Yes you can, but....why???

A short one today - extra fitting has been required for the latest commission, but that post should be up soon.

And so a rant!

I am completely confused by this article: http://byhandlondon.com/blogs/by-hand-london/make-your-own-pashmina

For those not interested in visiting the link it's about how to make your own pashmina.  The steps are basically: buy pashmina wool, cut to desired width, finish edges with a single row of stitching and a bit of fray.

Simple, straightforward and, to my mind, utterly pointless.  You're not getting anything new or different from this kind of pashmina, you're not using up material from other makes (though I guess you could if you had a very large scrap of something suitable), and you're not really saving any money.  The poster is apparently close enough to Goldhawk Road in London to pop in to grab some pashmina wool, but I haven't managed to get there yet and I've been trying for years (juggling life with trip to obscure London location is surprisingly difficult).  And if I did it would cost me way more just to get there than to just buy a ready-made pashmina.  I've never seen pashmina wool in any local shop and decent wool is generally not cheap so buying online (where you can rarely buy less than a metre in anything other than quilting fabric and there are postage costs) wouldn't be a saving either.

This is definitely one for my exceptions list - though if there was anything different or interesting you were getting out of this make rather than a plain pashmina I might be less scathing.  Maybe I'm too practical, but for me making something has to have some point to it....

My Sewing Space

So I see a lot of posts on the sewing blogs I follow about sewists sewing rooms or sewing spaces.  Some of these are professionals who work from home, occasionally the odd sewing studio for someone who's branched out to something a bit bigger, but generally they are sewing rooms (or parts of rooms) of hobbyists like me.  Obviously they tidy and clean for the pictures, but these spaces are so different from mine - so pretty and full of pristine Ikea furniture that instead of being inspired I feel like rolling on the floor laughing at how far far FAR I am away from such a mellow, serene "me time" sewing experience.

And so today I shall take you on a tour of my sewing space!

Hint: this ain't it.

Commission - flannel shirt 1

I have been (very slowly for life reasons) been embarking on something new which I hope will help me level up my pattern drafting and bespoke clothing making.

My dad has commissioned me to make him a casual shirt for the autumn/winter - something nicer than a t-shirt, but not a dress shirt.  I suggested flannel and found this fabric:

Oo - another familiar pic...

Technical clothes

In my previous post I mentioned this hoody, which I was given for my birthday and I thought it would be a good opportunity to explain what I mean by technical clothing in my exceptions for not buying clothes.

Fashionable hoody is fashionable (credit: Sensory Direct)

First a little bit of background to why I asked for and why I looooove this hoody.  I have some issues with anxiety (read: have had panic attacks and other anxiety related problems since I was tiny) and find that deep pressure helps me relax.  Deep pressure is essentially a firm consistent pressure, which Temple Grandin famously found helped many people with autism cope with the world.  She developed a hug machine to squeeze people to their heart's desire, but the same effect can also be felt with weighted products: weighted blankets being the most common.  Since Temple Grandin implemented it as a therapy for autism it's expanded to other areas.  I know quite a lot of people who find it helpful for their anxiety (though there are plenty of others with anxiety who find it anything from pointless to horrible) and plenty of people with no particular issues who find it comforting.

I made myself a weighted blanket a while ago now and sleep under it most nights (the recent heat and having to be without it was unpleasant), but it's not exactly portable, and if I'm having a stressful day and just want a bit of a top up on my calm while still being able to watch Oscar or sew, the hoody is way more convenient.  Also the hoody is much easier to take if we're going away somewhere to sleep under - I can throw it on my legs or my chest and be comfortable enough even in a strange bed.

On to the technicalities!  Since I did make my weighted blanket I do have some insight into how I would go about making a weighted hoody and my initial inspections when it first arrived bore out my theories.  The weight in a blanket it produced by putting two layers together and essentially sewing little sealed off pockets all over the blanket full of little plastic pellets to create an even weight distribution.  Here's a tutorial I looked at before I made mine.

Credit to the lady at the above tutorial.  You fill each row with pellets then sew across.  Fill, sew, fill, sew....

The hoody is made in a similar way - hidden pockets on the inside of the hoody contain weights of varying sizes made with this method.  You can actually order additional weights to add to it, but it's plenty heavy enough for me.

dinky weight

So why not make this myself?  It's just a hoody with some weights in.  Well, yeah, I could make it myself, but for me there's a couple of reasons not to.  The first being that I wanted it quickly (I'm impatient) and didn't want to learn how to make a halfway decent hoody from scratch first.  I guess I could have found a secondhand hoody and added pockets, but that runs into all kinds of other problems with making sure the pockets are in the right place and the right size and not visible from the outside and blah blah blah.

Another reason not to make it myself I learned from making weighted blankets.  My machine is great and all, but it's still just a home machine and it really really doesn't like it when it hits even small pieces of very hard plastic.  There are some things it's really just not made for and dodging flying shards of shattered needles is no fun.

In future as I get better and maybe get better equipment I might try more of the things that I consider "technical" at the moment, but for now I'm happy having a little bit of leeway on not buying.

