in their drawings. Some people study the shapes and proportions in nature. Architects (or the good ones, any way) are hugely concerned with proportion. To pretend that pleasing proportions is something that relates to everything the world except the human form is just plain silly.

The job of the clothes designer is not to say—this is an awful form, bring me another one, preferably a size 2 1/2, with high cheekbones. The job of the clothes designer is to trompe-l’oiel, to fool they eye. Anyone who firmly believes seeing is believing hasn’t been seeing well enough how he’s been fooled. Guiding the eye to believe what it is seeing is the job of any artist.

For a most basic example of this: grab a pen and a piece of paper, and draw a square. Don’t use a ruler, or any other measuring device. Now turn the paper sideways. Does the square still look as square? Probably not. The eye tends to squash things. You probably drew your square taller than it ought to have been. When you turned the paper sideways, this was revealed. Now that you have your paper turned, it looks a little more like a horizontal rectangle and a little less like a perfect square. You can search for geometric optical illusions, and you shall find fifty hundred other examples. The point is this: Your job is not is not to fault the form, but to simply present the form in it’s most favorable light. You can change what is seen simply by guiding the eye as you choose—leading it ignore some things, and focus on others. You can make anything look awful if you abuse it enough, and nearly anything will strike the eye if it’s presented properly.

And all of this is to say, I want to hear nothing at all along the lines of protest when I say something isn’t flattering to my proportions. This isn’t about rules, and this isn’t about standards. All this means is that you, as the designer, have the power to lead the eye. Make a conscious decision to do so.

Now, back to the dress.

This is the fabric that I chose.

I chose it because it had my two very favorite colors in it—red and green. It reminded me of the most wonderful part of summer. It was cheerful and full of life. It was meant to be a picnic dress—the sort of dress you can wear when you are celebrating the chance to relax, and the sort of dress you can get muddy without worry.

Hear comes the first design issue. The background color of this fabric is much too similar to the tone of my skin.

Everything needs a good strong frame. Look at paintings, look at windows, look at gates. Nothing looks so awful as something that bleeds into its surrounds, without the dignity to stand up and be proper about it. It weakens whatever it is, to have the edges fade off in a sickly sort of way. So the first order of work was to contain this fabric, so it didn’t bleed away into me. The goal of this dress is NOT to make it appear that I am wearing nothing more than a few vines with red berries on them, thank you very much. The garment is separate from me.

Enter the piping at the neck and sleeves. This creates a line distinguishing the dress from me.

Having placed that red at the sleeves and neck, you can see why it was a necessity to put it at the bottom as well. In part to keep from having the dress fade out weakly at the bottom, but in a part because continuity demands it. The eye is very disappointed when what it expects to see is simply missing. It’s like missing a button off your shirt, when all the rest are very regularly spaced. Your eye just wants it to be there. It should be there. It’s the logical conclusion. Not putting a band on the bottom now would be like writing a story with no resolution. It would be most unsatisfying.

This is what we have now:

Do you notice any problems?

The eye is attracted to strong colors; it moves from similarities to similarities. (You’re going to be hearing a lot about the “eye”, just so you know.) The eye doesn’t have much initiative, it likes to be led. So it is dutifully following where it is being led, jumping about from cherry to cherry to cherry. But the eye is also lazy; it really doesn’t like all this running around. It wants to rest. This is utterly too much work. It would rather look away than keep moving around on this crazy surface.

And so, the waistband. It needed this solid block of color to give the eye a rest. There are those, by the way, who inform you with rigid rules and firm rebukes that you should never ever ever never ever have a belt, waistband, sash, etc unless you have a size 2 1/2 waist. Because, they say, this draws attention to the waist, and unless you have the most beautiful waist ever in existence, it’s basically a sin to wear anything that draws attention to the waist. I would maybe go so far as to caution that I think it’s generally more flattering to wear a dark, receding color, if it’s going to be at the waist like that. A bright, light color looks bigger than a dark color. If you’ve ever seen a black refrigerator, you’d know what I mean. Not that I subscribe to dark colors all the time, every where, by any means, and of course every rule or guideline is meant to be broken, but that’s my two cents.

