Chipper. Not the wood kind.

All day Monday I thought it might just possibly be Thursday.  Or more accurately, I hoped it might.  This isn’t really a good sign for the rest of the week, but I have determined to be cheerful and positive.  No, really.  I have.  Yes.  Me.  I am not making that up.

However, because the day was just too exhausting for words, I did not even remotely have any intention of sewing something.  In fact, I counted myself pretty lucky to have slumped down in my chair to watch the second half of “The Women".  No, not the fabulously over-the-top 1939 version starring the fabulous Norma Shearer with fabulous supporting performances by the fabulous Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Joan Fontaine, et al.  No.  I mean the horrid 2008 version.  Yes.  That is how tired I was.  All I can say is Clare Booth Luce must be spinning in her grave.

So while I did not in fact do anything sewing related, I did manage to put the entire Burda World of Fashion Skirt Fiasco behind me and make a firm decision to Move On.  Um.  I didn't quite get to the What To Move On To part, but hey, it's a start.   Those Burda women will not get me down!  And yes, it is totally their fault that I keep laboring under the delusion that I am, in fact, 6 feet tall and not, in fact, 5 feet tall.  That is their fault!

Ahhhhh… in with the good air… out with the bad air…

In the meantime, here's another good image library link.  This is the Bridgeman Art Library based in the UK.  They have a nice collection of online resources that are relatively easy to sort through by topic.  And yes, they have a textile section (look under the "Crafts and Design" sub-heading).  The images are sometimes watermarked in places that obscure your view and there isn't an option to zoom in, which is unfortunate since there are tons of things that I would like to see more closely.  But for a quick eye-candy fix, this is a great stop.

Here's a random sampling:

cotton block printed dress, French, 18th C. 

fabric swatches and fashion sketches, 20th C.

woven scarf, 20th C

pre-Columbian embroidery, 12th – 13th C.

Coptic shroud, painted fabric, 4th C.

 Mexican embroidery sampler, 19th C.

lining from boy’s coat, Russian, 19th – 20th C.

Roller-printed chintz, English, 19th C.

cotton curtain, English, 19th C.

And now I have to feed my starving family.  Assuming I can scavenge something.  I’m like a wild puma that way.

 

Stabbed In The Back Seam.

So remember my new French friend?  And how I was so excited to meet her?  And my big plans to corrupt her?  And how she was going to help me fit my clothes better and stuff?

Yeah.  Know what?  She is not my friend.  Oh, no.  She is not.

Because, really.  She insisted on messing up my intentions to corrupt her into gaining a size or four.  She had an annoying tendency to collapse in a faint at the slightest bump or knock.  She absolutely refused to be my height and seemed to enjoy towering over me.  And she would persist with Gallic perversity in having an upper chest measurement that was 3" wider than my own.  Three inches, people.  And she's a size 4.

(insert much cursing and maligning of the French here)

Most of it I was willing to overlook or accept.  All I asked was that she meet me halfway, that she compromise just a little.  But I just could not convince her to have a smaller upper chest.  I begged.  I pleaded.  She would not listen.  So after many days fraught with tears of anger and a deep sense of betrayal, I finally succumbed to the inevitable. I dumped her. 

Au revoir, bi-atch.

Distraught and dismayed, I searched for solace. And impulsively reattached my affections on my new best friend.  

She was on sale.

At first I was a little nervous about her.  Would she be sturdy enough to not fall over every time I walked past her?  How would she take to corruption?  Was she short?  And most importantly, what size was her upper chest?

Because that's the question you always want to know about your new best friend.  Right?

Well, I can tell you: she's perfect.  She is sturdy enough to hold her own in a fight to the death with things like denim and linen.  She corrupts really well with a little padding.  With a simple adjustment, her shoulders are at the same height as my shoulders.  And best of all, her upper chest is a nice dainty 33".  She's my soul mate.

Because check it out!  I totally padded her out under my custom-fit sloper and voilà!  She's just. like. me.

Unfortunately. 

It's like a sweet potato with a neck.

There is a possible chance that I may just hate my new best friend a tiny little bit.  We may have to be frenemies.

I Bought A New Friend.

Her name is Fifi.  She’s French.  La. Dee. Dah.

Actually, I don’t like her much.  I mean, look at her.   She’s a size 4.

Sheesh.  Some people have all the luck.

Of course, I’ll probably like her better after a few weeks of my corruptive influence, after which she’ll end up looking Just. Like. Me.   That’s my plan anyway.  I’m all about corrupting bi-atches with hourglass figures who are a foot taller than me.  They will go from a size 4 to a size, uh, Not 4.  (You might think I’d at least be happy that I have size 4 shoulders… I’m not.  This just means the rest of me looks that much more Not 4 in comparison.)

Hmmph.  Stupid size 4 French friend and her 24” waist…

‘Course, I didn’t pay much for her.  I guess you get what you pay for in store-bought friends.

