Thread of thoughts (Patreon)

https://fabricnfiction.wordpress.com/2018/01/31/tutorial-thread-shirt-buttons/

I’ve been reading/listening/talking/digesting a lot of sewing/garment construction content. This is kind of my way- I study and study and stow things away in my head, and then later I get to do something with them. Or not. A lot of times not.

I follow more than a few podcasts* on sewing, fashion, and garments. Among my favorites are the Seamwork Radio, Check Your Thread, Dressed:The History of Fashion, and Articles of Interest. Sewing and fashion are interesting to me as someone whose family sewed a great deal, but who was never ever on-trend and never understood the unspoken rules of fashion, much less the even more unspoken rules of what was expected to wear in my specific rural South Dakota town in my specific era of growing up. I think a lot of us understand when something is or is not working, but never understand why. Between these podcasts, I'm coming into my own understanding of some of this, and thought I'd share some of the stuff coalescing in my head.

Articles of Interest is probably my top favorite podcast: about the *soul* of fashion. It is one of the best produced, researched, thought through, and constructed (and as a result, least frequently produced). It's less about how to make a garment than deep dives into specific trends (in fashion and garment construction)- centered around the ethics, philosophy, and circumstances behind why things came to be the way they are and sometimes what it could mean for the future of the trend. EVERY episode is top notch,** and sticks in my head for a ton of reasons, but today I'm thinking about "How to Dress". You're going to miss out highly if you don't listen to it, but here are some things that you maybe already knew about fashion and how to dress, as learned in The Creative Pragmatist.

• “Big/Slim/Skin”- a tip about how to play with proportion 
• “One, Ton, or None” - an idea for how to use color (but personally, I think of as beyond just color- sort of a game of SET but for your clothing.)***

That touches on why some of what works works, and why what doesn't doesn't. Then on Seamwork**** and Check Your Thread***** (*!) there've been some recent episodes on altering patterns than have gotten into adjusting fit. Throw in some informative instagram posts from MX Apparel Design (*!!) and part of a panel on pattern mixing cosplay at Convergence, and I finally have some of my basics on style. And let's not forget Samantha Rei, who knows her shit on SciFi/Fantasy fashion design and will teach you to think bigger when it comes to these things, which is the venn diagram circle where I'd happily place myself when it comes to personal style.

Shall we get into the nitty gritty? It's okay if I've lost you. I'll talk about writing again in another post some day. I've got a post just like this one but about writing just bubbling away on the back burner.

Anyhow- all of this is coming to me understanding things I want in design for myself: to be able to choose where the waistline hits and what the waistline looks like. (Hello, let's learn to sew BELTS, friends.) How to fix crotch depth on all the legged garments that I sew in the future, before I sew them. How to know what I like about my body and how I want to accentuate those things.

Yet another aside: I stopped someone in the park today and asked to take a photo of their dress because there were so many elements of the design that I liked. They said yes, they loved that 20 year old dress SO MUCH and had paid to have the zipper replaced some years ago, and when I got home I made comments on the photo about what I wanted to change about it.

• Why are they called princess seams?
• Are darts inherently femme?
• Can I make an app that lets me balance femme/masc elements to my preference by putting things like shoulder slope and length on sliding scales?
• Fabric choice and color is an interesting part of this too- something gauzy and pink will limit how masc you can make something, regardless of the design elements, but what would a gauzy pink three piece suit look like?
• What about a nubbly, stiff black denim, some structured dresses can still be super rough?

I'm excited to test out some of the things I learned to play with shoulder slope and waistlength, and be able to make a pair of pants that don't bubble up in the crotch. It's going to happen. But first, I'm going to finish this jumpsuit I started to wear at Con and the dress I was going to bring to Paris. Whoops.

More soon.

Cole

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*I don’t have a lot of time to sit and watch videos, and I find I can understand better when I’m just listening than watching. I know it sounds counter-intuitive to study a medium that is SO visual on an audio medium, but it works for me.

**This footnote is to bliss out about how fucking thorough and considered the podcast is. Trufelman and team always consider so many angles of the ethics of a subject: race, sex, economic, nationalist, environmental, queer, etc. Sooooo much beautiful context, distilled into this kind, charming podcast. I'm sure there are moments when the team misses something or has to leave something out just for time concerns, but there is a reason this is my #1 podcast in this genre. Did I mention I listen to a lot of podcasts?

***These two bulletpoints are stolen whole cloth (lol) from the podcast, aside of my aside in parenthesis. It was put so concisely that I can't improve upon it.

****Seamwork Radio is an amazing free podcast from a sewing community that it costs $15-16/month to join. I'm not part of said community because their patterns aren't really my thing, I'm a bit of an antisocial sewist, and I get exactly what I need from the podcast. If there was a way to give them a bit less $$$ to help fund the podcast only, I'd be perfectly happy to do so, because it is SO FUCKING GOOD. It is practical and realistic, has fairly solid ethics, and the hosts are personable and charming. They had a couple of episodes on being more environmentally conscious in one's sewing, and the hosts obviously have taken that very personally in their own sewing, but it is still a financially solvent business/community created around creating things, so there's a fairly soft edge on the "how much should you be making" line.

*****Check Your Thread is the most environmentally conscious sewing podcast, probably, but (understandably, as it's a one-person-show that still manages to produce episodes WEEKLY) sometimes misses some of the other nuance (but tries so hard and gets better all the time). It's an interview-style show mostly, with occasional solo episodes from creator Zoe Edwards. I've learned soooo much about mending and sourcing from this show, but also? The actual change needs to come at a much bigger level.

*!And now this post becomes more footnote than post, and you understand what the inside of my head feels like- so tangential it hurts...

*!! I had wayyy too many of these already, but check out this amazing piece the designer posted on design for hip dysphoria- (don't like your hip curve or lack thereof- there are tactics for you!). This is a designer who primarily designs for trans/enby folk, but much like any work around accessibility, cis folks can benefit from learning these things too! Check them out. Britt's work is size inclusive, takes into account so many kinds of accessibility that I won't list for fear of missing some. Super thoughtful and transparent work here.