sewing projects – a word is elegy to what it signifies

Finished Object: Champagne and Black Demi Bra

May 8, 2018May 8, 2018 Amanda WynnLeave a comment

Pregnancy is rapidly rendering my once favorite bras uncomfortable, so now that the second trimester is upon me and I’m actually able to make it through my day without three naps and seven meals, I’ve had more waking hours and energy with which to put them to use.

So this weekend I dug out my tried and true bra band and adapted it for a demi wire and a three piece, very round cup shape. I chose to make the cups out of a gorgeous beige stretch lace I’ve got in my stash and lined it with stretch mesh in a blushy skin tone, so that the cup could conform to variations in my shape depending upon planetary alignment, tidal schedules, water retention, engorgement, etc, lol. I used a slightly lighter, stretchier power net for the back band that I usually do to build in some extra give in the band, too. Thank goodness for spandex.

Now that I have a pretty solid understanding of materials and construction methods in bra making, I like to challenge myself on the finishing details, so I went all out on the interior on this one.

I used a gothic arch on the elastic, since I’ve found that especially as my tummy expands, the elastic on the bridge rolls in a weird, uncomfortable, and unflattering way and it seems like that can cause it to look worn out over time in some of my older bras. The gothic arch is trickier to construct than an unbroken piece of elastic but I think it sits much better against the body, especially over the life of the bra. I enclosed all the seams using the mesh lining, which I think gives a great feel against the skin and a good look, too. The strap elastic is enclosed where it joins with the bra as well.

I’ll be adding this to my Etsy shop after a few more iterations and a few more tweaks on a bra size / style guide I’ve been working on, along with a few other full cradle and partial band bras. More soon. 🙂

Achievement Unlocked: New Etsy Shop

March 1, 2018March 1, 2018 Amanda Wynn2 Comments

I’m excited (and a bit jittery) to say that my Etsy lingerie shop is finally open. I’ve been setting it up for a few weeks and still have *so many things* I want to add to it, but it’s a start that I feel proud of. Also excited to say I’m testing sizing and writing up directions for a sewing pattern I hope to release soon. The crafter life goals of sewing for others and pattern drafting do work well together.

So far, no full cradle bras because I’m writing up my 95 theses of how to fit a bra. Not really 95, but a few pages for sure. I’ve been reading a lot on sizing standards and the history of different measurement practices and vanity sizing, and now I see why most of us are totally confused by manufacturer sizing. More on this later when I get my fitting guide all hammered out, but the issue of adding four or five inches to your underbust measurement really throws a wrench in everything. What’s even more frustrating is that just using your raw underbust measure seems like it would clear up everything, but then you have to grapple with figuring out which manufacturers add inches to the underbust measure for their bands and which don’t, and with how individual brands approach sizing, because a 36B in one brand might be another brand’s 32DD. (I intend to use the raw underbust measure, myself, though I’ve found the high bust to be a better place to measure – right under the armpits, over the bonier part of the upper chest, since the underbust measure can vary so dramatically with breathing, sitting vs. standing, bloating, etc. It tends to be slightly larger than the underbust measure by an inch or two, which works out perfectly for me with my broad back and unusual proportions, but may not for everyone.)

For now, I’ve focused on lacy bralettes, underwear and garter belts in the shop, and I’m still learning the ins and outs of SEO and writing copy and it’s been actually kind of amazing in researching all of that to realize how much snake oil marketing stuff floating around out there is promising starry-eyed budding entrepreneurial dreamer types like myself that a fortune is there for the taking if we just fork out 2k for whatever guru’s online course! Ugh, gross. (They tell me that if I don’t set up a mailing list, the howling abyss demon of failure and loneliness and bad skin will come for me, so if you’d like to join the mailing list, it’s (here), and I did set up a 10% off code that will be sent to your email, and I promise I won’t spam you. Especially not with false scarcity marketing or canned enthusiasm adspeak crap, because the world has more than enough of that.)

Learning photography is infinitely more fun, though I think I lost at least a week to cussing my camera controls and my cat for jumping in the shot when I finally got all the elastics to lie flat for two seconds. You can really see the eternal conflict between my antique feminine, Marie Antoinette delicate aesthetic and my Morticia Addams for life/what would Cersei wear sensibilities:

Under My Thumb bralette.