Commission - Houppelande lite

I've seen this somewhere before....

 You may remember the fabric for this one from my post a little while ago - this was the strange situation where the lining actually cost more than the outer fabric and I was sure that was breaking some kind of rule.

Well if it was it doesn't seem to have done any harm, for here is the completed garment:

Sewing machine holiday

My sewing machine is having it's very first service!  Given I don't even know how old it is (I got it secondhand from a friend of a friend) and how much it has been used especially over the last few years it is waaaaaay overdue for a service.  I'm dreading the fluff and lack of oil and horrible things they may find inside it (I don't eat while sewing, but I do sew non-standard things now and then...), but I am very much looking forward to having it back all spiffy and working smoothly again.  It's been very very slowly getting ropey over the last few months especially with more tangles and snarls and just general sluggishness, so hopefully when I get it back those will be gone and I should be able to have a carefree sewing experience (lol).

In the meantime I have more sashiko (including a sashiko commission - ooo....) to do, some pattern drafting and other non-machine-y things to do.  I also have about 4 blog posts in the works, but haven't had much time/energy/will lately.  Hopefully I'll be able to get more of them done while the machine is having it's spa time as well.

Birthday sashiko!

It was my birthday....I was going to say 'recently', but actually over a month ago now (I've obviously not being paying attention).  I got lots of lovely pressies, but I have to say the one I was second-most looking forward to was my new sashiko kit!

Yay!

Pattern and Project Organisation

My parents will be so proud to hear that, at heart, I'm an information manager.  After all, that's what we do for a living and that's what they pay me for.  Mum's tendency to draw up itinerary's for our more complex family days together has totally rubbed off on me and even Dad was horrified that not only did I have four packing lists for my last holiday (one for each of my family and a list of what had to make it to the car), but they were, in fact, colour-coded in multiple colours...

So it may not be a big surprise that I manage my sewing projects with a project management app called Trello.  That makes it sound a bit more impressive than it is - Trello really just gives you a place to have a series of structured lists for each project.  I have this blog as one board, my serious experimental/development projects each have their own board and then I have one board keeping track of repairs, works in progress and inspiration/ideas (no prizes for guessing which of these is the longest list).

Stompy Mammoth!

Stompy!

Yay mammoth!  I love this little guy - I made it for M to give as a present and it's totally adorable! It's a modification of the elephant pattern from a book called Stuffed Animals: From Concept to Construction.  M saw me make the elephant project and asked if I could make a mammoth version - some long fur fabric, a re-draft to bigger tusks and this is what we get:

Socks!

Socks!

 OK, to me this seems like completely ridiculous sewing, but I have made socks and it heartily amuses me.  They are green, because I had some hanging around, and because what's the point of sewing if you can't make something that you'll never find in the shops. You may also notice that they don't match - the reason for this shall be revealed.

Hobby burnout

I don't want to post too many pics of O here, but this is one of my favs ^_^  The toy moved every time he breathed and he was completely stunned by it.

I was reading this post from Noble and Daughter on Unheathy Sewing recently and could really relate.

Sewing became my sanity saver when O was a little baby - he had tummy issues that meant he had a lot of trouble sleeping and I was a very fraught and anxious new mum.  In that blissful ignorance of the not-yet-parent I had promised to make my sister's wedding dress for early December 2014 (O was born in at the start of June).  It wasn't a complicated dress, but when O was born we hadn't even really decided the design yet, let alone started making it.

Rolling in fabric

Ignore any and all cats you may think you see in the picture

Today has been a very good fabric day ^_^

A family friend posted me three dresses and a waistcoat that were surplus to requirements AND I just so happened to get some the last of the fabric I needed through the post for two commissions.

Sunflower patch

With summer hopefully inching it's way here I'm really glad I found these trousers again and finally got around to patching them.  I've been wondering whether to darn or patch and what kind of pattern to go for since last year!

The Great British Sewing Bee and the "Easy Button"

Bee!

The Great British Sewing Bee is back!  It's one of those shows I love to hate - it does everything wrong and yet I enjoy watching it every week (though mostly to yell at the screen about how they're DOING IT WRONG!).  I've been getting increasingly frustrated with it this time around because my favourite section of Waterstones in Cambridge has disappeared - this may seem a bit tangential, but trust me the two are connected for reasons which will become clear.
The main reason GBSB annoys me is because it announces itself about being about the best British sewers and about how much they learn every week as they are forced to do the various challenges.  These people may be learning some bits and pieces, but trust me: they are not the best sewers and they are not learning in any kind of meaningful sense.  We have a fantastic heritage of sewing in the UK and these people are not good ambassadors for it.  Don't get me wrong: they do some pretty cool stuff, and under pressures that are kind of insane, but that just doesn't compare to the centuries of artisan sewing we have in our culture.  To have a "children's week" where they do three challenges and that's it on children's wear?  Being able to do those challenges does not mean you can make children's clothing.  It means you can think and act fast under pressure and have a handful of basic skills and that's about it.  There is so much more to learning about how to design and draft and construct clothes and infinitely more work that's needed to be truly skillful.  I consider myself a rank beginner next to even the apprentices of Saville Row and they will spend their entire careers becoming masters of only one type of clothing.

