I cannot stress enough that all those things in sewing pattern instructions that seem pointless are actually very important
Yes, how you fold your fabric before putting down the pattern pieces and cutting matters, because it influences how the fabric drapes, and ignoring that can cause fit issues in ways you wouldn’t expect
Yes, cutting an entire separate piece to sew to the edge to finish it is going to be better than turning the edge and stitching it on its own, because there are geometry issues in play that make it actually harder to just fold a curve to the inside.
Yes, cutting clips or notches into the seam allowance around curves should always be done, because those geometry issues will work on the seam allowances and keep the curve from laying flat (remember, clip when the curve goes in, notch when the curve goes out)
Yes, interfacing may seem completely superfluous and frustrating and an extra step to work with, but it adds rigidity and stability to areas that need it (especially under buttons)
Yes, using a fun quilting cotton print for lining looks nice, but the point of lining isn’t to make the inside pretty as much as it is to make the inside slip smoothly over the layer under it, and quilting cotton is going to instead be prone to grabbing everything under it, so you really should use those annoyingly slippery lining fabrics
Yes, in general, you should use the kind of fabric the pattern tells you to use, because there have been centuries, if not millennia, of people throughout the entire world figuring out what fabric best suits what kind of garment, for reasons beyond aesthetics
I know that a lot of people new to sewing see these things and feel like they’re things that just aren’t necessary, because they skip them when they sew and the item ends up just fine. And if you don’t mind the idea of your clothes looking homemade, then it is fine. But…if you’re consistently skipping these things and end up unhappy with how homemade your items look, please consider that that result is at least partly because you’re not following the entire directions
“Sewing” involves so much more than just the stitches
All this is true, but I will say: people will tell you not to make shirts out of quilting cotton, even though quilting cotton has BY FAR the best and most fun patterns.
Is it as good as fabrics designed for shirts? No. (My personal favs for winter are a cotton sateen with some stretch, and for summer a nice linen, if you must know, but I often use cotton double gauze for summer, too.)
Can you make a perfectly good button-down shirt out of it that will last you 5+ years of regular use? YES. I’ve made several. It’s fine. Wash the fabric with super hot water and dry on hot first to make sure it’s not going to shrink on you. The shirts last longer if you hang them to dry but that’s true of most things.
If what you are looking for out of making your own shirts is The Most Fun Shirts Possible, use the quilting cotton.
Oh, yeah, quilting cotton makes fun shirts! People just need to be aware that it does not always make a soft and drapy shirt XD
A “menswear style” button-up shirt will probably work out fine in even the sturdiest quilting cottons. If the shirt’s goal is to be soft and flowing, then the weight of the fabric becomes more important.
“Button up shirt made from quilting cotton = fabulous” versus “Button up shirt that, If I had made it in quilting cotton, probably would have looked–and felt–like a tent”
Of course, if “shirt that is a tent” is your goal, that’s fine! It’s all about being aware of all the things beyond print/color that the fabric contributes to the finished item.
And you’ve got to iron your seams!!
Sometimes with a press cloth, depending on the situation. You can cut a piece of silk organza to use and it works nicely because you can still see through it.
And staystitching the curved edges is absolutely necessary if you’re working with a soft drapey fabric and you don’t want the neckhole to stretch out horribly.
It’s worth learning to use a thimble, I promise it makes hand sewing so much easier.
And ffs, clean your sewing machine regularly, and oil it! AND clean your iron now and then when it gets gunky! You can buy these melty sticks of iron cleaner to do it with.
Some people may say that mockups and basting are for the weak, but it’s the other way around. Skipping them is for reckless fools.
“After receiving a tip about a family of Burrowing Owls on the eastern edge of Cheyenne, a photographer rushed to the location in late June. The owlets seemed nearly ready to leave their burrows. Over the years, the photographer has perfected a method using a GoPro on a small tripod, set to take a photo every 5 seconds. They leave the camera behind, allowing the owls to feel comfortable. The challenge lies in the long wait to see if the effort pays off. This shot was taken on June 28th.”
