now that i can fill a bobbin…

..I have far less excuse to not sew. I mean, yes, time and all that, but honestly, it’s not that I don’t have time, it’s that I spend A GREAT DEAL of my not-working time fucking about on the internet to no good purpose. And as I keep mumbling about, I do have ambitions to be doing stuff that will cause me to NOT fuck about on the internet (and i’m getting better about it! I genuinely am!), but a thing I learned doing four days of all-consuming sewing is that having a SPECIFIC, not nebulous/ideal, project in the evening is actually a really good way to keep me offline for a lot of hours.

To that end, I did pick up the hat I’m knitting and start on that again, although you must understand by “hat I’m knitting” I mean “I’ve done like six rows,” so let’s not get too excited. But still, I HAD done like four rows and now I’ve done six. So that’s something. :)

But anyway, instead of spending a million hours on social media despairing, I’ve been looking at patterns as if I have in fact unlocked a whole new version of myself who sews and will wear clothes that are not t-shirts & jeans. One of my friends rather sensibly suggested that perhaps instead of going straight for the 1940s Matrix dieselpunk vibe that my greedy little heart lusts after, perhaps I should make a vest which I might actually wear WITH jeans & ease my way toward the punk rockabilly future-retro heartbreaker thing, or at least, new clothes.

I do have a couple of dress/top/tunic things that I’ve worn to pieces and would like to replace, but they were apparently in fashion TEN YEARS AGO, not a vague 3-5 years ago like I thought, and there’s nothing like them available now in the stores now. I’ve found patterns for ones similar enough to work, and if I sewed those it wouldn’t be expecting myself to completely change who I am. But of course my natural tendency is to do things the hardest way possible, because the dress/tops are for knit fabrics which I’ve only done the tiniest bit of sewing on and which are Tricky.

But anyway, so I found that pattern, and then decided okay I’d go for it, except it turned out it was 70% off now so then I had to look at OTHER patterns to see what was irresistibly 70% off. The catch is that most of these are actual printed patterns that they’d send to me, which actually I prefer to pdfs that I have to glue together, but it does mean adding the cost of shipping & customs on to them. OTOH they’re light & VERY CHEAP.

I ended up with five patterns for under fifty dollars including shipping and customs charges (which, given that they often run $15+, is a Real Bargain). Two of the patterns are PDFs, so instant gratification. One’s just for a t-shirt; one’s for a skirt which, if I’m competent enough, I might end up making two of: one of the leftover green fabric from Indy’s costume, as a test run, and In Due Time, one from the Glasgow Worldcon tartan, which I (hopefully) got enough of to make up to 3 pieces.

So far the only waistcoat/vest pattern I’ve found that I really like is a DIY/make your own pattern by following these instructions one which is…man, I don’t think I’m that skilled, but…idk, I’ve got a ton of old sheets that I can cut up for practice, maybe I’ll try that. And again in a sort of ideal world, I’d do a green one & a tartan, eventually.

And there was a pattern that was also on sale that I’ve had bookmarked for a while, as a color block dress I want to make with my Glasgow Worldcon tartan. But anything to do with the tartan is very strongly Not First On My List Of Things To Do, because that’s frickin’ EXPENSIVE fabric and I need to get a looooooot more confident before I start cutting it up. (I will, in fact, almost certainly do a less expensive trial run to get familiar with the pattern even if I DO get more confident with sewing, because it’s a really cute dress that would make a perfect Everyday Cosplay Rogue outfit. Because I wear dresses so often.)

But yeah no those are down the road projects. For the moment, however, if I manage to make a t-shirt and a vest or skirt that’ll be quite an accomplishment, so I’ll consider those two things as, like, proof of concept or something, but also, importantly, as Specific Projects to work on instead of this vague idea that I should -waves hands- do something or other, probably.