Generic sewing image - because sewing is just needle, thread and fabric right?

This has been particularly getting me down recently because with the new series comes the new book.  It's full of projects from the series that you can do at home! Yay! Be just like the sewing bee'ers!  Buy yet another book of sewing projects where you'll maybe get around to starting one or two, maybe finish one, and have a pretty book on the shelf that you mean to get around to doing honest.  It's not even that most people who buy the book won't make anything from it - it's the fact they they're not teaching you how to sew, they are setting out steps for you to follow to make very specific items.  This is fine and dandy, but there are a million and one of this type of sewing book available - we really don't need any more and certainly not a new one every series.

You can actually buy this button from Staples from your home or office....though no one knows why....

I was reading a post on Modern Retro Woman (totally awesome blog about taking the best bits from the lifestyle of mid last century.  I wish I had the confidence and energy to try more of these ideas) lately on "How the Easy Button Hurts Us".  If you're not interested in reading the post it basically goes into how getting sucked into the mindset that you can do anything in "three! easy! steps!" encourages us to make grandiose plans with no real idea of how to get there and then when we hit road blocks we give up because our resilience has atrophied.

"For example, before I could make a tailored blazer when I was working on my custom sewing certificate, I needed to learn how to do things like, sew a seam, do pad stitching, roll a collar, master bound buttonholes and pockets, etc.  Each of those skills were tedious to learn but they were necessary for me to get to my final goal." - Modern Retro Woman

This perfectly illustrates my problem with the whole of GBSB and the project style sewing books.  It's the mindset of "follow these steps and you'll have this gorgeous thing" without any of the knowledge or skills to back up what you're doing.  For someone who has the knowledge and skills they're mildly entertaining, but not something you're going to spend any time or effort on because the projects have been specifically pitched to casual sewers.

Just a needle thread and some fabric....right?

So how do you learn those real fundamentals and build your sewing knowledge through to intermediate and advanced work?  There aren't college or university courses for sewing - fashion, yes loads; sewing, no, at least not in any coherent fashion.  The best I have been able to find are courses dotted around the country: creating a skirt block here, bra making there, couture finishes somewhere else, but no coherent path through learning how to sew at all.  The only way to get better at the skills of sewing is through teaching yourself with books or the internet.  The down side of that is you're still picking up odd bits of information here and there, never really even knowing what you should be looking for.

And that's why I'm annoyed at sewing bee and Waterstones.  Cambridge Waterstones was my favourite bookshop because it actually had a decent sized section on books that taught you skills rather than had steps to create projects.  And now it's gone: squeezed out by more three! easy! steps! books and a much much bigger fashion section.  Amazon exists to buy books once I know what I'm looking for, but it was so useful having a section to browse.  It was there that I would find books that made me realise I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what's possible in sewing.

I don't want to use the easy button, but sometimes it feels like the world is conspiring against me.

Bespoke - Wedding Dress

This is the thing I am most proud of making at the moment and I think it will be my best for a long while.

(Thank you Carrie and Seb for letting me use a couple of wedding photos!)

Bespoke - Kimono Wrap

This is a make that I actually did in September/October time for a friend I met through the anime folk in Cambridge (so many anime enthusiasts and artists in the Cambridge area: it's awesome).  She had a kimono-style wrap/robe she loved the style of but not so much the fabric.  It was a bit too polyester and while she liked the pattern of the fabric she preferred different colours.

I mentioned on Facebook that I could copy any existing garment without damaging it and that was just what she was after - she didn't want to risk losing the one she had, but she wanted something just like it.

The Original

Satisfaction of repairs

Doing a big bunch of repairs is so satisfying. Sometimes I find it hard to get around to the repairs hanging around the house, but once I do it's always faster than I think and suddenly a big long to do list is down to almost nothing.

Repairs done in the last batch (about 45mins):

• Button and vent fixed on M's coat
• Zip repaired on wiggle dress
• Handle and zip fixed on sheep bag
• Strap reattached to latest version of bra (I'll be posting about my attempts to make a perfectly fitting bra soon)
• Finish a little bit of an experimental patch on the back of my jeans.

Boom! Repair list down to one item...which is going to be horribly fiddly and I'm dreading, but still: progress!

Next step: to get the red skirt I bought at the vintage fair adjusted.

The Cambridge Affordable Vintage Fair

This weekend was the Cambridge Affordable Vintage Fair!  I love it so much - I've been trying to get back to it since my first visit for the November event, but various life things have been getting in the way since then, so I was determined to get there this weekend.

I've really got into buying second hand and vintage the past couple of years, though I've always had a tendency to "inherit" clothes from family. There is near endless variety since you could find anything from the last 60 years and the quality is generally significantly better than what's new in the shops at the moment.  If it wasn't it wouldn't have survived to be second hand.

But on to the vintage fair.