Tangled Up in Blue bralette.

Rapture bralette and ruched back underwear.

Heart of Glass bralette and underwear.

Just Like Honey bralette, garter belt, and underwear.

Nothing But Flowers bralette and underwear.

Going to California bralette and ruched back underwear.

And now I’m off to bed to listen to the rain. Mmm, gothic novel spring weather.

Belated 2017 Roundup / Obligatory Rambles About Lifegoals and Resolve

January 14, 2018January 14, 2018 Amanda Wynn3 Comments

2017 was … intense, macrocosmically and microcosmically. But it’s been ever upward and onward, and rounding up the things I created over the last year really makes me feel pretty great about how far my lingerie making and sewing skills have progressed. I also feel a sense of accomplishment about trying fabric design!

So here’s a sampling of my sewn work over the last year, all self-drafted:

And here are some of the fabric designs I printed using Spoonflower (shameless self promotion, my shop is here):

It’s somehow cheering to see it all in one place. It’s easy to think of all I’d hoped to accomplish and did not; it’s harder to realize how far I’ve actually come.

My biggest goal for 2018 are to finally open up an etsy shop for handmade lingerie, and I’m moving toward being able to do that probably within the next week or two. Lots of samples sewn and processes mastered and materials hoarded toward that end. Still to do: photos to take, copy to write, listings to create. I’d like to offer patterns and design more fabrics to use in my collections as well. It may seem unrelated, but for me this is inextricably connected to my more personal urge to declutter and simplify and work towards realizing the more minimalist approach to living I’ve always wanted. To me, clearing the physical clutter is tied to clearing the psychological hesitation to focus on what I really want to be doing with my time. I went around my house taking pictures to have a “before” state to see what progress I can make and have a nice list of TED talks to work through for inspiration. But mostly I hope to be able to declutter enough to actually sew in my sewing room instead of just piling it full of sewing-related junk.

Here’s hoping. 🙂

July 3, 2017July 3, 2017 Amanda Wynn2 Comments

Happy almost 4th of July. We’re making a stay-cation of it, which means lots of sewing time. Lots of makes I’m proud of lately–larger bras sewn for my grandma, since being a 40E doesn’t afford her the luxury of choosing from all the lacey whispy nothings we 36b-ish-es have to peruse. I’m trying to stretch my abilities so that I can sew well for a wider range of sizes than just my own.

18950091_389709308092385_906700585829400576_n — satin covered foam cup, lace and tulle upper cup. lace + tulle cradle.

19050452_1874732672746313_6469854029349388288_n — strap detail.

18947873_463378214015013_6420703634794741760_n — It looks a bit lumpy on my 36b dressform, and I had to stuff it to fill it out. this picture doesn’t quite do it justice, alas, but it gives an idea.

I’ve also been somewhat doggedly trying to work on my finishing methods like attaching fold over elastic. So convenient and shiny and pretty, and yet, such an enormous pain in the butt. The first few sets of underwear I made were a huge disappointment, since the waving of the elastic distorted the lines of the fabric and made my makes scream homemade. But I sewed about twelve pairs in a week and I think I’ve got it now. The tricks seem to be actually measuring elastic into quadrants and evenly distributing the reduction (I mark quadrants on the garment and FOE with pins, then match the pins as I go, so that the stretch is distributed evenly over the FOE) and sewing along the open edge of the FOE as accurately as possible. And also steaming/pressing when it’s all done to help pull the elastic back into shape and make it lie flat on curves (thanks to tailormadeblog.com/Ying of Tailor Made Shoppe for that tip!).

19228487_1357457241028793_2471917403001323520_n — early FOE + mesh struggles.

19436943_440155829696180_4284353035947212800_n — and here is where it all started to really come together for me, in my brain and in the muscles of my hands. 🙂

I made these to match the bra above. The pink lace is one of my absolute favorites.

