kaolin fire presents :: project :: clothing

Well, everyone bitches that clothes don't fit them *just right*. And I've been bitching for a very long time. So I thought I'd do something about it. Borrowed a sewing machine and set to it.

I'll put up eps templates as soon as I get a chance. (as soon as I get off my ass?)

I have a favorite shirt that doesn't quite have the right proportion... so that was my basic template, conceptually. Didn't help much for the real thing. I got a nice dark rayon for my shirt (not shown here because it really didn't come out well) and some simple low contrast light tan linen for pants. I cut out two rectangles that matched my shoulders and the length I wanted it to hang, though I didn't have a feel WHERE on my neck it would be hanging from... I gave it a guess, and it worked out about right. I sewed up the sides and shoulders and remembered to leave a neckhole... but forgot armholes. ripped out the armholes, ish (didn't have a seam ripper), and tried it on.

It mostly fit. the neck hung ALL wrong, and I couldn't squeeze it over my ass, which is apparently about 1 inch rounder than my shoulders. Ah well. At least that's not too noticable normally. So I cut a slit down the front and it hung much better. The sides were also a bit wrong, though....

So I guesstimated a couple of things -- slanted the shoulders, cut a neckhole out (cut some of it out while I was wearing it then cleaned it up when I took it off), and gave the shirt a waistline. It was hell to get into but fit just about perfectly. Unfortunately, the rayon wasn't stretchy in the slightest -- I couldn't get it off without ripping it (I'm not too flexible, either).

Then I went out and got some comfortable stretchy fabric -- a nice cotton-polyester blend of some sort, I think. It was under the heading, uh... I don't remember. Something like "weaves", I think. Near the polar fleece, though that's just at Stone Mountain Daughter, probably.

I wrote up a simple template on paper, mathematically, and put that to effect on the new fabric -- along with CHALK so I could mark lines properly for cutting ... and I had a better idea of how pinning could work ... much further away from the sides of the cloth, just enough to hold the two pieces of cloth in relative position.... and it turns out that this new cloth was SO much easier to sew than Rayon. Man.... it could just be I didn't know how to get the right settings on my machine, or what they would be or whatnot... but rayon is pretty shimmery stuff, so the machine did have a hard time getting a grip on it even at highest pressue... maybe I needed lowest? I'll expermient with it later.

The second shirt came out like a dream. I still need to attempt hemming, and maybe attaching sleeves.... but for a nice long summer shirt, it's perfect enough. ;) Actually, I did attempt hemming ... a little over halfway along, though, the bobbin ran out of thread, and I took that as a sign, ish. Went back and spent twenty minutes or so carefully ripping out seams, and then moved on the the pants...

Confidence was up but I had no CLUE what I was doing with the pants -- shirt was an easy two piece sort of thing. I tried the same with my pants, measuring how long the backside would need to be to go around my ass and down my legs... and then making both pieces that long. I figured I could cut them down as necessary. Well, apparently, they weren't long enough in any case, and that design didn't give them any stretch for squatting and the like. So I ripped out the seams by squatting as far as was comfortable and then measured the resulting gap in fabric. Did a lot of geometry to figure out how exactly to make the piece I needed to cut out (well, mostly just the quadratic equation, and then some bisecting curves...). Cut it out, put it in, really gaining confidence in my ability to hack shit together... and then pants FIT, but they were a couple of inches shy of tall enough to stay on. so I cut out ANOTHER trapezoid (well, the other piece was a pentagon), and sewed that on easily enough, and put the pants on -- and they stayed up, fit, felt comfortable enough.... the waist could use a little taking in, but then I think I'd need to add a button or something, because as it is they're tight squeezing over my ass. But I'm really really happy with them and look forward to my next attempt. :)

The next attempt will be with the rayon again -- a different shirt design. I'm thinking something along the lines of a front and a back, stitched up the sides with some sort of lacing.... get around the problem of not being able to stretch it over my head. Could look nice -- may be too much work; both to make and to wear. We'll see?