Victory Pants

Not dead, merely resting.

2008-09-03T16:12:00.000-07:00

So, yet another six-month stretch has passed between updates. Perhaps I need to take on more projects, you say? Naw, I've just been busy with work--and work makes for boring blog posts, so, no posts. But to whet your appetite for new material, here's an illustration I did recently. It's signage for a cage of mathematically-named rats:

And I do love me some rats. Especially geek rats.

Doin' it to ya earhole

2008-03-10T13:08:00.000-07:00

EDITED 9/08: Unfortunately it looks like the site that was hosting my radio shows has undergone a complete redesign, and so the shows are no longer available. Dammit. I do have copies of them, though, if you never got around to hearing them and are interested...

And now, a quick link to my most recent project:

Rev. Patty's Soul Power Funksplosion Hour!

Yep, I got to be a guest DJ on KAOS on two separate occasions over the past month or so, and I used my time to beam a bucketload of funk, soul, and classic R&B out across the airwaves. It was a blast, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to do it.

You can either stream the music online, or download the MP3 files for later enjoyment. #19 and #21 are the shows I guested on (as a glance at the setlists will surely tell you). Now, go forth and listen!

FINALLY. (also known as Burda 8106)

2007-05-31T16:08:00.001-07:00

After more than a year of stalling, I have finally finished the green dress project, Burda 8106. AT LAST! I didn't finish it in time for the last opera of the season, but I did wear it to the last ballet (which was on Friday).

Of course, just because the project's done doesn't mean the learning experiences are. Wonder Tape--an aptly named notion that dissolves in the wash--was integral to this project, and I used a lot of it. Between the zipper installation and taming the lining, I easily went through a roll of it. So of course when the dress was done, the last thing to do was wash it, right? Right. And that's what I did (twice; it turns out Wonder Tape doesn't dissolve in cold water).

That's when I discovered that when sewing with linen, pinking the seam edges is Not A Sufficient Finish. In some places, the seam allowance had ravelled all the way to the stitching line, and that's not good. So although the dress is done enough to wear, I've still got some work to do...maybe a Hong Kong bias finish or something on the longer seams, I don't know.

Simplicity 3893

2007-05-15T19:30:00.000-07:00

In an effort to kick-start my sewing, I took some time the other weekend to start--and finish!--a less time-consuming project than the one that's currently on my dressform (Simplicity 4171). I had picked up two yards of a semisheer floral print at some Joann's clearance sale, so I decided to make it into a summery top using Simplicity 3893:

The main draw of this pattern was that it was easy. Really easy. The version I did--the lime green one at the bottom right--used only four pattern pieces, which was perfect. Of course, nothing can ever be that simple; I fiddled with the cutting layout quite a bit. The fabric I used had originally been intended for skirts and featured a diagonal border print along one selvage edge, which I wanted to incorporate into the final product. (I was also an eighth of a yard short.) Here's what I wound up with:

You can see the border print at the bottom of the hem. Through some serendipitous occurrence I even got some stripe matching on one of the side seams...well, almost.

And finally, here's the shirt on me:

Clearly I have learned nothing from all those years of watching America's Next Top Model.

I'm glad to have finished the project, but I'm not entirely satisfied with it. For one, I'm not convinced this style doesn't make me look pregnant. Second, I hate having to wear a camisole with it. Finally, the fabric was a pain to work with; it frayed like nobody's business. So much so, in fact, that I had to use some of the leftover bias tape from the neckline to make the casing for the underbust elastic. (In theory one would just press down the seam allowance and stitch the casing into that, but the rampant fraying made that a non-starter.)

If I make this pattern again, I'll be modifying the neckline and using an opaque fabric. But I think I'd much rather use the momentum to springboard back into the shirtdress project, which promises to make me look like a 50's bombshell...

Art cake from beyond Saturn

2007-04-28T19:39:00.000-07:00

As many of you are aware, I will occasionally take on an utterly insane or random project, just because I know I can do it.

The Sun Ra Art Cake (SRAC) is such a project.

For the technical details of the contest that inspired the SRAC, see Threadcakes.com. The short version: one was to create a cake inspired by Threadless' t-shirt designs, and I was inspired by this one. The text refers to an album by Sun Ra that I just happen to own. Serendipity like this can't be ignored, so I dropped my preparations for the Procession of the Species (more on that later) and got to baking.