I know I’ve made this post before but I thought of a better way to word it so fuck you I’m pretending I haven’t.
I unironically love when things that get adopted as stock phrases on this website because people think they sound badass eventually get butchered in a way that is fairly minor but it completely makes them lose all impact.
My favorite example being how people somehow butchered “X is not a personality” into “X is not a personality trait” for some reason so now everyone sounds stupid when they try to use it because they don’t realize that like. The whole point of the insult is to imply that the person it’s directed at makes X into their ENTIRE personality and is otherwise hollow inside.
“Being pedantic is not a pesonality”
Good, solid insult. You’re implying that the other person hinges their entire personality on being pedantic and that they have nothing else if you take that away.
in Maine sheep are released on offshore Islands in spring to graze for summer. With no natural predators on these islands sheep thrive. To be corralled up and brought back to the mainland in early fall.
Seafaring Sheep travel to their Private Island Paradise for the Summer.
i beat myself up for not knowing enough about my special interests a lot but then i remember the average person off the street has no idea what the carboniferous is and i feel better
are you really bad at it or are you in “good at it” spaces
Me: ah shit, I misidentified that yellow rumped warbler as a female goldfinch, I should literally be hung at the gallows for this. I’m such an IDIOT
My friend, pointing at a vulture: check out that fucked up crow lol
I’m a woman,” Alan Vortrebond, the youngest captain in the Barrayaran space force in over a decade, said.
Gregor blinked at him.
“Are you… requesting a Betan sex change?”
“No,” he said, “I’ve been a woman all along. I entered the academy under a false identity. I can take off my pants to prove it, if you want.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Gregor said hastily. He stared at him -her? processing. She was very small for a Barrayaran man, and her voice, now he thought of it, was sort of feminine. “Why are you telling me this now?” Gregor asked. Why couldn’t she have made this announcement a year ago so it would be Aral’s problem?
“I want to get married,” she said.
“You want to what?” Emperors, Gregor was pretty sure, were not supposed to be flabbergasted. Gregor was decidedly flabbergasted.
“Marriage,” Vortrebond said impatiently, “I’m sure you understand the concept. Groats in a circle, oaths, a lifelong bond of love and commitment, etc. He asked, and I finally said yes.”
“He… knows that you’re a woman, then?” Gregor asked.
“Of course,” said Vortrebond.
Gregor was… faintly fascinated. He had never imagined a woman successfully conning her way into the Barrayaran military. If he did imagine it, he would never have imagined she might get married afterward.
“Who is this future husband of yours, may I ask?”
“His name’s George Cooper.”
No. It couldn’t be. There had to be hundreds of George Coopers on Barrayar.
“George Cooper the Caravanserai crime lord?” Gregor asked tentatively.
“He’s not a crime lord, he’s gone straight,” Vortrebond said indignantly, “Ask Captain Illyan.”
Gregor wouldn’t describe Cooper’s arrangement with Simon as going straight exactly, but that wasn’t really the main issue. Until this moment Gregor had been under the impression that the only people who knew The Whisper Man’s true identity were himself, Aral and Simon.
“How do you know him?” Gregor asked.
Trebond grinned.
“Who do you think got me those fake IDs in the first place?” She asked.
Which made more sense than it didn’t, Gregor supposed.
“So, you’re retiring, then?” Gregor asked. “Retiring” seemed an inadequate term to use to describe a rising star in the military revealing herself to be a woman and running off to marry a man who had once been in charge of a criminal empire powerful enough to give Jackson’s Whole barons a run for their money and was now something like the secret right hand man to the Chief of ImpSec, but Gregor didn’t know what else to call it.
“Oh no, I don’t intend to.”
“But,” said Gregor, decidedly out of his depth, “You can’t.”
“I’ve sworn my oaths, sire,” Vortrebond said, suddenly deathly serious, “They’re binding. Even you can’t disregard that.”
