The week after sewing camp, as I was slowly finishing up the Forager vest I started there, I saw a movie set in the early 1900’s in Hawaii.
For the first 20 minutes, it featured this little guy:
He’s so cute I want to squeeze him but I’m sure even if I wasn’t a stranger, he’s old enough that he wouldn’t let me.
Do you see his clothes? They are tattered, yes, but they also look like they are handmade. So beautiful. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. The many Japanese migrants in Hawaii during the movie’s setting wore these beautiful blue and white clothes. They tended to wear layers and multiple blue and white patterns at once, and it was stunning.
I determined to hack the Forager Vest into the vest above.
With all the clothes I’ve made, I’ve never had as many fit problems as I did with the Wiksten Shift. It is made for upright folks who don’t mind lots of ease. I have rounded shoulders and don’t want to look pregnant. But hey, problems with a pattern are an opportunity to keep adjusting the pattern until it fits.
So I did.
For Evangelicals in the late 80’s and early 90’s, Halloween was a holiday of the Devil. After a few Halloweens when I was really small, we didn’t celebrate it in my family growing up.
Over time, we developed a tradition of getting together at the home of family friends out in the country where people didn’t bother to trick or treat. We watched old musicals while stuffing our faces with candy. We watched Fiddler on the Roof, and The Music Man. I can still sing many of the songs. (“There’s troublllleee! Trouble! Right here in River City!”)
It took a long time to out grow that idea, that Halloween wasn’t for Christians. And in the meantime, I lost many opportunities to dress up.
You can’t go wrong with a sack dress, right?
I still haven’t really cottoned onto making muslins (a tester version of a pattern in inexpensive fabric you can make changes on before cutting into your nice fabric). Even if I had, I probably wouldn’t have made a muslin for a sack dress. It’s a sack. How can it not fit?
I was surprised by the tweaking the Wiksten pattern would have required for a good fit. I’m glad, though, because I learned about two alterations I can make for future projects.
Remember how I was a floundering blob of anxiety for the beginning of the mindful making retreat? That didn’t completely go away.
But the temperature of the anxious energy that was burning up my insides went way down.
By the time the retreat ended late Sunday afternoon, I was exhausted from all the driving and the social interactions, and already had a vulnerability hangover, but I was so relaxed.
The best part of this is that much of what we did is stuff I do at home, but it was how we did it.