I suppose at the this point you might be disagreeing with me.

You might be saying you preferred the dress without the waistband. You might be saying that the waist band chops me half, that it totally defeats the purpose of trying to encourage a more vertical leaning of the eye. You might be saying, that darn band is the first thing that pulls your eye, and it makes you look short, short, short.

You may have a point.

I still hold that the fabric I chose demanded that treatment, but therein lies the problem. This is why you can’t just design off of ideas separate from people. This fabric, on someone else, could have been wonderful. I still love this fabric. Just, as a table cloth, or curtains, or something else besides on me. The flaw of my design was not my design, per se, just that I really had no idea what it would look like on me.

In retrospect, this fabric doesn’t suit me. Even with the solid bands of color, the eye simply does way too much moving around, and usually the more your eye has to move, the wider things appear. Since I am already short, adding in more horizontal eye movement is only making me look shorter, and my frame just can’t handle all that busy-work.

What works better for me is solid colors, like this:

It’s not to say that I can’t use textures or details, but over all, I am more flattered by simple shapes and solid blocks of color. See?

(I made the wool skirt. I did not make the wool blend sweater, but I did accidentally send it through the dryer once. It doesn’t drape as nicely as it once did. . . )

You will note that when we compare those two pictures side by side, your eye is instinctively drawn to the the picture on the left. You will also note that as soon as the eye has looked to the left picture, it also goes immediately to my face. If you make yourself look at the photo on the right, you will notice that your eye does indeed get stuck on the red sash. For one thing, it is the largest solid block of color. Your eye wants to rest, and that’s a good place. For another thing, my face is still basically the same color as the background of the dress. It fades away into the background. When I wear the cherry dress, your eye is not instantly pulled to my face. It forgets about my face and pays attention to the dress. This is a problem. Well designed clothes do not draw attention to themselves, they draw the attention the the wearer.

The outfit on the left understands this; it grabs your attention with its large blocks of strong colors, and then promptly shoves all the attention to my face. The dress on the right doesn’t understand this, or else is simply being willfully selfish, because it isn’t interested in sharing any of the attention. Your eye can get distracted jumping from cherry to cherry to cherry for a good five minutes, but it your eye is extremely unlikely to be interested in paying attention to my face. (This is most obvious in a still photograph. In real life, the eye is attracted to movement, and as I’m nearly always running my mouth off, that would give my face a chance to be noticed. Or my mouth, at any rate.)

Does this mean that the pattern draft was a waste, and that I should burn it and never look back? No! I would still like to make the “cherry dress” pattern again—just, with a few modifications and a solid color of wool crepe. The lessons here to be learned are:

(1) Good fabric stores ought to have full length mirrors in them, so you can better approximate how a fabric will look on you, and

(2) You can’t design clothing apart from the people who will be wearing them. The idea might sound perfectly grand on paper, but in real life is where it counts. On paper, this dress might sound wonderful, but in real life, I feel uncomfortable and awkward wearing this dress. Because I worked from ideals without seeing how it would work in reality, I failed to meet my ideals that I started with.

[ed. note: 'Tis easier to write than to mess with pictures, and 'tis better to post without pictures than to not post at all. My promised post on design is still in the works, but you get this while you wait.]

You may recall that my elderly neighbor (old enough to be my grandmother) taught me how to knit. I don’t remember what all I said on that subject; I don’t think I mentioned that I had been trying to get her (back) into sewing. I like sewing. She thinks sewing is too fussy, too time consuming. So she wouldn’t jump at my bait to sew, but I jumped at her bait to knit. I think I did mention that I opened her knitting world up by introducing her to knitting books, knitting magazines, mail order yarn, and free patterns on the internet.