First, my bona fides:

I solemnly swear that I really did bake this cake and I really do own the album. It's in the middle of the photo. At any rate, I made the cake and prepared the marshmallow fondant on Thursday night.

Yummy. I filled it with a cooked rum buttercream, and I even remembered to soak the layers with a rum imbibing syrup, so it stayed nice and moist. Next day I sat down with the marshmallow fondant, my reference photograph, and a handful of shaping tools. After covering the cake with a layer of fondant, I used some aerosol food coloring to paint it blue. Then it was on to the business of tracing out the pieces of Sun Ra. Here's what things looked like when I was halfway through cutting out his robes/headdress:

You can only accomplish so much using the medium of fondant, though, so I wound up painting in the details of Sun Ra's face and hands using a very fine paintbrush and some of the brown coloring gel. After placing the fondant pieces on the finished cake, I used some yellow buttercream icing to pipe the text and the details of Sun Ra's headdress and collar.

Here's the finished product:

And here's the photo I worked from:

The likeness might be shaky, but rest assured...

...it was delicious.

So that's the story of my entry into the Loves Threadless Cake Contest. Threadless is a dangerous site...I already had my eye on a shirt or two of theirs, then they compelled me to bake 'em a cake playing off of their homage to Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra. Scary!

The Needlewoman of Olympia

2007-03-12T20:24:00.000-07:00

Sure, it's a little conceited as far as post titles go, but if this project isn't enough to announce my arrival as an Accomplished Hand Embroiderer, I don't know what is.

This is a baby blanket I made for my niece, Clara--and it only took me a year and a half after she was born to finish it! In my defense, it's the largest embroidery project I've ever undertaken, and if I had it to do over again, I might simplify the design just a teensy bit. I have no idea how many hours went into this: hundreds, probably.

This is as much of the blanket as I could fit in one shot:

A closeup of the medallion:

An EXTREME!!! closeup of the cinquefoil corner and some text (and a broken stitch):

Finally, a picture with the backing fabric showing:

The poem around the border is (as you may have guessed) "Evening Star" by Edgar Allen Poe:

'Twas noontide of summer,
And mid-time of night;
And stars, in their orbits,
Shone pale, thro' the light
Of the brighter, cold moon,
'Mid planets her slaves,
Herself in the Heavens,
Her beam on the waves.
I gazed awhile
On her cold smile;
Too cold- too cold for me-
There pass'd, as a shroud,
A fleecy cloud,
And I turned away to thee,
Proud Evening Star,
In thy glory afar,
And dearer thy beam shall be;
For joy to my heart
Is the proud part
Thou bearest in Heaven at night,
And more I admire
Thy distant fire,
Than that colder, lowly light.

Very fitting for a girl whose name derives from a Latin word for light. Since it's more of an artifact now than a mess-up-able baby blanket, I'll probably wind up making a second "daily driver" blanket for her. As Marie (Clara's mother) said, "This isn't just a blanket, it's a textile!"

Who's trendsetting here?

2007-02-26T15:26:00.000-08:00

Why, that would be Burda and me! Compare and contrast the dress Queen Latifah wore at last night's Oscars with my dress for Swan Lake:

The underbust band is wider, and I know better than to fool around with stripes, but apart from that...very similar, no?

Summer tie-dye

2007-02-14T11:13:00.000-08:00

If the past two years have been anything to go by, summertime tie-dyeing is well on its way to becoming an annual tradition. Here are a bunch of things I did for my niece Clara:

Star shirt #1. The pattern isn't quite as visible as it is on the other star shirt.

I call this one "frog face".

I was quite pleased with the way this one turned out. The woodgrain effect on the bottom was achieved using a shibori technique--I made several rows of an uneven running stitch using toothfloss, then gathered it up tightly. As you'll see later, this worked much better on a small scale than on the large dress I tried to do for myself.

The second star shirt, AKA the "commie baby" shirt.

Parts of this dress turned out better than others. I like that the heart on the chest is clearly visible (and almost seems to be glowing), but the hearts on the hem were just a little too small to really register as such.

The checkerboard effect on this shirt was completely unintentional! Originally the checker stripe was going to be a solid blue, but I realized halfway through dyeing that section that I had two purple stripes next to each other. So I flipped it over and dyed the other half blue. Since the fabric of the shirt was pleated before I tied it, the blue and purple came out as semi-uniform squares.

