Sew Distracted

Weight, Sewing, Leonardo, Robin, and Me

I've been thinking a lot about sewing of late.  Thinking. but. not. yet. sewing.

You can tell that.  It doesn't mean I am not going to sew again.

I realized that for a long time I didn't sew because I just didn't like the way I looked.  I was heavier than I felt comfortable being.  And I didn't want to sew anything for me.  That is changing now.  I still need to lose more weight. You could ask my doctor or look at any estimates of how much one should weigh, and if i told you my weight, you would understand, but I am not going to go that far on a public blog.  Besides, although I am pretty much happier with how I look and feel now, I still feel a little pudgy and sluggish, so I will lose the weight.  But I am ready to start investing my time in sewing a few things for this somewhat pudgy body.

There are however a few details I have been having trouble with however, namely what should I be wearing and what should I be sewing.  For a while I was posting photos over at SG on a what did you wear today thread, but I've been remiss about that lately.  It helped me a lot however, and I've been rethinking a few long-held prejudices about what I could and could not wear.

Then Robin over at A Little Sewing on the Side posted about her struggle with finding the right things to sew and mapping out her own proportions a  flame was lighted.   So yes, I stole part of my title for this post from her.  

The idea was nothing new.  I've read about body proportions before and I had some ideas about what my own proportions were, some of which were wrong and some of which were right.  I've also read Imogen Lamport's blog for a while, since I first discovered it, although I am not always good about commenting, having been a hit and run blog-reader of late.   So when Imogen wrote about Leonardo DaVinci and body proportions, I knew I had to do this one of these days.  But I kept putting it off.

I tried to cheat and figure it out from a photo.  But that didn't work well because it has been a dark rainy year and I have a dark house.  The two brightest rooms are not great for photography,  In the bedroom I have to have the camera down low, angled up to get my whole person in a photo, which makes my legs look long, but is not accurate.  And in the sewing room, the camera is a little high, not terribly high, but as if a 6'2" person was taking the photo, and when I tried to map out the body proportions from those photos it always looked like I had a huge head and short body, which was also unrealistic.

So yesterday I taped a big piece of pattern paper to the wall and had G help me take some measurements.  It was a lot of fun, and G proved to be an exacting assistant which is not surprising.  Try asking an orthopedic surgeon to mark "mid knee" and you will get all kinds of answers: "what do you mean?  The middle of the joint?" (that is below what I would call mid knee) "The middle of the knee cap, the bottom of the knee cap, the middle of the part that bends -- that is not an anatomic description"..... You get the picture.  And the answers to those questions are not as simple because I learned that different books and "experts" mark these points at different anatomic points.  Go figure.

Being a person with an advanced engineering degree and an orthopedic surgeon, G was meticulous, having me help him balance multiple levels and rulers and Triangles while he calibrated exact points of my anatomy against the flat wall.   Leonard would hopefully have been proud.

This is what I came up with, and the experience has been very helpful.

My drawings are not as detailed as Robin's, but they work for me.  And the exercise explains a lot.  Drawing it out helped even more.  I can see better why some things work and why other things don't.  And it also caused some deep inner searching, revising of my views of myself, and cleared up a few issues that apparently had been causing a good bit of cognitive dissonance.

I didn't mark the actual measurements on the picture I showed you.  I'll just say I am 5' 8.5 inches, and it worked out perfectly on the wall.  And my drawing skills are not that good, and I got he knees drawn badly, and not necessarily in the right place, but I know what they mean.

I am longest in the top and bottom quadrants: top of head to center of bust and knee to floor.   The middle sections are the shortest.  After reading Imogen I had suspected this as this is where I put on weight, in the middle:  waist and upper hips then thighs.  But I didn't realize that I was that long in the upper part.   I knew I was longish, and I knew my neck was longish, but I didn't realize that the rest was so long.  Yes some ready to wear is short through the armscye area, but I don't always add length in that area on patterns.  Maybe I've just gotten used to higher armscye's and the patterns are cut low.  I do know that I rarely need to lower the bust point, and certainly not an amount proportional to the extra 12% shown in this mapping.  I still have to work out the details here.

It is in the middle two quadrants that I was surprised the most.  I've always been told that I am long waisted, and according to that diagram I am because my waist is the red line below the "ideal" waistline.  But I am long waisted because I am long through the upper torso.  My waist is perfectly proportioned to my bust point.  Not that it matters much.  My waist is not my smallest place at this point, but that is not uncommon either.  You should try listening to G try to explain to someone that the smallest part of her body is not her waist, that the waist has a specific anatomic location, and that medically speaking, that is the place that counts, not what is "smallest".

