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Jul. 31st, 2019 10:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
totchipandaDo you know what I'm not doing today? INVENTORY. For some reason Retail Job At Tourist Destination had year-end inventory in July (you know, the busiest time of year), and wouldn't let us close early to do it. The last year I worked there, I stayed until 4:30 AM and came back at 9:30 AM. It's been 9 years since I left and I still celebrate not-inventory day.
I have no thinky-thoughts today. Instead, I have thoughts about stays. I'll admit to being annoyed that I didn't get into the pattern test that went around recently (apparently I'm too average) but whatever. I had printed off the Costume Close-Up pattern before I switched offices over 2 years ago, so back in July I finally laid the papers out and overlapped the things and then cut them out. I only measured the pieces, but they were definitely too long, so I folded up a couple inches out of them. That's as far as I got.
Now a long weekend is coming up THIS weekend (yay!) and I'm wondering what to do with myself. Oh look, stays. Oh look, stays are on my mind. I want to make a pair with a wool outer (I have some lovely mustard suit weight, originally bought for Star Trek TNG/DS9/Voyager uniforms, and I heckin LOVE the idea of mustard stays) and boned with something other than honkin' thick zip ties. I can get chair caning locally, which a quick Google brings up when I searched "chair caning vs reed". The store is really close to me, so I will go check it out probably on the weekend. Pros: local! No shipping! I really wanted to try out synthetic whalebone but the stuff from Farthingales is $2.20 cdn while from B&T it's $2.30 US. However, shipping from Ontario is $20! GDI Canada Post. I didn't check the shipping from B&T but I vaguely remember doing so before, and between the exchange and potential for customs, it's not worth it. At least, not if I wasn't also getting some other things I can't get anywhere else (I have a hankering for hankies!)
And then I... kind of want to hand sew them (gulp). Who even am I! Obviously I need to make mock-ups first to make sure it all works for me. Am I going to lose interest and machine sew them? Probably? I def want to do the fold-in-allowances-and-whip-together-cover-seams-with-tape thing.
Speaking of stays, I had to unpack my bag from the June ball in order to go on my trip last week. I carefully removed the short stays because they were unbound still and the bones shifted during the ball, which is good information about how they fit. If the chair caning works out I could re-bone them with that.
So, mustard wool outer, IKEA cotton canvas inners, when I go check out the caning there's a leather supply store really nearby that might have something to bind with. We won't talk about lining yet, this is already an ambitious project.
I saw a thing this past week about removing "should" from one's vocabulary in an effort to remove guilt from your life. LIke, "I should clean" = no cleaning = guilt about living in a pigsty. Instead, say "I want to clean" and then if you don't, less guilt! So instead of saying, i should clean this weekend (vacuum, damn dishes*, bathroom**, sewing spaces, etc), I say, I want to clean this weekend, and I can kind of trick myself into thinking that I AM going to clean this weekend. Perhaps Saturday and Sunday I can spend up to an hour each day doing Cleaning Things, and then the ENTIRE REST OF EACH DAY PLUS MONDAY I can do other stuff. Like sewing. Like knitting. Like maybe finishing up Stranger Things.
**my tub faucets are very drippy lately, and there's a hair clip stuck in the sink drain. So much dust and toothpastey mirrors!
*something has been stuck in the big sink's drain and its getting worse at draining, but I've been so lax about keeping them clear to put in a request
I have no thinky-thoughts today. Instead, I have thoughts about stays. I'll admit to being annoyed that I didn't get into the pattern test that went around recently (apparently I'm too average) but whatever. I had printed off the Costume Close-Up pattern before I switched offices over 2 years ago, so back in July I finally laid the papers out and overlapped the things and then cut them out. I only measured the pieces, but they were definitely too long, so I folded up a couple inches out of them. That's as far as I got.