And then finally there’s this, a bralette pattern I’m working on. It’s not a terribily original design; it’s a pretty commonly seen basic bralette style with a lot of coverage. Stylistically it’s not very different from Cloth Habit’s Watson pattern, and the cups have a very similar seaming arrangement. But there are definite differences in the cradle/wings; hers brings things to a definite V point in the center and that’s a challenge I don’t want to deal with if I can help it. I’m not sure but I think the underarm side might be higher on this because I am anti side boob escape-age, and for wider set breasts, the struggle is real. Most bralettes without a higher side band leave me feeling exposed and at the mercy of the elements/gravity/sudden movements. So far I’m pretty happy with it!

19533985_1578455965521572_743910166985965568_n — I even dyed this fabric and strap elastic! stretch lace over mesh.

19623544_1726649340962321_3805653942688284672_n — first attempt at enclosing the band seams with the lining. it was tricky and slow going but maybe practice will help.

19624972_471228323260185_7669179636227506176_n — outer view of the finished bra. I made this one in scuba, a thicker double knit (I think), which works great for balancing stretch with structure. Seems a perfect fabric for bra cups.

I’m making up some samples of lots of these pieces in a range of sizes to test the fit and refine my details these days. Slowly lurching ever closer to actually offering custom made lingerie… 🙂

Happy 4th!

Honing my bra making process.

June 9, 2017June 11, 2017 Amanda Wynn1 Comment

I’ve been working this week on refining my bra making process. I like to experiment with the steps in garment making and trying to arrange them for efficiency and speed. #nerdlife So this week I cut out four bras at once:

I’ve been experimenting with foam cups and how to finish and join them:

So far, I’ve finished one 40E sized bra using the Maya pattern, available for free here, which has as great round shape. It doesn’t work so well for me personally (shallow broad shape), and for the person I’m making the large bras for, it required some adjustments to the upper cup, but the resulting shape works really well.

And here’s the first one I’ve finished of this round. I’m really happy with the way it turned out, and the person I sewed it for was really happy. It’s kind of amazing how many women haven’t had the experience of wearing a bra that actually fits, and it makes me happy to be able to help with that. It’s a small thing, but I know how that having a bra that fits right and flatters makes me feel a little bit happier with my body and a little bit more confident, and I love that I’m getting almost to the point that I can do that in some small way for other people. It’s also fun to sew these for the older women I know who are more endowed and haven’t ever had a really lacy lavish bra because they are so hard to find in larger sizes. 🙂

The full on view shows some issues I had with getting the elastic aligned with the bottom of the cup; in the future, I’ll probably widen the cradle so that when I use wide elastic for larger sizes, it doesn’t come so close to the channeling line. Something to add to my bra making lab notebook 🙂

Happy Friday!

RIP, Chris Cornell.

May 25, 2017May 25, 2017 Amanda WynnLeave a comment

Poor Chris Cornell. His passing has definitely triggered some heavy thinking on subjective meaning and the stories we tell ourselves about the sum value of our lives in isolation. Suicide scares me; it’s something that has felt like a dark figure in the periphery of my social circle for a long time. When I was very, very young, my father found his friend, our neighbor, in his barn. The first boy I ever kissed committed suicide. My grandfather did, for reasons I don’t understand and he did not explain. During some nightmarish teen years, I considered it myself. Luckily, I never found the resolve, and life improved and took me places I never imagined and gave me many, many reasons to be thankful to be here. I don’t feel in danger anymore, myself, though when something happens like a relatable creative figure choosing the act (despite seeming to have mastered their own emotional turbulence, having every reason to be satisfied with life, having resources to do what they want and positive influence in the world) it frightens me. It’s worse since Chris Cornell was such a large figure of my youth, and I’d been enjoying his music right up to the present; he seemed to have come to a good place of sobriety, contentment, seemed like a decent human being, and to be a great family man, too.

This song used to make me cry in a happy girly way, hopeful for the peace of middle age and the companionship of family. Now it makes me sad for a daughter without a father and burdened forever with the mystery of his reasons. For the mystery all of us are doomed to be to each other.

