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The state of my crafts.
Apr. 3rd, 2011 10:48 am1) My beautiful vintage Kenmore is jamming again. My brother and I were the ones who cleaned it out and got it working, and we've never done sewing machine maintenance before (we did have a manual, but it's for a slightly different model and is, uh, soaked in machine oil such that I keep it in a pouch of saran wrap that I use to handle it.) I have bitten the bullet and taken it to my adorable local sewing machine repair-ery. It is a combination doll shop, typewriter repair, and sewing machine shop. As far as I can tell it's sort of a co-business between various men with scarves and vintage-collection hobbies. I hope they do good work as I would like to recommend them based on awesomeness.
2) I need to unpick and handbaste the zipper on the, uh, January Showers skirt, which is turning more into the April Showers skirt every day. After the zipper, it's just the hem. My sister, who knows from sewing, came over and admired my lapped seams and told me it fit well, which was endearing. There have been several pouring-rain days lately when I could have used a heavy-weight knee-length skirt that could provide a warmth envelope without wicking water upwards like long skirts and pants do.
3) Latest thrift shop spendings: a queen-sized eggplant purple sateen sheet, very nice fabric, good color: $2, a cotton gauze curtain in a kind of awful pastel purple that will motivate me to finally tackle dye, $1, bag of embroidery thread: $0.50. Someone also gave the thrift shop something like thirty recent, good-quality sewing patterns, but they were all cut out exactly one size too small.
4) My sister and I made body maps as per Fit for Real People on Saturday. Unfortunately Fit for Real People doesn't really tell you what to do with them after you've made them. We confirmed that we both have small heads and square shoulders, that her waist is exactly halfway up her torso (that and an extremely slender torso are, I suspect, why she has an easy time buying clothing while things look Wrong on me a lot), that my waist is 1" higher than "standard" for my height, and that we're both 1" leggy compared to the Standard Proportions, which apparently are out there somewhere. I have also had the fun of redoing everyone's measurements and confirming that 1) she's only one size different in the upper and lower body, no matter how much she and my mother complain about being pears 2) I have 5" bust-to-waist change and 8" waist-to-hip change, so my lifelong received understanding that I'm a rectangle or apple is silly. That would explain why I need more darts in my skirt than I think I do.
2) I need to unpick and handbaste the zipper on the, uh, January Showers skirt, which is turning more into the April Showers skirt every day. After the zipper, it's just the hem. My sister, who knows from sewing, came over and admired my lapped seams and told me it fit well, which was endearing. There have been several pouring-rain days lately when I could have used a heavy-weight knee-length skirt that could provide a warmth envelope without wicking water upwards like long skirts and pants do.
3) Latest thrift shop spendings: a queen-sized eggplant purple sateen sheet, very nice fabric, good color: $2, a cotton gauze curtain in a kind of awful pastel purple that will motivate me to finally tackle dye, $1, bag of embroidery thread: $0.50. Someone also gave the thrift shop something like thirty recent, good-quality sewing patterns, but they were all cut out exactly one size too small.
4) My sister and I made body maps as per Fit for Real People on Saturday. Unfortunately Fit for Real People doesn't really tell you what to do with them after you've made them. We confirmed that we both have small heads and square shoulders, that her waist is exactly halfway up her torso (that and an extremely slender torso are, I suspect, why she has an easy time buying clothing while things look Wrong on me a lot), that my waist is 1" higher than "standard" for my height, and that we're both 1" leggy compared to the Standard Proportions, which apparently are out there somewhere. I have also had the fun of redoing everyone's measurements and confirming that 1) she's only one size different in the upper and lower body, no matter how much she and my mother complain about being pears 2) I have 5" bust-to-waist change and 8" waist-to-hip change, so my lifelong received understanding that I'm a rectangle or apple is silly. That would explain why I need more darts in my skirt than I think I do.