Now a long weekend is coming up THIS weekend (yay!) and I'm wondering what to do with myself. Oh look, stays. Oh look, stays are on my mind. I want to make a pair with a wool outer (I have some lovely mustard suit weight, originally bought for Star Trek TNG/DS9/Voyager uniforms, and I heckin LOVE the idea of mustard stays) and boned with something other than honkin' thick zip ties. I can get chair caning locally, which a quick Google brings up when I searched "chair caning vs reed". The store is really close to me, so I will go check it out probably on the weekend. Pros: local! No shipping! I really wanted to try out synthetic whalebone but the stuff from Farthingales is $2.20 cdn while from B&T it's $2.30 US. However, shipping from Ontario is $20! GDI Canada Post. I didn't check the shipping from B&T but I vaguely remember doing so before, and between the exchange and potential for customs, it's not worth it. At least, not if I wasn't also getting some other things I can't get anywhere else (I have a hankering for hankies!)
And then I... kind of want to hand sew them (gulp). Who even am I! Obviously I need to make mock-ups first to make sure it all works for me. Am I going to lose interest and machine sew them? Probably? I def want to do the fold-in-allowances-and-whip-together-cover-seams-with-tape thing.
Speaking of stays, I had to unpack my bag from the June ball in order to go on my trip last week. I carefully removed the short stays because they were unbound still and the bones shifted during the ball, which is good information about how they fit. If the chair caning works out I could re-bone them with that.
So, mustard wool outer, IKEA cotton canvas inners, when I go check out the caning there's a leather supply store really nearby that might have something to bind with. We won't talk about lining yet, this is already an ambitious project.
I saw a thing this past week about removing "should" from one's vocabulary in an effort to remove guilt from your life. LIke, "I should clean" = no cleaning = guilt about living in a pigsty. Instead, say "I want to clean" and then if you don't, less guilt! So instead of saying, i should clean this weekend (vacuum, damn dishes*, bathroom**, sewing spaces, etc), I say, I want to clean this weekend, and I can kind of trick myself into thinking that I AM going to clean this weekend. Perhaps Saturday and Sunday I can spend up to an hour each day doing Cleaning Things, and then the ENTIRE REST OF EACH DAY PLUS MONDAY I can do other stuff. Like sewing. Like knitting. Like maybe finishing up Stranger Things.
**my tub faucets are very drippy lately, and there's a hair clip stuck in the sink drain. So much dust and toothpastey mirrors!
*something has been stuck in the big sink's drain and its getting worse at draining, but I've been so lax about keeping them clear to put in a request
no subject
Date: 2019-07-31 09:20 pm (UTC)Turning "but"s into "and"s and "should"s into "want"s.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-02 02:21 am (UTC)As someone who sort of recently made stays, I would recommend not doing handsewn channels. Firstly, from a personal preference point of view, if you do the allowances-whip-seams thingie plus eyelets and binding, that's already a LOT of handsewing and I know that I would get bored of that long before I ever got out of the channel sewing stage. Secondly, from a practical point of view, if you're using reed/cane, it can get a little tricky inserting it into the channels and the really straight channels that you'd get from machine sewing would make the process easier than if you have ever so slightly wonky handsewn channels where the end or edges of the reed/cane can get caught on the unevenness. My stays were boned with reed and it was a bit of a challenge putting them in the machine sewn channels. Involved splitting all of them lengthwise and then being ever so gentle so as not to bend/break the reeds. (I broke several, including some back ones after trying the stays on and bending backwards too much.) I would also suggest testing the strength of the cane before boning anything that isn't pretty fully boned, just because it is a bit brittle. Sorry for the long ramble on that! Lots of thoughts about boning materials.
Your stays project sounds great! The mustard wool will be bee-yu-ti-ful! (Also, I never got around to lining my stays because I'm so lazy and it just didn't seem worth the hassle.)
I hope that your language change helps you be more productive! I should try to do that. Sounds smart!
no subject
Date: 2019-08-02 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-02 09:13 pm (UTC)