He spoke in a Rolling Stone interview in 2014 about the death of Kurt Cobain and a few other friends and how it colored the time around the creation of the Superunknown album. What he said sums up the feeling around his death, too:

“It’s not so much the person and the relationship with them, but the creative inspiration that person has and I would get from that person. My perception of the world of music at large artistically shrank, because suddenly this brilliant guy was gone. I’m not even talking about what he meant culturally; I’m talking about his creativity. It was super inspiring from the very first demo I ever heard. It broadened my mental picture of what the world was creatively, and suddenly a big chunk of it fell off…The tragedy was much more than the fact that I would never see him again – it was that I would never hear him again. There’s this projection I had with Andy, Kurt, Jeff Buckley and other friends of mine that died of looking into the future at all these amazing things they’re going to do. I’ll never be able to predict what that is. All this music that will come out that will challenge me and inspire me – that sort of romantic, dramatic version of the perspective. When that goes away, for me in particular, it was a really hard thing. And it continues to be a hard thing.”

Maybe it was the Ativan he was on. As maybe in my grandfather’s case, it was the Ambien–I’ll never know. Or maybe some of us have brains that are prone to falling in to something that we can’t always crawl out of, independent of our lives’ circumstances. Luckily for me a tendency toward emotional turbulence seems to be tempered by a rapid cycling through of emotions; the worst is usually soon passed. As long as there’s hope of improvement and I still enjoy my obsessive interests, my tendency is to just grind through unhappiness. But feeling isolated compounds it all…which gives more impetus to try to connect in some way, at least, to other people and to remember to work at some kind of expression.

I used to write constantly. I’m a lapsed poet, even, which has something to do with my personality type (INTP, stereotypical nerd) and not wanting to live in my emotions, so I pretend they just aren’t there. It’s kind of impossible to write poetry without exposing feelings. Even if I mistrust my emotions as something ephemeral and more like weather moving over a landscape and not something upon which to base my actions, they are going to have an effect. I’m not the rational creature I tell myself I am; no one is. I read a description of INTP emotion that compared the emotions to a quiet passenger in a limo seated in the back behind closed, tinted glass. You, your in your head monologue version of yourself is the semi-rational, driving agent at the wheel, pretending the passenger isn’t there, and going about your business. That’s all fine and good, until, as if in some Godfather movie, emotions assert their existence despite you and the passenger swarms up from the backseat to try to choke you and your supposed control out and you wreck the car. It’s sad how apt a metaphor that is for my own life experiences. The modern version of Plato’s horse drawn chariot.

So my desire is to crack those windows a bit, between emotion/cerebral inner monologue, self and social world. I may be shit at small talk, but I can strive for a semi-regular “this is what I’m working on and this is what it means to me” ramble.

Lately, just bras that experiment with posture control, some work at an 1860s style corset cover. Bullet journals and lifehack systems. The former, nostalgic femininity; the latter, comforting illusions of structure and control.

wearable muslin in tricot that looks like I live in the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks.

wearable muslin number 2 in charmeuse.

bralette experiment. in which i learn that bralettes don’t do it for me at all, but I like doing applique stuff.

posture bra experiment 1. wearable but not quite successful; the line of the strap needs to cross the shoulder to be effective.

posture bra experiment number 2. more successful with double straps. beautiful floral charmeuse from TailorMadeShop on etsy.

Bye for now.

excuse me while I talk about my underwear.

April 2, 2017April 4, 2017 Amanda Wynn3 Comments

I’ve been sewing a lot of lingerie lately. My life is kind of a series of small possessions–I play host to a revolving door of obsessive interests, immersing in one after another, always centered on an axis of making *something* with a nostalgic eye cast backward in history. My hoarding of pattern catalogs and sewing ephemera *may* be giving way to hoarding of lingerie materials, which in my mind, marks some kind of progress because it’s more about the action of the crafting and the enjoyment of the moment while creating the thing than it is about possession of a thing. We’ll see.