She tries to pretend she’s an old coot. She claims she can’t understand all this fuss about knitting with lace, and I get out books like Lace Style so she can see what people are doing. She complains that all the sweaters aren’t designed raglan sleeved, top-down, the only way she believes in making sweaters. In Lace Style, there is this truly ethereal garment—it is diaphanous, floaty, it plays with the sunlight. It is also, of course, meant only for effect. It’s insubstantial as a garment; it is meant as an accessory, to bring it’s unique appearance. I sit there and marvel at the huge effect that has been captured by a simple garter stitch in plain white yarn. She fusses, because what kind of a garment is that? And kids these days. . .!

But it’s all just a charade.

‘Cause a couple weeks later, she’s telling me about ravelry.com, and the “naughty” tab, and generally giggling like a teenager. My mind struggles to grasp this—I can look at a garment I would never wear, yet still cataloge and be captivated the various elements I could take and use as see fit. She can look at the same garment and deride it as utterly useless, not being able to harvest anything from it. Yet a few days later, she can be getting her chuckles from the same sorts of things she derided in the garments, now in a more blatant form. She is still a kid; she’s just still stuck in the time period she was a “kid” in. The problem for her is never really that anything strikes her as too sassy, sultry, attention drawing, etc. (My google-ads are going to be just awful as result of this post. . .) The problem is that it seems to her to be strange, foreign, unfamiliar. They are speaking in a language she can’t understand.

I get out Elizabeth Zimmerman’s A Knitters Almanac, and enjoy it thouroughly. She looks at it, and say “I don’t have time for that!!” and instead reads Things I Learned from Knitting, by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, self-described as “The Yarn Harlot.” In this book, my silver-haired neighbor discovers that she is “addicted to knitting”, and she gets thrills from this. She isn’t in the least bit disturbed that she has this compulsion to knit, knit, knit, KNIT!!

Whoa. Get a grip, lady.

And then I think, is this how it seems to people I am about sewing? I hope not. Sewing isn’t my addiction; sewing isn’t my religion. I don’t really come across that fanatical about sewing, do I?

Here I am learning the wonders of knitting—don’t worry about being exact; it’ll stretch. And here she is, counting every single stitch, repeatedly checking her gauge on the project she’s working on, and still being in a snit because one sock turned out 1/4″ longer than the other. Here I am learning about how life isn’t that big of a deal; if you mess up, no one is going to count every single stitch you made and deride you for the place you made a mistake or two. And here she is, ripping and re-knitting and re-ripping again.

And from this I see that, (1) In my sewing, I have much more the attitude she has about knitting. Which is ironic, because she doesn’t want to become involved in sewing for that very reason. And (2) I would much rather my attitude toward sewing be more like my attitude toward knitting.

It really isn’t that important. Chill out, dude.

Not that I don’t value excellent work; I do, and I strive for it. But it becomes paralyzing. Is this pattern perfect? I can’t cut this fabric unless this pattern is perfect. No, don’t be silly. You’ll wear it anyway, perfect or not. You’ll learn where you went wrong and do better next time. For now—cut. People give you funny looks when they find out how much work you put into an everyday, ordinary garment, and with good reason. It’s just a regular old, ordinary thing—and you’re obsessed over it? You do realize, don’t you, it’s just a piece of clothing? It will serve it’s purpose and wear out. It’s a temporal, fleeting thing. Ride the waves and get on with life.

I am reminded of this every time I hear her obessively counting stitches, which I know is a futile thing because her gauge will change from moment to moment depending her mood. She is worrying futily, and it opens my eyes to the futility of my worry.

I am also reminded that human nature has never really changed from the beginning of time. The scandal of one generation at another generation is largely just a scandal of the differing ways of expressing the same basic humaness.

And age bears no realtion to fuddy-duddiness. She, being many years my senior, would be considered less fuddy-duddy than me, the one who has no interest whatsoever in clicking on the “naughty” tab on raverly.com.