Later I'll post pictures of the dress I dyed for myself, which was supposed to resemble an abstract peacock.

New year, new projects

2007-02-13T11:30:00.000-08:00

Yes, it has been nearly six months since I last posted. Despite that, I have projects aplenty to show off. The first and latest is a dress I call the "Silver Swan", as I made it to wear to PNB's production of "Swan Lake". (For the record, it was a very good show.) My pattern was Burda 8049, and I got the fabric --"Late Date Shimmer"--from fabric.com.

It was a fairly straightforward project until I took the bodice off the dummy and fitted it on myself. That's when I realized that a) just because the dummy seems to be covered up doesn't mean that my bra won't be showing, and b) fabric with a crinkle woven into it S-T-R-E-T-C-H-E-S. However! Disaster was averted when I changed the troublesome underbust pleating to a gather, which made the bodice much more fitted and elegant and less like a Valkyrie breastplate. I also pinned out a lot of extra room at the center back, and overlapped the center fronts 1" more than was called for. The dress is still cleavage-riffic, but I was able to wear it without flashing the world.

Here's a picture of the finished dress on my duct tape dummy:

Would you believe this is the first thing I've sewn that I actually wore in public? Not only that, but I managed to finish it without pulling a string of crazy all-nighters! Next time, however, I'll probably add another week to the estimated project time. While I didn't have to run myself ragged to finish, I didn't really have the time to, say, feed myself properly. Or for that matter, keep the carpet from turning into a minefield of lost pins.

Finally, here's a picture of the dress on me:

I swear, I'm not pissed off--just winded from walking halfway up Queen Anne hill.

Who are you calling a sucker?

2006-09-19T09:34:00.000-07:00

As promised, pictures of the seersucker robe I sewed up right before moving into my new place. I used Vogue 7637, but made quite a few changes...some intentional, some not. I doubled over the back piece instead of cutting two and sewing a back seam, as in the pattern. Then when I realized I was going to have to do stripe matching along the shoulders/sides/underarms, I completely departed from the suggested cutting layout. The band is recycled cotton broadcloth from an old duvet cover I made, which was thisclose to being the perfect length. But of course it wasn't, and if you look closely at the back of the neck band, you can see the unevenness where I had to bridge the gap with a third, smaller piece of fabric.

Here's a closeup of the sleeve seam stripe matching. It's considerably less accurate than the shoulder seam matching, which is nearly perfect. I think for the silk version of this robe I'll be making more pattern alterations--the oversized sleeve (like the last robe I made) is just too damn floppy to be practical while cooking breakfast. But considering my total outlay for this project was about $10, I'm happy with the result.

Blackberry season

2006-09-06T19:49:00.000-07:00

I'm still waiting for my replacement digital camera cable to arrive. Until then, I'll have to depend upon whatever pictures I can conjure up with fancy talkin'...

So: August is now over (and, unofficially, so is summer). Not before I managed to get some serious blackberry picking done, though: two hours of work yielded three six-cup containers full of perfect fruit. It's funny how much better I've become at judging which berries are the best just by looking at them. So what is the perfect blackberry like?

It should be black, of course, although a red nodule or two might be present. The best have a sort of glossiness to them--an inner glow that disappears when the berry becomes overripe. If it doesn't fall into your hand when you grab it, it isn't ready. You can still wrest it from the vine if the pickings are slim, but you'll probably take most of the stem with it. Conversely, if it turns to pulp between your fingers, you didn't want it anyway.

I hope the weather holds long enough for me to go out picking again. This time I know where my half-fingered biking gloves are, and that's an essential component of successful blackberrying.

Moving right along

2006-07-19T23:40:00.000-07:00

I'd just like to note that, as predicted, it only took five posts before I neglected the blog for a good long while. But! Extenuating circumstances abound, the biggest of which are:

1. Road-tripping down the Pacific Coast Highway for the better part of June. I have a crapload of pictures from this that will be put up in due time. But what kind of blogger would I be without including at least one picture in an entry? Not much, that's what. So: near the end of the trip, we stopped off at a diner called Heaven on Earth, which sells monstrously large cinnamon rolls. They are literally the size of your head, and I have photographic proof:

You really don't want to know what the bread : cinnamon-sugar ratio was at the center of that thing.