I’m trying to move more into making than owning, more about enjoyment of the process than collecting (but I still love you, bookshelf!). I find trying to sew beautiful things to be a therapeutic exertion of will over a sometimes ugly reality. Politics has me hand-wringing? Grab my lace. Worried about antartic ice sheets? Turn off a few more light bulbs and grab my lace. Focus on the lace. The Western world seems to be both far better than it has been in the last few millenia, in terms of civil rights, gay rights, the standing of women and children, literacy, information access, medicine. Yet in terms of scaled economic injustice and systems of exploitation of labor, climate change, pollution, the island of plastic in the pacific, mercury in and acidification and warming of the oceans, species extinctions, the disappearance of the middle class, the disappearance of privacy, the uncertain future of jobs in a time of automation, it is arguably worse and far more complex than I think most human brains are evolved to be able to grapple with. I don’t know any answers. But in an often ugly, screaming world, I am trying to quietly make what beauty I can. I make lace things. I make lunches. I make babies and make love and make breakfast magic out of 3oz of leftover steak, three eggs and last night’s soggy skinned baked potato. I make scribbles. I make crude jokes. I make my grandma laugh. (Since she watched Sons of Anarchy and Game of Thrones, there’s not much that phases her. <3) That’s often all I feel I have the efficacy in this world to do.

Anyway…I’ve sewn Cloth Habit’s wonderful Harriet pattern at least 10x since I bought it.

As it was, without modification, the cup placement was slightly narrow for my rather broad boob placement, as to be expected with any pattern I sew. Yet because my shape is shallow up top, the upper cup was sagging sad and empty, as most bras have for me forever. Not the fault of the pattern, just natural variation in human anatomy. (It is a peeve of mine when people complain about patterns not fitting their bodies precisely, especially when it comes to breast shape, when it would be so utterly and obviously impossible for any pattern maker to account for the bajillion types of bodies and mass distribution in existence.) So I tried tweaking the pieces by taking the C cup as a baseline / wireline / cup to cradle joining point and overlaying the B and A size pieces as guides to taper down to the projection of a B cup at the apex and the A cup at the top. Not sure if this was the most efficient way to do this. In fact, it surely wasn’t. But it gave me something that works. I’ve struggled for a few months with the relationship of the wire to the pattern and cup shape, but I think it’s starting to make more sense and really come together for me now. There are a few great blog entries on this topic on bramakingblog.com that were helpful for me.

After about 10 iterations, I wanted to try something else–specifically, something less pokey in the side boob. Since I need a wire for a bigger cup size than my actual projection, and I have wide boobs on a short torso, I often feel like the wires that fit me are way too long. Demi wires are a great answer to this problem, so I worked some more on a self drafted bra pattern with a different shape. I’ve been trying to up my technical game by working on enclosing all the seams in my bras (there’s a post on doing just that on the Watson pattern on the TailorMadeBlog that got me started on this). So I tried one attempt with a full band.

Then I reworked my pattern as a partial band bra for shallow demi wires and ended up with this.

Considering some minor tweaks and fabric variations for this. Happy Sunday!

Finished Object: Black Velvet Bra. And, also, on failure.

December 22, 2016December 30, 2016 Amanda WynnLeave a comment

I have been sewing bras off and on for the last three months. I blame a Craftsy sale for ensnaring me, yet again, in my usual cycle of: oooh, this looks interesting, this class is on sale–I’ll buy it to watch later after I finish what I’m working on now–I’m bored or stalled with current project–I watch just enough Craftsy course to get obsessed with new subject but not enough to actually know how to do it– I try project in creative-lust-fueled mad rush–I fail–watch more class–try again–fail–I repeat again until too bored to continue with original subject or my project is, almost despite my inefficient learning methodology, successful. This may be the only time I’ve ever come close to completing a successful project based on Craftsy viewing.

So please excuse me while I revel in this bra:

black-bra-2

This is a self drafted, full band, underwired bra with pretty much full coverage. This bra is the first and only bra I have ever worn that ACTUALLY FITS ME. I understand now why women wear these things, because it actually does lift and support my breast tissue instead of smashing it down under too-small underwires and too narrow cups.

In this project, as in most of my sewing projects, at least half of the issue has been coming to a better understanding of my actual body mass as it relates to the ideal of a sewing pattern or the median compromise of ready to wear sizing. Bras have never fit me because my body does not fit either the standard of sewing patterns or the fit standards of bra manufacturers, and to be fair, neither industry could possibly be expected to accommodate every shape. But I wish I had understood decades ago how to deal with my body type.

