Lutterloh L2-246

Another Lutterloh pattern.

Though it is impossible to see in this picture, this is the fabric in the drawing. The upper part is just a light gray that I thought seemed reasonable.

Thanksgiving in Corpus Christi

I went to visit my cousin and her husband in Corpus Christi over Thanksgiving. My mother and her brother and his wife (my cousin's parents) and Jan and Ray, her husband and me all hung out for a couple of days of Thanksgiving bliss.

From left to right, Jan, Webster (the dog), Ray, Jan's husband, my mother Lou Anne, Marge and Clinton, Jan's parents.

The Thanksgiving meal was great. Turkey, homemade cranberry relish, with orange, stuffing, broccoli, and more besides. We also had some great pudding pies, with homemade crust and separated eggs. Friday we went out for breakfast for real Tex-Mex food (I had choriso and eggs) and Saturday we had barbacoa for breakfast.

There house is beautiful. It has a lovely water garden, complete with Koi and a nice deck where one could sit and watch them swim ...

The dog can watch the Koi too, though they prefer he not join them swimming.

Their house is close to the waterfront, so Jan and I went for a walk with the dog along the beach on Thanksgiving.

She managed to take a picture of me that doesn't totally make me shudder.

They even got me into a group photo.

I

Vogue 8118

Next up is to make the pants form, but as soon as I get my sewing table set up, I can start sewing. This is what I am thinking of starting with ...

It's an old Vogue pattern, but it is so loose & baggy it should fit no matter what. I sorted though my collection of fabric & picked out some choices that I think would work, but where I won't be sad if this turns out to be a wadder.

Dressform done

I finished my dressform :-)

Yes, my body is very asymmetrical.

I had glued the base on last weekend & left it to set.

Yesterday I put the fitting on the base & put the base on the stand. Then I covered the form in a dry cleaners bag.

Then comes the cover. First a seam up the back (which I didn't get very straight, oh well), a casing around the bottom and some darts in the side.

Darts:

Then I sewed up the shoulders:

Then a circle hand sewed around the top & it's done.

I put it next to the one I had made before. I weighed about 20 pounds less & it was made about 12 years ago. I have crunched on the left side, which is rather unnerving. Perhaps I should start going for massages to relax the left side of my body.

Next to to make stuff that fits, to get some value from this work!

Dressform progress

I have made progress on the dressform. Last night I ripped off (most) of the plaster to reveal the formy goodnesss ...

Well, something like goodness, it's not exactly done. :-)

Starting from where I left off, the first step was to wipe down the inside with green soap, to help get the plaster off after the foam was poured ...

Then came the wrapping with tape, to keep the form from splitting when the foam went in. I don't think it mattered for me, but I did it. I set the thing upside down in a box and took a deep breath ...

The foam comes in tin cans. I mixed it up in Nancy's yogurt containers, of which I have an almost infinite supply. It's a 2 part mixture, take some amount from can A, mix with the same amount from can B & then it turns into foam. The instructions said to mix up 2 cups, but I was so freaked about the idea of splitting the form that I only mixed up one cup of each to start. It turns out that fewer, larger batches are a better idea, because the mixing container can only be used about twice before it gets to gunked up with foam.

When it was done, I left it to cure for a week (the week part being the time between Sun afternoon, when I finished & the next Sat afternoon, when I had time to work on it).

Then came the sawing off of the bottom. This is where the posture part comes in. I discovered that we had missed a step, which was the leveling marks while I was wearing the form. We were supposed to put on marks on the hips, front & back, which could be used to level the bottom. I had done a kind of leveling marks, by hanging the form from a coat hanger & marking around it before I sewed it up, so I used that. I'm sure it would have been better to have marked it while it was on me, but it is way too late now, so I just eye-balled it.

My shoulders really aren't level, and one side really is more compressed than the others, so I just made the hips more or less level & the tilt front to back such that it seems kinda reasonable.

Next is getting off the rest of the plaster & gluing the plywood on the bottom. Then comes covering it with fabric & putting it on the stand. Almost done!

Cross top dress

Another drawing. It's wonderful (not!) how what looks good on the model makes me look fat in the drawing. I'm not fat, really! No wonder the fashion houses use very tall, very thin women as their models.

Dressform

I am making myself a customized dressform. I got a kit from My Twin and roped a friend into wrapping me with plaster bandages. I have sent for the foam to fill it, which I hope will arrive this week. In the meantime, here are some photos of the empty cast.

Front:

And back:

It's a somewhat scary view of my body, but it's the only one I have, so I'll run with it.

I actually did this several years ago. However, I kept looking down to make sure the person who was wrapping me was doing it right, so the shoulders came out even more rounded than mine really are (at least, that is what I think). Also, I weighed 20 pounds or more less then, so I wanted to try again. Here is a photo of that one.

Just because I weighed less doesn't mean that I wasn't short waisted and flat chested with huge bumps on my thighs though. :-)

Also, I got a cool new camera, so I can take these pics.

Lutterloh L1-124

The pattern number is my own. I have a Lutterloh pattern book from, maybe, the 80s, which I have scanned in to use. I numbered the patterns for my own convenience. The pattern, that is the image I used for the "fabric" for the dress is one I got from a fabric store on the web.

It's the same old image of me, in which I look like I'm facing down a firing squad. :-)

Simplicity 9021

Another drawing, this one of a Simplicity pattern on me ...



It looks a lot better on the model than it does on me. I think this is mainly because the model has legs that are out of proportion to her body.

I lined up the pattern image so the top of the head of the figure was even with the top of the picture of me. That puts her shoulders and waist higher than mine, but her knees line up with about where my knees are and her feet are a heads height below the bottom of my feet.

I used to look at fashion drawings and wish I looked that good -- until I realized that the proportions of the people in the drawings are not realistic. If I had legs that were that long relative to my body (and often, a waist that small), I would look like a freak. :-) Of course, that is part of the point of high heels, to given women those kinds of visual proportions.

So, given that I'm a real person & not a drawing, I think the design is reasonable. One of these days, I hope, I shall make this dress and see how it looks in real life. I may put on higher heels for the photo shoot though.

50s Dress

Here is a drawing of a dress that I put onto a picture of me. The style is one I screen scraped from a sewing pattern from 1951.

One thing I finally figured out about sewing patterns is that they can be somewhat ... idealized. Clothes one finds in stores are made to be worn by someone. Sewing patterns may be designs that look nice, or look like what someone wishes she could look like, but they are like playing the role of the princess in the fairy tale. They don't necessarily play well in real life.

Still, sometimes they do work in real life. This one might ... The drawing is rough and of course, it is topped by my face and my pose is hardly one for the fashion rags. I like to think it has potential though.

The upgrading of style

Just for fun, it would be interesting to look somehow more interesting than that I just got up, put on jeans and a t-shirt & bolted out the door.

So I asked myself, well, what do I want to look like. Actually, I passed someone on the trail wearing orange socks and baby blue crocs. I noticed this from quite a ways away. Striking, but I can't say that it screams out that it is something I would want to follow. It might scream out, it might say this is a unique person who goes her own way, yes. Certainly, I want my style to say that I'm a unique person with my own thoughts, yes. However, I think I would rather it murmur this in dulcet tones, rather like an Austin heroine translating an Italian libretto, while saying she knows little Italian.

I asked myself -- if my look were like a piece of music, what would that music be? Bach's "Little" Fugue in G Minor would do. It appears simple, but is really complex; it is beautiful; it can be listened to over & over again and still be enjoyed each time.