2. Moving! I'll be in new digs by the end of the month. Yes, the timeline is insane. No, I didn't plan it that way.

But I haven't been neglecting my other projects; in fact, I whipped up a stylish summer bathrobe last week. For me it was a bit of a technical achievement: the fabric I used was an uneven-stripe seersucker, and it's also the very first garment I've made that has pockets. Since it worked out so well, I'm calling it a wearable muslin, and will probably make another out of some (criminally inexpensive!) dark purple sueded silk I've ordered from Fabric Mart. Pictures to follow when I get a chance...

As a wise man once said...

2006-05-08T13:36:00.000-07:00

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it."

That was W.C. Fields, for the record. Anyway, a few of the sewing projects that have been on the back burner took a turn for the craptacular. Which doesn't mean I'm not going to try, try again, I'll just be smarter about it this time. Which may be a while.

Exhibit A, the Vogue/Sandra Betzina wrap top:

This makes me very glad I'm making up muslins (test garments) before cutting into my real fabric. Apart from not attaching the ties, there are no major errors...I just hate the way it makes me look. That is, not unlike being wrapped in a darted fabric sack. Even after lengthening the pattern an inch and a half, it still ends at a place that screams "GUT! GUT! LOOK AT THIS!" I don't even remember why I bought the pattern, since what I really wanted in a wrap top was something like this. Even the envelope art makes the model look like Laura Bush:

Clearly this project was just not meant to be.

Exhibit B, the reverse-engineering of my favorite summer shirt:

Pictured above is my attempt to deal with the fitting issues I was ran into after I tried the shirt on again. One of my books suggests that the wrinkles and pulling in a garment that doesn't fit point to the problem area. All of the wrinkles on my muslin pointed directly at my boobs--even the wrinkles that started on the back of the shirt. So, per Vogue Sewing's manual, I slashed the shirt lengthwise along the two bust points, and once at the widest part of the bust, then placing more fabric behind it and repinning. After sticking myself with pins in some VERY unwise places and coming up with a semi-sensical action blueprint (pictured below)...

...I said "screw it" and ordered this t-shirt grouping from HotPatterns. I'm tempted to recommend them based solely on the common-sense approach to sizing they take: three size groupings, with slight overlap between them. And each range's patterns are designed for different bust cup sizes. (The major pattern companies design for a B cup. Even Burda Plus, which is generally better, assumes a C.) So I'm pretty stoked that there'll be a few patterns I can fall back on without doing a full bust adjustment. That, my friends, is a very good thing. Plus the paper the pattern's printed on is of good quality, so there will be no wads of pattern after I've finished a project. I can't wait to fine-tune the fit so I can start making shirts out of the cool fabrics I ordered a while ago...

RATS!

2006-04-30T17:51:00.000-07:00

I spent most of the past week getting ready for the Procession of the Species, which took place Saturday afternoon. The weather was awful until about five minutes before we started, at which point the sun came back out and made our already improvised raingear very uncomfortable. It's clear: nature hates me. And all I ever did was try to honor its rodentia! Consider the extensive rat head editing ("rathediting?"):

Storing the rat head at work wasn't ideal, but where else do you keep it?

I added a few inches to the curve at the back of the head, reinforced the ears, and then covered the backs with a remnant of felt. The cardboard teeth were cut out and replaced with a double layer of buckram. It still reads as a solid white surface, but the loose weave lets in light and makes it easier to see. Unfortunately, the daffodil crown isn't really visible in any of the pictures I took...

But in the end, it didn't matter. The paralyzing cuteness of a sleeping baby dressed as a rat should not be underestimated:

Maybe next year she'll stay conscious for the whole thing. Who knows--by then I may even figure out a foot design that works. Mine only made it to the end because the tight fit prevented me from tearing them off when they started to spin around my ankles.

There has to be some kind of solution short of sacrificing a pair of shoes. BUT WAIT! Before you say I'm overthinking it, look at this guy.

Don't get me wrong: I love the costume. But compared to the prospect of doing this a) on all fours, and b) using arm stilts to do so, the problem of rat feet sounds pretty damn reasonable.

Reverse engineering, part 1

2006-04-20T04:44:00.000-07:00

The more I read up on sewing, the more complicated it gets. I've been told (or read somewhere) that dissecting a vintage suit jacket or sport coat is good for realizing just how many layers of how many sorts of fabrics are required to get the garment to wear like a suit. That's more of a project for the winter, though, when I've got a little more sewing experience under my belt....and nothing better to do.