As bras go, no matter the manufacturer or the size I tried, I have always been plagued by one of three problems: sad, empty bra cups; underwires stabbing into my actual breast tissue or preformed cups that don’t conform to anything like my breast shape; too narrowly spaced cups. These issues were also part of my problem trying to sew my first few bras using something like standard pattern sizing as well. It turns out that while, yeah, my breasts are on the smaller side, they aren’t quite as small as I thought. What they are is shallow with a broad root, and the tissue has a sort of tear drop distribution. So for my sewing adventures, once I had the band size right, I adjusted the bridge at center front to get the spacing of the cup bottom/cradle from breast to breast. Then I adjusted the width of the cup bottom/cradle to fit my exact breast width and the placement of that on the band. Finally, I adjusted the cups for the fullness on bottom with much less fullness on top. (This involved a lot of cardboard cutouts, smooshing my boobs around and marking on them with eyeliner, some plastic wrap and tape, and about a billion iterations.)

Long story short, for anyone with a broad rib cage and similar fit issues, I’d suggest experimenting with underwires; I had been wearing ones that were at least three sizes too small for my entire adult life. Also consider the shape of your breast tissue, because if it’s non-typical, no pattern will fit without adjustment to fit that.

But back to my glorious triumph:

This bra has a milliskin band, fold over elastic binding, powernet for the back band, and glorious, glorious stretch velvet for the cup fabric outside *and* the cup lining. (I cut it with the direction of stretch differently for the lining and the outer fabric so that the fabric would be stable and supportive enough–if the stretch is in opposing directions theoretically it will work, and it did work beautifully here.) It’s my way of saying sorry to my boobs for mistreating them with horrible fitting bras for all these years. It feels amazing. It feels so amazing it’s like my boobs are being held aloft by the careful hands of Eric from True Blood all day long. Since it actually holds all of my breast tissue, instead of underwires or cups smooshing some of it down and sitting on top of my actual boobs, this bra looks much better under clothes, makes my bust look larger and is more flattering.

What I also love about this bra is that except for the elastic it is made from the carnage of past sewing failures, painstakingly picked apart and repurposed for this fit experiment. The hook and eye tape was once a failed moulage closure. The velvet was a failed bodysuit. The powernet was scavenged from an earlier bra attempt that fit terribly. The channeling and underwires were stolen from my second-most-recent finished object that didn’t fit–my satin covered foam cup red lace bra:

red-lace-bra-3

This bra turned out great, but the cups were a bit too full when it was entirely done, and there was no way to correct that without ruining the seamless look I was going for. So I deconstructed it and will reuse the band and the lace on a future attempt.

I don’t throw my failures away, because usually I can find some way to reuse odds and ends, and also because it’s a great way to track how far I’ve come. When I get frustrated that I can’t seem to get a certain project right, seeing how terrible I did when I started and how much I’ve learned along the way, even if I’m not getting wearable garments yet, is a great motivator. I have had a LOT of bras not work out:

bra-fails

This is just a sampling of the many many attempts I went through learning how to work with spandex and mesh and powernet, playing with foam shapes, trying to get the band right, then not realizing the flat, unflattering look was because my cups were too small and were actually minimizing my tissue, then realizing that my breast tissue was even wider than I originally thought. Even though the Craftsy courses with Beverly Johnson are fantastic, there’s a certain real world comprehension of body shapes and how to deal with that geometry that requires experimentation, I think, or at least for me. I’m excited to see how my next one turns out.

There Will Be Blood; or, Amanda Works on Hand Sewing and other August Sewing Randomness

September 3, 2016September 3, 2016 Amanda Wynn2 Comments

Often I find myself hesitant to post because I’m never satisfied with the work I’ve done and tend to not complete things as often as some sewers. Often I discover mid-project the shoulder slant isn’t right or the fit is off in some way that will prevent me from ever wearing the garment so in the fabric scrap pile it goes. But this month, I actually finished two things! Self drafted corsets, no less. They aren’t perfect, but I’m going to try not to look at my sewing that way from the point on…instead I’m going to appreciate everything I learned this month, and the skills I started to acquire while doing these projects…like inserting boning, adding eyelets, encasing boning channels, inserting a busk, cording, hand stitching, adding puller loops to a corset, etc…

201608-corset-1-front — An underbust/waist cincher in black shantung and cotton duck.