But anyway.  What came as a shock, although it shouldn't have, was how short I am from bust to break of hip, and if you factor in my actual waist, how really short I am from waist to break of hip.  That explains why so many jeans, even jeans that are not meant to look like "mom jeans" come up dangerously past my waist and onto my ribcage.  And it also blows my long held belief that I am long through the torso, Yes, I am somewhat longer than average because I am taller than average; the halfway point comes very close to where it should be according to the idealized figure.  In fact, according to my calculations, I am actually 3% shorter in the upper body than I am in the legs.  3% is not significant.  Still, this was just a shock.    So relatively speaking the halves of my body are pretty equal and well proportioned.  Somehow when I figured that out, the first thing that came to mind was a certain well-known fitting expert saying "look at those short stubby legs" at a fitting class at a sewing expo many years ago.  Not so.

This explains a lot.  And slowly I am getting ideas for what I need to do. I need to play up the top and the lower legs.   It explains why sweaters like this cropped alpaca number I knitted last summer look so good, and why I am suddenly enamored of little cropped cardigans.  It means I can play with dramatic jewelry and fabulous shoes, both of which are weaknesses of mine.  

Speaking of which, when I told G that Imogen had said I needed to play up the neckline  and my feet and lower legs, which I took to mean I had to wear fabulous dramatic necklaces and gorgeous shoes he just started cackling uncontrollably.  

I wonder why? (smile)

New Vogue Patterns have arrived

My head has been filling with ideas that I cannot seem to manage to get written down, blogged, or organized.  It is not that life has been busier than usual or more stressful just that it has been full and scattered and there seems to be little time to finish anything much less start new projects although the ideas for new projects are like a torrent right now, a torrent I can't even keep up with.

In time I hope.

In the meantime my new Vogue patterns arrived last week, and I am just now managing to get them off my desk and filed away.

Vogue 1143

Vogue 1151

Vogue 8614

Vogue 8620

Vogue 8623

Vogue 8626

Spring as Fantasy: Alexander McQueen

I finally started looking at the fashion shows for Sping 2010 over the weekend.  I can't believe I missed it yet again.  I shouldn't be surprised.  I haven't even looked at the Fall collections and here I am thinking about fall clothes.

But on to spring.

I started with the last shows, as those came up first on Style.com.  I am just now beginning to look alphabetically through the general list.  So far little has captured my eye, especially in terms of things that I actually want to wear or make.

Alexander McQueen however has captured my imagination.  These are not, for the most part, wearable clothes.  But they are stunningly beautiful. The technique is amazing from the creation of the fabulous fabrics to the manipulation of print and volume in the actual dresses.  The models, on fabulously architectural heels, completely unwearable, but the line, combined with the clothes references history and transcends it some almost otherworldly way.  As seen in the photos the models in the clothes seem like otherwordly goddesses from some strange planet or magical world, tall regal beings both fragile and strong, perhaps from some world with gravity very different from our own.

Sometimes fashion shows are just for art and ideas, sometimes clothing is the stuff of dreams.  

Some things are more wearable, perhaps by the more extreme, or socially protected among us. G particularly likes this dress, more than some of the dresses that are closer to the traditional mold.   It is the contrast of the colors, of the form fitting bodice with the wide feathered skirt and the tough boots, a mixture of soft and strong and the completely irrelevant.   The collection is all about volume, volume and texture and print.  Sometimes texture and print are used to create volume or the illusion of volume.  Sometimes structure is created for its own sake.

I love looking at all these things, just as I love a good romp with a fantasy novel with visually rich prose.

But there are clothes that make me think in more earthly terms.  This jacket reminds me of the 80s and early 90s.  The days when you might find me wearing Thierry Mugler and Claude Montana.  I suppose I have always had a bit of a taste for the stylized extreme. The sleeves are a bit too exaggerated, but if I could modify the sleeves a bit without compromising the idea too much, I would wear this.  On me I see this with pants, pants with full legs and a bit of volume to balance the sleeves, to contrast with the more fitted silhouette.

It is this coat, lined in fabric to match the dress shown underneath that I find most inspiring.

It is a coat and not a coat.  I don't think you could take it off, so it functions like some kind of abstract coat-suit.  It is like the idea of "coat" has been transformed into something else, recognizable but new.  It looks so simple.  I am sure it is not.  To pull this off so that it looks good would require a mastery of cut and subtle structure.  And yet I am fascinated by the idea of this as an ensemble, of some variation of this that might fit my more earth-bound life.