And that time will march on; if you won’t make the effort to keep up, you will be left behind. You sometimes don’t realize how true this is, until you have become accustomed to watching late-middle aged people struggle with new technoloy, and then—having been thouroughly inoculated to the whole old-people-don’t-get-it—seeing a most definitely 100% of the way senior citizen whip out a digital camera and use it without hesitation. Suddenly you forcefully realize that the process of being confused by the world starts very early. If you are not prepared to look the future in the eyes and grab it by the horns, you will become confused. Perhaps it won’t be noticable until you are middle aged, or until you are firmly in the senior citizens territory. But if you don’t hang on now, it will be too late to grasp out for handholds later on. You won’t be able to grasp making sweaters any other way than raglan sleeved, from the top down. It becomes nearly as much a law as gravity itself; it is insurmountable. Meanwhile, “kids these days” will be doing some incomprehensible thing that seems utterly pointless and bizarre.

People don’t really change. But if you loose your ability to communicate with them and interact with them, it seems like humanity totally reinvents itself on a regular basis. And if you are from Humanity 1.08, how can you understand Humanity 1.5?

It seems as though the best way understand the world around you is to have one hand in the past, one hand in the future, and your head firmly in the present. If you don’t understand at least some of the past, you can’t understand the present you are in. And if you don’t keep an eye on where the future is heading, your time in the present is very limited; shortly you will be living in the past.

It sounds very endlessly difficult. But generally speaking, we’re going to either die young or grow old. And if you’re planning on growing old, you should start figuring out how to do it sooner rather than later. The course you set now will be the one you will be walking on when you’re older, because once you are old, you haven’t the strength to change the course.

Which? What? Pictures and stories of my first ever self-drafted dress! That I finished last year, and never told you about, and finally now am gracing you with it’s presence! It is, basically, proof-positive that I finished Pattern Drafting 101. Taught be me. I was at the head of the graduating class. Which was only me.

Anyway, this is post is dedicated to Bridget. It’s all her fault. No, not really. Really, I could “Thank You” to a million people. Not really. I don’t know a million people. But there is the author of my one-and-only text book (Elizabeth Allemong and her wonderful book European Cut), and my sister who patiently took all my measurements a half-dozen times, and my aunt who introduced me to the world of sewing (but she’d probably die a million deaths if she realized she was responsible for starting me down this path, because for heaven’s sake you’re not supposed to take hobbies so seriously!), and my parents who borned me into this world in the first place—but I’m dedicating this one to Bridget.

Why?

‘Cause otherwise I wouldn’t have finished it, and it doesn’t matter how well you start if you never, ever finish. Oh, I guess I probably would have finished it. Eventually. Sometime. Maybe. But I was getting so sick of this project. I had reached ultimate saturation. I didn’t want to look at it, didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to work on it. And every time I looked at it, it seemed like it looked worse than it had the time before. And I was, like, 90% of the way there! It just needed finishing up, hemming and boring stuff like that. But instead, it had been tossed into a corner and was just sitting there. Bridget gave me the encouragment, that yes, actually, it’s coming along quite nicely indeed. So finish it.

Also, she kept me company while I cut, sewed, pressed and hemmed 177″ of bias binding. You really, really, really need company when doing something as tedious and mind-numbing as that.

Besides all that, you’d never being seeing this post except for her. She helped me cull through the over 130 photos my (very wonderful) sister took of me wearing the dress (yes, the same sister who took all my measurements!). It’s really no fun looking at over 130 photos of yourself. Then again, maybe she didn’t have fun looking at 130 photos of me, either, but she did it anyway. A true friend (but I’m sure the brownies didn’t hurt, either. . .they were really good brownies).

Anyway, yes. The dress. And me. Brace yourselves!

You simply would not believe the tedious hours that went into making this dratted thing. The 177″ of homemade bias binding hem is just the beginning.