201608-corset-1-back — My first go at inserting eyelets.

I liked this corset and wore it for a full day to test the fit and how it behaved actually on my body. Since it didn’t have a busk and is somewhat long for my short torso, I found it a bit uncomfortable for some activity. My grandma helped me lace it up initially and since grandma was a very accomplished lacer of corsets back in the 50s when the ladies in her family took it to near tightlacing levels for an evening out, it was quite the study in masochism until I loosened it up a bit. Driving in it was absolutely miserable because it somehow seemed to be too long for comfort while at the same time riding up and compressing my rib cage to a degree that was miserable. I think part of the problem might be the ratio of my hip / waist / bust being what it is; without the valley of a significantly defined waist to rest it, if I didn’t have it cinched very tight it sort of drifted. I think a waist tape might help with this, and/or converting the corset to a proper underbust where the bust might help it stay in position.

So then I tried a shorter version:

201608-corset-2 — Puller loops for the win! These are the loops that look out of place above–most of the time the lace goes from one side to the other but to create a puller loop, go to the hole directly above where the cord last came through. Keep a lot of slack in the lacing here. Lace up the rest in the normal crossover pattern. Then when you’re lacing it up, you tie it at the top or bottom or wherever as usual, but you can pull the puller loops to tighten and then tie them off in a bow too. I found this made it much much easier to remove them too!

The shorter version is more comfortable but sort of wanders freely over my rectangular torso. Also the shorter version seems to give a much less satisfying line, since my proportions are what they are, and the corset seems to actually add a bit of girth even as it smooths the line of the torso. For me, the result wasn’t hourglassy; my ribs are too large for that figure flattery. The look is much more abrupt and I discovered when I squish in everything, it creates a nice squidgey little roll of displaced fat between my underbust and the top of the corset. Oof. I’m sure with practice and some habitual waist shaping these things would be less of an issue for me. (Also, I cut the bias binding far too narrow, so it’s a bit messy, but I found hand sewing the binding to be the most soothing activity ever. It’s what I do at school pickup time when I’m trying to quell my social awkwardness around my parent peers. Go ahead, mfers, ask me about my obsessive interest. I DARE you.)

On the uncompleted front, I tried a Renaissance era set of stays and also a set of 1810s-ish conical stays; they didn’t work out for me. (Large ribcage + small bust + large waist = bust fabric floppage and/or unflattering boob squishdown with nothing left to spill over like some heaving bosomed Jane Austen romantic-yet-snarky heroine.) But I learned so much!

cordingisfun — Cording is time and thread consuming but actually pretty magical. Same with handsewn eyelets. This is done here with plain old yarn and muslin for practice 🙂

Now I’m on to a simple pattern for a very simple corset with gores for shaping. It’s self drafted and it’s a crude trial run I’m giving myself full permission to make a mess of. It’s in cotton duck with a front busk and back lacing. I inserted a busk for the first time. I did a ton of hand sewing on it for practice, even though it’s terribly inefficient and I have torn the living sh*t out of my fingers in the process.

Super sewing tip–if you get blood on a garment you’re sewing, saliva does a fantastic job of removing it before it stains. Just spit on the spots and rub. Probably something to do with enzymes breaking down the blood. Also–beeswax is your friend. This is rapidly turning into my favorite thing to do.

goredcorset1 — Be it ever so humble, my hand stitching is starting to resemble a proper line.

Happy almost autumn…getting excited for the return of layered clothing!

Current Sewing Projects: Knit Blouses and Victorian Blazers, Oh My

February 20, 2016February 20, 2016 Amanda WynnLeave a comment

I want so many things on my sewing table. Impossible things. Impractical things.

Camiknickers.

Black tulle tutus and sunglasses and spring cool.

To draft the perfect catsuit.