I’ll keep you updated on the ongoing corruption.  It requires quite a bit of effort from me, so y’know… it’ll be slow going.  I don’t like effort.

Back-and-forth

Ok, so I decided to make a tutorial about the “back-and-forth” pleats I showed in my last post.  Camera in hand, I pulled out a scrap of fabric, full of good intentions and cheerful optimism.

Now I know why I had made a firm resolution to never do tutorials.  Oh man.  The lack of coherency.  The weird pictures.  The “WTF?” of it all.  And all for a tutorial that no one is likely to read.

And then I thought to myself , “This will totally allow you to avoid taking down the Christmas tree and/or interacting with your miserable family for several hours… not to mention all the pattern-fitting that can be shoved under the sewing table.” 

A tutorial it is!

I’m calling these Back-and-Forth Tucks.  Well actually Katie is calling them that and I’m stealing it.  Gwensews says she’s heard them called “Mexican Tucks”, which when I Googled it came up with one hit from the now-defunct Creative Needle magazine.  I liked that magazine and was sorry it so precipitously went under, because they tended to have heirloom sewing techniques without the insane over-the-top weirdness that Sew Beautiful seems to go in for all too often.  It also means I can’t look up anything about tucks on their now equally defunct  website.  So, we’re going with B-N-F Tucks.

Step One:  Mark and stitch your pleats as normal.

Use whatever tucks or pleats your pattern calls for.  This method works on any type of pleats, but as you’ll see in a minute, it looks best on tucks/pleats that are set close together and are narrow.

Step Two: Start stitching the Back-and-Forth part

Start at the top of the pleats or wherever you want your b-n-f to begin.  Lower the needle into the stitching of the first pleat and then stitch across to the fold of the last pleat.  Be sure you have a tail of bobbin and needle thread on both sides when you start so you can tie a knot at the back.   Pull the threads to the back and tie off each row as you finish so that the stitches don’t pull out when you move on to the next row.  Here’s the back of the first row (sorry for the blurriness).

Step Three: The Next Back-and-Forth

Press or hold pleats in the opposite direction and stitch next row.  You’ll find that there’s a point of least resistance for where to place your second row of stitches.  The wider your pleat, the further apart your rows will need to be or the fabric surrounding your pleats will warp like crazy.

Keep working until you reach the end of your pleats or to where you want to stop.

You can see some of the warping on the surrounding fabric in this shot.  Here’s a set with narrower pleats:

The far right and far left rows are 1/2” and 1/4” tucks.  The center row shows actual 1/8” pintucks.  Pintucks work best for this technique because they’re so narrow.  However, in this example I placed the tucks quite far apart and there is a lot of “blank” fabric space in between.  This shows up the b-n-f stitching a lot.  If you don’t like this look, you can do this method in a different way that looks really cool with pintucks.  However, it requires hand-stitching.

Supplimental Steps: Handstitch the Back-and-Forth Tucks

To start, knot your thread and bring it up from the back and through the fold of the tuck.  Then take a tiny “bite” of fabric next to the tuck and tighten the stitch.  Take three or four more tiny bites in the same spot  (being sure to catch different threads of the fabric or you will make a hole in it).

Here are some finished rows with machine stitching,  hand tacks (in contrasting color—in a matching color they don’t show up much), hand tacks with a seed pearl attached and, at the end, french knots in 6 strands of embroidery floss.

The french knots are worked exactly the same as the tucks, coming up through the center of the fold and then down through the fabric next to the tuck.  These are really pretty and delicate and would be totally cute on a baby dress.  Or a grown-up dress, for that matter.

 

And that’s my tutorial.  Sorry if it’s not exactly coherent.  My miserable family figured out where I’m hiding and now they’re demanding food.  Sheesh.  So needy.

Oo… S’funny, In’t It?

The Husband found this video last week.  It’s gone slightly viral.  If you’re, y’know, from Yorkshire.

Since I’m not getting far along with fitting a custom shell to pad out my new french friend (because I’m trying to study to pass a FLIPPIN’ USELESS TEST at the end of the month)… er… I figured you could get a dose of a funny accent.

 

Yes.  People from Yorkshire are inherently funny.  Because of their accents.

 

It’s a known fact.

In Which I Am Crabby. And Snarky. And Not Very Funny.

I was going to make a post about sewing.  Honest. 

I made a new minky fleece jacket for TLo.  It's Ottobre 4-2008 #38.  It's cute.  But I forgot to take pictures. 

I finished (mostly) re-padding my new french friend.  I didn't forget to take pictures.  No way am I taking pictures.  Of what is, essentially, me naked.  If I was purple.  And didn't have arms... or legs... or a head.  You don't need to see that.  Trust me.

I started fitting a new tunic from Ottobre (5-2010 #6).  But then I realized that I am a freak of nature.  And apparently can't be fitted.  So I got irritated.  And I don't have pictures.