“But you made them under a false name, under false pretenses,” Gregor said.
“Nicknames are perfectly acceptable for oaths, there’s precedent,” Vortrebond said, “And Alan is a reasonable enough shortening of Alanna.”
Gregor could absolutely poke holes in that.
This was going to be a political nightmare. It would have been a nightmare even if Vortrebond left the military and got married quietly, and this was going to be a thousand times worse. Gregor couldn’t let her stay, the conservatives would throw a fit. On the other hand George Cooper was unlikely to be pleased with him firing his fiancé. He could probably make quite a nuisance of himself if he wanted to.
This wasn’t a decision Gregor should be making on his own. He should await and talk to Aral about it, figure out just how fucked they were going to be with the conservatives.
But, well.
Gregor looked at Captain Vortrebond, really looked at her. He could see the confidence in her stance, her self-assuredness. This was a woman that men followed. She was a brilliant captain. People had been saying she was looking to be the greatest space captain since Aral Vorkosigan. Gregor wasn’t sure he could afford to lose her, he didn’t want to lose her.
And, a female Barrayaran Captain, an exceptional , beloved Barrayaran Captain who just so happened to be female. Gregor rather liked the sound of that. It would certainly be interesting .
“Alright then,” Gregor said, “We accept your oaths as binding to Us, and look forward to your continued service on Our behalf.”
Captain Vortrebond stared at him. Her shock at his quick acceptance was gratifying after all she had put him through over the course of their conversation.
“Thank you, Sire,” she said.
“No need to thank Us for your continued service to Barrayar, Captain,” Gregor replied. After all, he couldn’t wait to see what happened.
I don’t mean to be old but computer used to just have games. U didnt have to pay for em either but if u wanted u could get a little CD that put the game onto the computer and you could play it forever and ever even if the company that made it went to hell and shit. You didn’t even need the internet or wifi or anything. And it was pretty neat
It would be a finished game, too. If you played long enough and did really good you could go to all the places and get all the stuff. You never had to pay more money later it was just there. onn compter
Whenever I take a long car ride I end up exhausted afterwards, and I’m always like “why am I so tired? I was just sitting around doing nothing all day.”
But the answer, it turns out, is I was doing something. Riding in a car jars your body in many directions and requires constant microadjustments of your muscles just to stay in place and hold your normal posture. Because you’re inside the car, inside the situation, it’s easy not to notice all the extra work you’re doing just to maintain the status quo.
There’s all sorts of type of work that we think of as “free” that require spending energy: concentrating, making decisions, managing anxiety, maintaining hypervigilance in an unfriendly environment, dealing with stereotype threat, processing a lot of sensory input, repairing skin cells damaged sun exposure, trying to stay warm in a cold room.
The next time you think you’re tired from “nothing”, consider instead that you’re probably in situation where you’re doing a lot of unnoticed extra work just to stay in place.
opening my body’s task manager to see what’s taking up all my cpu
Also, just to add: we should not lose sight of the fact that the mammalian brain is a ridiculously energy-hungry organ. A human brain makes up 2% of the body’s weight and volume and 20% of its caloric requirement. Thinking is physical work.
Competitive chess players carb-load before tournaments. And lose weight in the process.
It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize that thinking physically takes up energy. I would be like “why don’t i have energy I’ve been sitting inside studying all day” ma'am it’s because the phrasings, evidences and vocabularies in your brain are eating the energy
If I’ve been really focused on crafting or something, there will invariably come a point where my brain is just like “Warning! Warning! Out of Energy!”.
Getting a snack usually fixes it.
I get post-exertional malaise from just… Going places. I sit in a wheelchair, I take one bus and spend some time in a different building… And when I get home, I’m sick.
This post helped a little cause I always feel bad about it.
leaving the house is abso-effing-lutely EXHAUSTING and it’s okay to BE exhausted after having to do stuff