Besides the hem in this picture, you will note a couple of other things. For one thing, the whole dress is underlined. Interlined. Regular old lined. Something. Having bought this fabric way too many years ago when I was young and foolish, I failed to be deterred by the fact that it was rather thin. Very thin. Thin enough it really needed something more to keep it decent. This caused some disappointment to me later on. It may have needed two layers of fabric for opacity’s sake, but those two layers make it much, much warmer. Not so great for wearing during already-quite-warm-enough-thank-you-very-much weather. Everything I have ever read has claimed that building a dress like this will make it less prone to wrinkling, but the whole thing is 100% cotton, so I doubt you’ll see much of a difference on that count.

A second thing you will notice is all the orange thread-tracing lines. Techincally, now that the dress is done, they should be taken out. But that’s fuss and bother, and you can’t see them from the outside, and I’m quite finished working on this. I’m not in the least bit repentant of doing all that thread tracing, though. It was extremely useful for getting the pleats to line up right, and the darts and everything else. It is a time-eater, but if I ever have pieces-that-must-line-up, I would do it again in an instant. It was very reliable, didn’t go away until you wanted it to, and then did go away when you did want it to. It was Precise. I liked it.

This is the inside shoulder; you can see the back shoulder dart. If you look close, you can see my hand stitching securing the muslin underlayer shoulders to each other. I was really doing quite the hybrid. I sewed a lot of the dress treating the muslin and the “fashion fabric” as one—the darts, and most of the seams. But where ever it tickled my fancy, I did it otherwise. The side seams were sewed together, but the inner and outer skirts were hemmed seperately. The muslin was treated as a lining at the neck and sleeve ends, sandwiching the (self-made) piping in between. And here, I sewed the “fashion fabric” shoulder seams seperately from the muslin, and descreetly hand stitched the muslin shoulder seams by hand. It made for a nice smooth finish.

Not that it was all so fine. Most of the time I just zig-zagged the seam allowances. I didn’t have a serger at the time. . .

Yes, you do see a waiststay. I was very ambivilant about putting it in. They say it’s supposed to support the weight of the skirt, and keep it from straining the rest of the dress. Having a hem that was 127″, and double layers of fabric, I thought that maybe it was necessary. But it’s rather uncomfortable, and I’m not sure at all that it makes any difference in the least. Especially since this was supposed to be a casual dress. Maybe if I was using fine, delicate fabric, I would be more worried. As it is—-it’s cotton. It’ll survive. Or not. I’m not too worried about it.

I say it was “supposed” to be a casual dress. It was. It was supposed to be the kind of dress you could host a picnic in—unfussy, but nice. The only reason I thought I could get away with such a fitted bodice is because I very cleverly added an ease-pleat in the back of the dress.

See? Very clever. I even precisely matched the print. Only problem? Sorry, Miss Knucklehead. You need your ease further down than that. As it is, I nearly burst a seam when I try to scoop ice cream, which means that whenever I wear this dress, I feel formal. And by “feel formal” I mean, I feel like I’m good for nothing but standing, prim and proper. Or maybe walking. But not doing anything that involves my reaching with my arms, with eliminates a startling number of activities. Half the time I ignore the “don’t move!” feeling and get on with my life anyway, but it is just not the casual do-anything dress I’d invisioned. I feel like such a failure. Kind of. Not really. The fit is really good, but I’m still pretty annoyed with this dress.

Oh, well. At least I remembered to put in a pocket, and that’s once less annoyance.

The dratted back ties—they’re dratted because (1) I can’t tie them myself; I never mastered bow-tying behind my back, and (2) I cut it on the bias, which made it very difficult to sew without distorting.

Why did I do that? I don’t know. I think I thought the ties would be more fluid and coopertive when tied. Maybe they are. . .

Its loose in the back, but stitched down in the front, along the bottom edge. By hand. After tediously sewing it on by hand, I got it into my head to measure my stitches in their regularity and size. . .