So, on to the next project: reverse-engineering one of my favorite summer shirts. I picked it up at Lane Bryant a few years ago, along with a 3/4 sleeve top and two tanks made out of similar material. Of course, they promptly disappeared from the stores forever as soon as I walked out the door. But back to the shirt. It's incredibly light, fits me very well indeed, and has only four pieces to draw and cut (not counting the bias trim). Best of all, the raglan sleeves are both easy to draw/sew and full of design potential.

My only serious misgiving is whether or not I'll be able to find the right kind of fabric to make this up in. A knit is a given, but that covers a wide range. The original is made of "onion skin", which is an amazing fabric I'm having a hard time finding for retail sale. (I blame the clothing cabal.) In the meantime, I made up a test garment out of a jersey bedsheet I found at Goodwill...a sheet that taught me how much I hate trying to true up fabric grain. Trim both long sides along a single rib, match the edges, then square the ends. It wasn't even like it was just slightly off; I think I lost a foot and a half of length on each end. (Note to self: examine test sheets a little more before buying.)

Here are the front and back panels laid out--the ends of the fabric are both folded over and held down with some letterpress blocks. Also, notice the purple thing in the lower left-hand corner: a magnetic pin holder. It's absolutely brilliant, and makes me want to spill pins just so I can wave that thing around and watch them all get suctioned up. At any rate, after cutting, pinning, and basting the pieces, I was left with the biggest surprise yet: a mockup that may even become wearable.

It's hard to tell in this awful picture, but you get the basic idea. The next step: either refine my pattern just a little more, or figure out my new bias binder foot. The unfinished hems make this test garment look like it was stolen from the "Flashdance" retrospective closet...but that can be dealt with. Perspective! Can't forget that. It fits, and fits really well, which is all I was going for.

(To be continued!)

Eponymous pants

2006-04-18T23:32:00.000-07:00

As promised, I'm posting pictures of the pants that gave this blog its name. After many years of infrequent cross-your-fingers-and-wing-it sewing, I've finally decided to get serious about learning how to do it the right way. Surprise, surprise: doing it the right way actually paid off in the form of pants that generally fit, and more importantly, look like pants. That's a first for me, hence "victory pants". Observe!

That's not to say I wouldn't do things differently next time. For starters, I'd use an actual pajama pants pattern--this is Butterick 6600, which was a collection of pants/capris/shorts and a few tops. It seems to be out of print now, so you'll have to take my word on it. Hell, I only used it because I had it on hand, and I hate wasting stuff. At first I made them up in a fab red-pink-white striped seersucker, but that was a complete bust. Not only did the pattern need tweaking (straight-leg does not mean gently tapered!), but the fabric was waaaaaaaaaay too thin, even for slackin' pants. So I made a few alterations to the legs, bought a crapload of clearance flannel at Joann's, and tried again.

I would've bought more of this flannel if I could think of something else to do with it--it's hard to beat $2/yard. But summer's coming, and I only have so much space to store fabric and other crap.
That probably has something to do with why I did the cuffs up in the black broadcloth I had on hand instead of going out and buying black cotton sateen, which would've been more fitting. They still turned out pretty well:
Note that this is the outside (non-seam) side of the cuff. That's because I didn't add the cuffs until after the legs were sewn up, so the place where the ends meet is...puffy...and very noticeable, at least to me. Well, live and learn. The waist on these is pretty high-riding, so at some point I might take that down a few inches. The alternatives aren't very enticing: either the waist hits my pits, or I look like the world's worst saggy-pants gangsta. At least I paid attention to keeping the pattern on the grainline, which I don't think I've bothered with before.

I'm also in the process of reverse-engineering one of my favorite simple summer shirts, but that post will have to wait until I'm not on the verge of faceplanting into the keyboard.

It's official: blogging is over.

2006-04-17T23:19:00.000-07:00

By that I mean that since I, the ultimate late adopter, have started a blog, it is no longer cool to do so. Trust me on this one.

(But really, when was it?)

At any rate, this here is Victory Pants. If I'm more successful at blogging than I was at keeping a dayrunner (or calendar, PDA, scrap of paper with a "to do" list on it, etc.), it will have not-infrequent updates on the plethora of projects I'm undertaking at any given time. If not, well, I won't exactly be surprised, since my track record with this sort of thing is...less than stellar. But hey, there's a first time for everything.