 

 

Random funny things:

"Put a bird on it and call it art."

 

Fine.  That's the only random funny thing I can think of right now.

But it's funny.

 

Is it December yet?  I could use a Christmas vacation.

Usually, It’s Just Better Not To Know

Once upon a time there was a little girl who loved to write stories.  These stories were typically sad, sorry affairs about her inability to make anything useful.  Sometimes they were about the things she did manage to make, usually not well.  Sometimes they were simply about songs she had stuck in her sorry little head. 

Despite all this, the little girl was terribly full of herself and kept a secret tracking device on her stories, so as to be able to see which stories people liked reading the most.  Coincidentally, the secret tracking device allowed her to see what people searched for when reading her stories.  Usually it was "patterns" or "uniforms" or "music", because she usually wrote about patterns and uniforms and music.

To the best of her knowledge she had never (no, not ever) written about... berets.

And yet.

The little girl was more than a smidgen puzzled by this.  Had she written about her grandfather's lifelong penchant for hats, and berets in particular?  Had she written about her grandmother's insistence that she wear a pompommed wool beret for Saturday Boutique Shopping every week when she was seven?  Had she written about how five years ago her mother had purchased eleven (eleven) authentic red French berets towards the (rather hopeless) purpose of making everyone in the family wear one for the Family Christmas Photo?  Um.  No.  She hadn't.

 

Seriously?  If this is you and you came back, I so want to know what you were looking for.  Honest.  Because if there's one thing in this world I hate, it's a beret (you wouldn't be expected to know that, I'm just saying).  And so it's funny to me that you were looking for berets on my blog.  And intriguing. 

Honest.  This has just been puzzling me for six hours now.  Curse you, Stat Counters, and your mysterious tantalizing tidbits!

Fashionist

Lately I've been suffering from Virtual Ennui. It's a terrible condition whereby the afflicted wanders aimlessly and fruitlessly around the interwebs looking for something to provide interest... something, anything... anything at all....

Now, I'm not what you'd call a big follower of fashion. I don't subscribe to any fashion magazines and I'm clearly not fashionable myself. But when you have Virtual Ennui, what can you do?  There's only one solution: Vogue.com. This is always good for a dose of Pretty Shoes For Everyone (If You Have $1200), a shot of Glamorous Famous People You've Never Heard Of and a very healthy serving of WTF Is She Wearing soup. They also have the weekly "10 Best Dressed" in which you get to vote for the Best Dressed. Vote, people. OMG is that not the best?

So I open up several pages of 10 Best Dressed and TLo, using her amazing Fashion Finding superpowers, instantly comes barreling in from the other side of the house like a Prada bloodhound on crack. (No really. She just knows.  She has Fashion Radar.  It's kinda creepy.)  Needless to say, when she discovered that you can VOTE (she's just as aware of how awesome this is as anyone), she of course had to pick her favorites.

And here's where it gets really scary. Every single one she picked was the overall favorite of the general readership.  Every.  Single.  Time.  She's 9 for 9 so far.

I can see where having a seven-year-old who's more fashionable than I am can only lead to Bad Things in the next decade.

I was going to say, "At least I have The Big One, who's unlikely to ever out-fashion me."  Except that this week is "Free Dress" week at school. She just flounced in wearing her black ruffle-miniskirt, black t-shirt, black knee-highs and black maryjanes, looking for all the world like a beatnik French schoolgirl, and announced "I am too wearing this. It's my fashion."

Help.

Friend of the Devil

This week my parental paranoia is in overdrive.  I've heard two different stories about acquaintances' children who have been (allegedly) sexually assaulted by the adults who supposedly should be caring for them-- in one case a school coach and in another the father of the victim.  This is depressing and scary, especially as in the case of the father, this person had contact with my children.  Which, as my husband has told me repeatedly, has little impact on us.  The child he (allegedly) assaulted is not a minor and my impression is that this wasn't a factor, but that makes no difference to me really... and most certainly not to the victim.

Even my mother said to me last week "It's getting so you're too afraid to let your kids out of the house."  Which is normally not an attitude she subscribes to at all.  But times change.  When I was The Big One's age we just lived a different life.  I know that bad things happened then too, but it seemed like the world was kinder and gentler to us. 

In waxing nostalgic for the rosy past, I have The Grateful Dead stuck in my head today (which I guess is about as bad as Fugazi but infinitely superior to the Taylor Swift that was stuck in there yesterday - thanks to vocal stylings of TLo: SUPERSTAR!).

So check it out: A very grainy (and apparently French) "Friend of the Devil".  As performed by Ministry.

You heard me.  I said Ministry.

Duuuuuude.  I totally saw them groove at the Country Fair.  No wait.  I didn't.  Who WAS that then?  Wow.  Now I remember why I don't go to the Country Fair.

 

And now I'm off to paint a rainbow on my face or something.  Peace out, people.  Think good thoughts.