Whoa. 1/16th of an inch, square on, everytime. Freaky. I guess maybe all my hand-quilting is paying off? Somebody go tell the atliers I’m readying for hiring!

I put a lot of silly stress on myself while working on this project. I just felt like it had to be perfect. It was a like a thesis paper, or something. It had to be the proof that I really truly had been learning, did learn. That I could draft to specific measurments and produce quality sewing. As such, how could I ever be fully satisfied with it? Every little mistake seemed like a disaster, completely obscuring the view of the rest of it. Instead of being pleased with how much I had accomplished, I wound up just being disgruntled with every little place where it didn’t seem to me to be perfect. Maybe that’s why, having drafted basic slopers that would enable me to make any dress, skirt or top I could possibly imagine, the only thing I wanted to do next was figure out how to make pants. Instead of feeling like I’d accomplished dress-making, I felt like I couldn’t measure up, and wanted to divert my attention elsewhere. Thankfully, I’ve relaxed (at least a bit), and my pattern drafting has continued.

Besides, in the grand scheme of things, the dress works:

(Yes, you can climb a tree in this dress. If you’re detirmined. Or pig-headed. Take your pick, but I think I have a fair dose of one or the other!)

Besides, till this dress, I had only made 4 pieces of clothing for anything other than children. 3 of them were jumpers, and none of them came close to fitting.

I do believe I shall give myself a passing grade.

[Tune in next time, when I discuss my thoughts that went into the design of this dress. I have always been frustated by people who will tell you what they did, without giving any hint as to why they did it. I shall. And it will be fascinating. Sort of. Anyway, I'm out of time for it for now, because I've got to wash dishes, which is just loads of fun.]

I am sure you were all in desperate need of that astounding fact. It is true. I’m messing around with some Aloo fiber (it’s a thistle that grows in the Himalayas–oops. I mean nettle. I looked it up. I know the difference between nettle and thistle, really I do!) right now, and I can’t stop thinking “Good gravy! This smells like goat!!” And I know what goats smell like.

Did you wonder where I’d gone? Did you pine for me? Did you suppose I had given it all up in favor of dancing the polka and curling my hair? Nope! First of all, I don’t know how to dance the polka. And my hair is already curly, so traditionally, I ought to be struggling desperately to uncurl.

Nor did I die, or fall of the face of the earth, though I suppose if you wanted to be dreadfully theatrical, you could say I nearly did both. Once a week, I go up to my grandparents to watch over them and houseclean while my brother (he stays with them 24/7, as neither of them is capable of taking care of themselves) does the grocery shopping. The short-cut from back-roads-the-middle-of-nowhere to the-interstate-which-can get-you-anywhere is a very steep hill, chock full of hair-pin turns. Going up this hill, if you look to the right, you can see for a million miles all around as it overlooks valleys and hills. On the right, it’s an open empty field. On the left, it’s a boulder-strewn gully filled with trees.

So I take this road once a week, and I made it all through the WHOLE winter with it’s snow and ice and wind without incident. Even though I drove a midget little Geo Prisim which cried every time it attempt that hill, and liked to floated on slushy roads. And then we get this one very last freak snow, hardly worth mentioning. But of course it is windy (and did you know that Geo’s are kissing cousins to kites?) and a dusting of snow blows over a chilly patch in the road. Despite the fact that the vehicle is barely moving (this is a Geo, remember, and it is trying to climb a hill. A steep hill), I of course loose control of the vehicle.

I am happy to report that when I went airborne, I was facing the open field, not the gully.

If you have never been in any sort of accident like that, allow me to inform you that it is a very weird experience. No, really. You would think it would be terrifying, but you kind of don’t have enough time for it all to sink it—it all goes so fast. You can’t take in all the facts of the physical happenings around you, much less pause for philosophical and emotional ponderings.

And after it—well, it’s over. The lady in the SUV behind me was far more upset than I was. Although, she herself said it was far more upsetting to watch than to be in one—between her and her husband, they’ve wiped out on that road 3 different times. She was so upset she was nearly crying; I could only think about three things.

