overclocked

[dragonlady7]

hyperfocus, unmedicated adhd, winter doldrums

via https://ift.tt/Y0TqOFE

idk lately my computer does this thing where the fan is just on all the time and probably it’s because i have like 300 tabs open but let’s just pretend it is mysterious to me

anyway my brain is doing that. I am in a phase where I can’t just do normal life shit. No, I have to be hyperfixated on something. So I was doing that with writing, for months; I’d be writing whenever I wasn’t doing something else like eating or sleeping or, resentfully, working.

But then I got stuck on writing, or burnt out or something– actually I think there was a combination of things that happened, and I just felt like I had to shut up for a while. It wasn’t that I was organically like oh I will move on, it was that I felt like i had to stop writing. No, I don’t know why, it was imperative at the time but I can’t tease out the logic. And so I fixated on other things. I was obsessively combing thru goodwill.com’s search results to bid on things for several weeks, and now own like…. a lot of weird shit. (The packages coming helped, a lot, and it was cheaper than some things I could’ve gotten real weird about, so I’m glad.)

Then I decided I was doing to pursue my interest of several decades in sewing. I’ve never successfully followed a pattern on my own, and the reasons are basically twofold– 1) I’m terrible at reading and following directions, so it didn’t appeal, but the real major one is 2) no pattern ever made ever came remotely close to fitting me, and I knew that from jump. I knew I would have to struggle through to make a muslin and then wildly adjust it, and it wasn’t like I needed a little adjustment– I generally need to do about an eight-inch full-bust adjustment, and it took me years to even find out what that was called. And here’s the thing, with that big an adjustment, the pattern doesn’t really work anymore, so you have to more or less redraft the entire torso, and possibly the whole garment. And since I can’t understand patterns in the first place, this never went well.

But then I got the Cashmerette book https://www.cashmerette.com/collections/books/products/ahead-of-the-curve-learn-to-fit-and-sew-amazing-clothes-for-your-curves for Christmas, and I had sort of known this to begin with but as I read more of it I realized that the pattern company founder is basically my size twin. Like, within a couple of inches, she has a body identical to mine, freakish tits and all. This boded well.

So I made a muslin of one of the garments from the book. (Well, it wasn’t that easy; I first tried to trace the pattern and it was wildly difficult and then I realized you can download the patterns instead and print them as PDFs and I did that and spent eight plus hours one weekend cutting them all out and assembling them and only then did I notice that they hadn’t actually printed at 100% and anyway that was wildly frustrating but I recut them correctly, or at least the one, a woven shirt pattern, and I got it approximately right and then cut it out of muslin and sewed it together in a fugue state on a Sunday night and put it on so that I could begin to mark what adjustments it needed and

zero, the thing fits perfectly. I am a perfect Cashmerette size 20 with no adjustments.

For the first time in my life I have cut out a pattern and sewed it and had it fit me.

(I’ve made garments that fit me before, but they were self-drafted, badly, and there’d been a lot of trial and error and revisions. And, crucially, they were historic-style garments, and not something I could really wear in my daily life.)

So anyway that was a revelation. Cashmerette just started up their own version of the sort of thing other indie pattern companies have done lately where they have a subscription service that gets you more patterns and workshops and things, and so I signed up for that. The first month’s bonus pattern is for a bomber jacket and I don’t need a bomber jacket but what if I made a bomber jacket?? So I now have a mental list of things I would do to a bomber jacket.

So the thing is, the aesthetic of the patterns as presented on the site is not really how I dress. They’re bright colors against a white background and everyone is flawless and smiling. But of course, I do not have to make my garments to look like that.

And so I’ve been looking through the other indie patterns I see made so much, and figuring out how to hack the Cashmerette patterns into those. Because it’s not like I’m trying to steal this indie designer’s work, but the only product they will sell me is drafted for a B-cup. I could either spend ages re-drafting the bodices of every pattern, OR I can legitimately buy a pattern that is drafted for an H-cup from a company that is willing to cater to my body size, and then spend a little while making cosmetic changes to resemble the aesthetic of the company who does not admit my body size exists.

(At least the scene has changed from the last time I looked; there was a trend for inclusivity a couple of years back which is why I know about Cashmerette in the first place, because the company founder wrote an ebook for other indie designers about how to expand their size ranges, because before that every time I saw a cute thing people were sewing I’d click through and find out it was available up to a 40″ hip or so. Now more of these come in larger sizes, but they’re still drafted for a B cup, so like I guess that’s better but it still doesn’t concretely help me much.)

Anyway. I’m 42 years old and had resigned myself to a lifetime of just wearing whatever fit me or whatever I could chop up and sew into something that fit me, and I have no real notion of what my actual personal style really is, so we’ll see. if I can ride this current sewing hyperfixation far enough to actually fucking sew something……. I do have a better chance now, that I’ll make something that actually fits me, than at any other prior point.

(Genuinely, my shopping technique in real life and online used to just be that I would go to a store, find literally everything in the store that was available in my nominal size, throw it into the shopping cart, and then go through and if IRL try them on and get rid of the ones that didn’t fit me and in the end sometimes be left with nothing, and online I would go through and remove everything that once I looked at the style lines etc. I knew wouldn’t actually work on my body, and I’d buy whatever was left, and that was what I was going to wear, and half the time it would be uncomfortable or not fit but I’d still wear it because that was what I had, and anyway it’s led to not a great attitude in my life toward fashion. Here’s a thing I’m learning, though– I have actually a really common figure. Fully ¾ of the people in the Cashmerette Club, when we discuss sizing, are within a couple of inches of my dimensions, and many have very similar proportions. I am actually a fairly average size. This is how shitty fashion is; every one of us in this collection of similarly-sized women is convinced she is a wildly anomalous freak. It’s kind of amazing. We’re all the same shape. It’s a really common shape for a human to be. Yes for fucking real. Yes I know we’re self-selected by virtue of having found we were the shape this pattern company caters to, but like—- there are a lot of us.)

The current leading candidate for the bomber jacket design in theory is that I make it of sequined fabric with a large embroidered patch that says Sorry For Party Rocking on it, but the more-realistic version is that I piece a bunch of scrap denim from jeans I’ve torn apart and make a farm work jacket. (Your picture was not posted)

Comments

[harpers_child]

Andrea who I know from doll collecting has a person sewing blog where she's done some interesting jackets.

https://sewiam.blogspot.com/

[unicornduke]

very cool!