But more than anything this week, I have been working on a Victorian style blazer. Something like this, but sleeker, more vampirey. This is a Burda jacket from the Hills are Alive or something about the sound of music, but my brain is taking it to a dark nuclear post-apocalyptic place. I loathe the running stitches and the pockets and the boxy fit, and I don’t like the position of the front bust darts either. So like this but not really like this at all except the high shoulder and the high-ish back neckline. *shrug* I also have been irritated in the past by the lack of seam allowance on Burda patterns, so I definitely won’t be buying this one. Just eyecandy. Also: do you think that’s really her hair, or is that a weave? It’s a serious hunk of hair there.

My partner hates poofey shoulders. So of course those have to happen. Because like Lady Gaga, I’m a free b***h, baby, and I LIKE a little old timey high sleeve cap if it doesn’t poof vertically. I’m thinking a single button closure in the front, a shawl collar, with a high back neck. I’ll probably give it a go in denim waste fabric for now, saving my red herringbone suiting for when I get the fit right.

I’ve actually had a good sewing week–I tried using a vest pattern to draft a bodice for a jacket, and used my 1880s sleeve from the recent tailored jacket attempt. The fit is nearly perfect, except for the shoulders. When I move my arms forward, it pulls on the front of my shoulder and on the back, along the edge of the scye near my scapula. All my reading of historical tailoring stuff has me wanting to try a new approach on my next attempt. They talk about getting armholes TIGHT, which seems to be sort of the opposite of the slash and spread suggestions I’m used to seeing and trying and failing miserably with. The idea, as I understand, is that the better the fit of the bodice, even–and maybe especially–in the armscye area, the more independent the sleeve movement will be from the more stationary bodice. Instead of lowering the armhole or adding more back ease and sacrificing the hard earned fit, I’m going to try adding more fabric to the bodice armhole, but not only in my usual vertical direction–I’m going to shift the side seam outward and slightly up. With my back being broad and somewhat rounded at the shoulder/scapula line, as well as slightly hunched forward, my back is taking up fabric from the sleeve and my shoulders/back extend in this weird diagonal way compared to the standard form. What I want to do is cover my entire back with the bodice, so that the ease in the sleeve isn’t used up by my back mass. If that makes sense. We’ll see!

I took my jacket attempt #1 and chalk lined it all up trying to figure out where to add. I even bought some hook and eye tape, since I haven’t gotten over my buttonhole aversion just yet. So drafting and cutting attempt 2 is my project for tonight!

Another thing to consider is sleeve pitch. Sleeve pitch, as I understand very roughly, is the sort of rotation of the sleeve in the scye. Most of the time the center top of the sleeve is aligned with the shoulder seam in the usual high position on top of the shoulder. But with stooped posture or forward shoulders or very erect postures, tailors *seem* from my reading to rotate the sleeve slightly within the scye to accomodate. This keeps the grainline in the right position relative to the arm. So with my shoulder being rotated forward maybe 10-15 degrees from standard (this would be set “high” in the tailoring parlance, I think), I might try rotating my sleeve forward to keep the hang correct. What I’m curious about in this case, though, is whether it matters at all that this might throw off the match up of underarm sleeves and side seams. Would one need to shift the underarm seam? In my case with the 1880s style two piece sleeve it doesn’t matter at all, though.

I’ve been branching out and sewing with knit fabrics quite a bit too. I resisted it for ages, seeing it as something like playing an electric guitar to sound good because your technique isn’t good enough to play acoustic. But the perfectionist in me loves the lack of fraying seam edges and the lazy instant gratification craver in me who has been sewing for three years with precious little wardrobe action to show for it ADORES the fact that I can sew up something quickly that forgives minor fitting issues. So far in the last two weeks I’ve made: two great fitting, exceedingly comfortable pairs of thongs (which I intend to make a pattern of to send out into the world soon!), a princess seamed scarf collared 1930s style blouse and another more Edwardian-ish high necked, poofy gathered sleeve blouse in a sleek, pretty ITY knit! Not gonna lie, I’m pretty stoked. That’s like a year’s worth of finished objects for me, and ALL self drafted. Someday, when I find a tripod, I’ll have to post pictures. It’s an incredible feeling to find that my spread-so-thin sewing attentions come together sometimes and actually produce something.

Also, the weather is BEAUTIFUL here. I love it.

Happy weekend!