sapotesews

One of the things about sewing is that it kind of forces one to examine one's actual body and its actual proportions. For instance, I have carried around this idea since middle school that I belong to the ranks of the chronically assless. My mother and sister both sport graceful, Jackie-O level outward curves with ten-inch low-waist/hip differences; comparatively, I am a rectangle*. None of my measurements really change all that much, or so I have been given to believe.

(* a rectangle... of FUN.)

So yesterday I got out my interlibrary loan copy of Design-It-Yourself Clothes: Patternmaking Simplified by Cal Patch. And I started the first project, which is an a-line skirt. I took my measurements (... square). I sewed the first skirt. And my friends, Jennifer Lopez has nothing on me in this skirt. I do not know where this thing came from. I do not know where it's going. I'm happy to greet my new posterior, don't get me wrong, but I would also be less confused if it was measurable by our mathematics.

I measured again. I drew a new quarter-pattern. I cut it out. And lo, it arose from somewhere beyond our paltry understanding of the laws of mathematics and geometry. It is quantum booty. It is Heisenberg Butt. Or possibly it's just that I've never sewn a skirt before.

So yes. Starting with a skirt may make more sense to people who followed the normal sewing progression from the wrap skirt on up the torso. I started with dresses, and I've noticed that I'm terrible at fitting the buttular area on those, but I just chalked it up to that being hard to do in front of a mirror. What's funny is that I have a lot of ready-to-wear skirts that fit - heck, they're pretty much the only ready-to-wear garment that will consistently fit me. Probably I have to now take the cheater's way and actually measure another garment and use that to draft the pattern. Or just add one bazillion inches of ease and hope it will appease the gods of whatever netherdimension my back end occupies when I have the measuring tape out.

I am confused, friends. Also, it will be fine if I take this two-piece skirt, add seam allowance to the fold line, and make it four panels, right? Because I am running low on silly quilting cotton that I am not sad to see doomed to muslining, and this way I can use the two skirts of fail to hopefully make a skirt of eventual win. At which point I will probably regret snapping and drawing the new darts on the outside with ballpoint pen.