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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2xIPcv7:
Ugh.
People think I’m better at sewing than I am. I have the basic gist of it, but it’s kind of a perfect storm of all my executive dysfunctions all in one. I can’t actually focus enough to follow a pattern, I can’t do math well enough to draft my own, so I have to just– guess at shapes, and cut them out and sew them together as best I can. And I don’t do that very well.
The few garments I’ve made myself have been largely unsuccessful, but I have managed to create a couple of things I wear often and enjoy. It’s not because they’re well-made, it’s because they’re close enough to what I wanted to please me.
I have huge boxes of hoarded garments that I’ve been saving up to refashion, but the vast majority of them, I have no clear notion of how to fix up, and I don’t think the materials I have are genuinely suited to the end result I want. So most of my “””sewing””” time is spent looking through boxes and saying well, it’d be nice if I knew what to do with what I have; what I want, I can’t do with any of these things.
I spent hours yesterday trying to work up the nerve and know-how to make a simple skirt out of some fabric yardage I have. I want a circle skirt, that would be fun. There are a billion calculators online; I’ve made one before. BUT. The pattern is directional, and runs parallel to the selvedge. The patterns all lay out in such a way that the fabric’s printed pattern would be sideways or upside-down for the majority of every panel. So I can’t use any of the easy-to-calculate patterns; I’d have to draft something incomprehensibly more complex. Clearly, I should not make a circle skirt with this pattern; I need to make either an A-line or multi-gore skirt. I’ve made those before, it wouldn’t be hard– but the pattern’s not really all that well-suited to those patterns either. So, in conclusion, fuck the pattern.
But dithering about it wasted the whole day, and I don’t have any more time, so.
I should have made a muslin just to do it; i have a few yards of muslin kicking around. Then, when I figure out how to do the real skirt, I can use the muslin as a petticoat, which would be ideal; I’ve always wanted a two-layer circle skirt, and it would be a great use of the muslin.
But I didn’t do that.
Farmsister wants us all to make her art for Christmas, and I know i should make one of the experimental art crazy quilts I’ve been wanting to make. But even starting that project is basically impossible with the creative paralysis I have. Ughhh.
I know this about myself; it’s why I made a big push to cut out a lot of projects at once and store them in giant Ziplocs on the shelves in my living room, so that when I’m in a state like this, I can just get those projects out and sew them instead of trying to overcome a huge block. But, I never did get that many cut out, because the times I’m not in total paralysis are so few and far between.
…
Can you imagine that there are human people on this Earth who can just… get an idea and execute it? What would that be like? I literally cannot imagine what that would be like. Like, you get a notion, you go to the store and buy the things you need, you swap in the things you already have that work to help finish it, you use tools you own and can find to execute the project, you complete it, you use it or give it away or whatever.
What is that like.
For the record I own eight or nine fabric dressmakers’ measuring tapes and yesterday spent an hour looking and cannot lay my hands on a single one. I also happen to know all my pinking shears are at the farm. My good fabric shears have been missing for eight months now, lost in one of the transfers from farm to home to farm to home to farm.
Ugh.
People think I’m better at sewing than I am. I have the basic gist of it, but it’s kind of a perfect storm of all my executive dysfunctions all in one. I can’t actually focus enough to follow a pattern, I can’t do math well enough to draft my own, so I have to just– guess at shapes, and cut them out and sew them together as best I can. And I don’t do that very well.
The few garments I’ve made myself have been largely unsuccessful, but I have managed to create a couple of things I wear often and enjoy. It’s not because they’re well-made, it’s because they’re close enough to what I wanted to please me.
I have huge boxes of hoarded garments that I’ve been saving up to refashion, but the vast majority of them, I have no clear notion of how to fix up, and I don’t think the materials I have are genuinely suited to the end result I want. So most of my “””sewing””” time is spent looking through boxes and saying well, it’d be nice if I knew what to do with what I have; what I want, I can’t do with any of these things.
I spent hours yesterday trying to work up the nerve and know-how to make a simple skirt out of some fabric yardage I have. I want a circle skirt, that would be fun. There are a billion calculators online; I’ve made one before. BUT. The pattern is directional, and runs parallel to the selvedge. The patterns all lay out in such a way that the fabric’s printed pattern would be sideways or upside-down for the majority of every panel. So I can’t use any of the easy-to-calculate patterns; I’d have to draft something incomprehensibly more complex. Clearly, I should not make a circle skirt with this pattern; I need to make either an A-line or multi-gore skirt. I’ve made those before, it wouldn’t be hard– but the pattern’s not really all that well-suited to those patterns either. So, in conclusion, fuck the pattern.
But dithering about it wasted the whole day, and I don’t have any more time, so.
I should have made a muslin just to do it; i have a few yards of muslin kicking around. Then, when I figure out how to do the real skirt, I can use the muslin as a petticoat, which would be ideal; I’ve always wanted a two-layer circle skirt, and it would be a great use of the muslin.
But I didn’t do that.
Farmsister wants us all to make her art for Christmas, and I know i should make one of the experimental art crazy quilts I’ve been wanting to make. But even starting that project is basically impossible with the creative paralysis I have. Ughhh.
I know this about myself; it’s why I made a big push to cut out a lot of projects at once and store them in giant Ziplocs on the shelves in my living room, so that when I’m in a state like this, I can just get those projects out and sew them instead of trying to overcome a huge block. But, I never did get that many cut out, because the times I’m not in total paralysis are so few and far between.
…
Can you imagine that there are human people on this Earth who can just… get an idea and execute it? What would that be like? I literally cannot imagine what that would be like. Like, you get a notion, you go to the store and buy the things you need, you swap in the things you already have that work to help finish it, you use tools you own and can find to execute the project, you complete it, you use it or give it away or whatever.
What is that like.
For the record I own eight or nine fabric dressmakers’ measuring tapes and yesterday spent an hour looking and cannot lay my hands on a single one. I also happen to know all my pinking shears are at the farm. My good fabric shears have been missing for eight months now, lost in one of the transfers from farm to home to farm to home to farm.