I don't suppose it will show up in Vogue patterns.

Garment District shopping 2 -- Mood

I haven't forgotten that I promised to post all my fabric from my trip to the garment district last month.  

To tell the truth I wasn't prepared for the "new" Mood.  I have shopped at Mood for years, but it was always a huge disorganized, almost higgledy-piggledy place.  I found great pieces there, but it was difficult if you were looking for something in particular.  Well that has changed.  Now things are well lighted and beautifully arranged with signs pointing you to particular fabrics.    I fell in love with far more pieces than I anticipated, but I regret nothing.

There was a fabulous selection of silk knits in solids and prints -- fabulous fabulous prints.  I was pulling them out and sighing with pleasure, but when I saw the one pictured above I knew I had to have it.  While my friends talked I rapidly took it in hand and had it cut before I could change my mind (or anyone could steal it out from under me).

Here it is draped over the fabulous Matilda.  This will be a dress, although not in the immediate future.  Although I want to sew things that I can wear now at the weight I am now, this piece will wait.  Besides it says Spring to me far more than it cries out for Autumn wear. 

Although I told myself that was "it", I said that before I went upstairs to look at the wools.  I found my favorite salesperson from my years at shopping Mood, and I found an entire collection of lightweight wool challis and gauze, which just took my breath away.  

There was this dusky-mauve-rose which just took my breath away.  This is the perfect soft neutral color for me and this fabric is a lovely dress weight.  

That was before I saw the plaid wool gauze.

My immediate thought was for a dress, so I purchased ample.  I was originally thinking something inspired by Vivienne Westwood, but even before the fabric arrived I was wondering if I would wear a plaid dress or if it should become something else -- a skirt and a vest perhaps, things I could wear with other pieces.  

I could wear the pieces together but I probably wouldn't.  I tend to like mixing my dramatic pieces with my more classic and neutral pieces.

Here is the plaid on Matilda.  Having seen it on the dressform I am once again uncertain about what I will actually make. It actually is not as "much" as I feared, although I am still leaning more towards pieces than a whole head-to-toe look. 

I adore the combination of browns and greys and wine colors.  This could go with almost anything.  

And yes, there is still more.

This piece was also found with the wool gauzes and it is only a remnant, about 3/4 of a yard.  I don't know what it will be, it will need a supporting fabric and I am thinking it may end up being the front of a cardigan or short jacket.   As you can see it is a very sheer netting or gauze with a pattern made from a thick and thin yarn that has been stitched to the background fabric.

 I just had to buy it. You can see the detail better in this second photo (without Moisés.)

As you can see I went to town. 

There is one more fabric, a beautiful blue and red super 130s menswear suiting with which I intend to make a dress.  This is the only fabric in the group for which I have a specific vision, although I haven't picked the pattern yet.

Packages of Pretties

Look what what was waiting for me in the mail when I got home!

I've been lusting after this book for quite a long time now, at least a year, and I wrote here about my frustrations at not finding an online vendor who would ship to the United States, and my French is fine for reading a cookbook or even an occasional article or book, but not so good conversationally, especially on the telephone, so the idea of calling up and requesting it was just beyond me.

Sometime in August however I got an email from Amazon France informing that the book was now available and I ordered it immediately.  There were quite a few delays however, and it was shipped just before I left for Texas.

I have been reading it and drooling over the photos.  Reading is about sums up my immediate plans though because macarons are not in my current diet plan, although I know the time will come, and with diligence and luck, perhaps even in time for a Christmas treat.  Regardless of when I first use this book, I know it will become a favorite.

Our local post office is getting used to strange foreign packages arriving for me, knitting and sewing books from Japan, books and yarn from England, France and Germany.  The exchange rate with the pound has been so good that it has been cheaper for me to order my Rowan books and yarns from England lately than it has been to purchase them in the United States, even with the overseas airmail shipping.   Even so there was some excitement when I picked up this package as I had the book from France and a package from England all at the same time.  

I had ordered a sweater from Pure because it looked like it would be the perfect shade to wear with something that is in the works.   I ordered this sweater, but not in this color.  Mine is a soft blue called heather bluebell and it is, in fact, the perfect shade.  I pulled it on in the kitchen while we opened the mail and I could tell from G's face that it was perfect before I even looked in the mirror, so you will be seeing it eventually, once I finish that project.