(1) Whoa, major adrenaline rush. I feel really, really weird. It’s going to take a while to flush all this from my system.

(2) Crap, I just totaled my Dad’s car.

(3) I am going to be soooo late.

It’s odd, but when you can get up and walk away, you can never quite grasp how close you may have come—to what? Broken bones? Months of coma? Dying? Who knows? You can’t. You don’t even know what just happen. For instance, the couple in the SUV didn’t want to believe me when I said I was alright; I couldn’t understand the concern until they explained I had been getting thrown around in the car. This was very difficult for me to believe, but the resulting case of whiplash the next day convinced me. Who knows how close I came to disaster? I suppose the couple behind me in the SUV. I suppose it does all make sense that she was more upset watching me than wrecking herself.

Certainly, I think, she will remember it for quite some time. 10 years from now, she’s going to sit up in bed in the middle of the night and say, “Honey, remember when we were driving up that hill behind that girl, and she went flying through the air, and we let her borrow our cell phone to call home, and when she was talking to her Mom she was all like “I’m fine, but Geo is no longer functional, so someone will have to pick me up.” ‘The Geo is no longer functional,’ can you believe that?!!”

She had a hard time not cracking up at phrasing at the time, and I suppose in retrospect I can sort of see why. I suppose such matter of fact statements aren’t exactly expected after one emerges from a crash landing. But at the time I could only stare at her blankly and wonder on earth I was supposed to say. I was fine; the Geo wasn’t functional, and someone did have to pick me up. That covers all the important points, yes?

Actually, the Geo was functional. Sort of. A pick-up truck was dispatched from home, and in the time it took themsleves to pull themselves together and drive the five miles out, a total and complete stranger had pulled up and checked to make sure I was all right, and then left to get a pick up; shortly thereafter another total and complete stranger pulled up in the pick up truck; pick-up truck man and SUV behind me man got the car unembedded; and it was discovered that car could still run. Technically. The headlights dragged on the ground and the doors wouldn’t close right, and it was quite rattley and bang-y, but there were no leaking liquids. They dutifully followed me to the bottom of the hill, where I sat waiting for a few moments before the pick-up truck from home arrived. (Seeing me properly centered on the road and the vehicle appearing only a bit battered, they couldn’t help but wonder why I had called for help. I had to inform them they were simply slow on the draw. Actually, it wasn’t so much that they were slow is that everyone else was so fast. I can’t help but wonder how many times per winter that guy pulls people out without a second thought. He is certainly not paid and probably not even thanked, considering the speed of which he completes the project and leaves.)

But it is toast. The frame is bent. Alas and alack and all that.

And what else? Let me s. . . I accidentally chopped off a bit of my finger with a carving knife. That counts as a near death experience, right?

And I got a splinter jammed way down underneath my fingernail, and I’m pretty sure that counts.

And I had the flu, which made me feeling like I was dying, but only because I like to complain and mope. I don’t have any pictures for that. . .My Dad is probably going to hate me for posting those pictures of my finger. He can never bear to look. I do believe it upsets him more when my finger is dripping blood than to know I wrecked his car. I mean, OK, I get it that your own flesh-and-blood is far more important than a mechanical pile of metal (and less replacable, too). But it was a teeny eeny weeny winey cut, and it healed up promptly, like I knew it would. (This is the same bleeding finger only 1 week later. You can’t even tell, any more, of course.)

And the car is still. . .dead. Twisted. Worthless. Etc. (I think he’s just squimish about blood.)

Anyway, I haven’t been writing, but I have been sewing. And knitting. Both quite a bit, actually. If I ever get off my lazy bum and take/post pictures of it all, you will all get to see that I’m exactly like every body else—I go on endlessly about the stuff I’ve made, regardless of whether it’s worth comment.

Until then, just for the record, I’d like to state that I’m not dead. And that Aloo fibers smell like goat.