3 outside the skinny blog

So once again, due to my own denial, lack of planning, what-have-you, I have a disappointment. My plan for today was to do a couple of housework chores then sit down to adjust the simplest blouse pattern I've got, and sew a blouse. I have two books "The Perfect Fit," and "How to Make Sewing Patterns," the latter because it shows with photographs how to measure yourself when you don't have someone to help. I have a tape measure and the pattern, the fabric, the thread, even the interfacing.

So, impatient to imagine ahead, I measured myself for the blouse.

Reality bites.

I'm several inches BIGGER than the biggest size this pattern is meant for. From what I've read of these books, which isn't 100%, this means I'm pretty much going to be starting from scratch - and I'm not at all sure I even have enough of this fabric.

ARGH!!!

So, I can forget about the sewing until I lose about thirty pounds (at least), or I can sit down and really study these books and use this first pattern as my crash course in pattern-making. Well. One thing I can do is to cut out the pattern paper and make a duplicate in newsprint, and use the copy to try out the methods in the book. That would be a step forward.

I remember in junior high when we were learning to sew in Home Ec (and isn't THAT quaint?), when we got to the zipper in a - was it a skirt? or a dress. Can't remember. Anyway, I must have ripped that zipper out twenty times. How I loathed it! Teen impatience, oh my god. But somehow, I stuck with it (maybe I would have flunked if I didn't at least FINISH the goddamned thing) and in the end, I think I had made about every mistake possible when putting in a zipper, and by god, I knew how to put in a zipper. I found in later years that I could put any kind of zipper in any kind of garment and it looked and worked just fine. That was one of those lessons no one could have consoled me with when I was down in the basement sweating, crying, and cursing over that stinking Home Ec assignment. I had to go through it myself, and discover later that it really was worth it. I don't remember what kind of grade I got on the Home Ec garment, probably not very good since it was chewed up pretty good, lol. But it was a skill, a hard-earned one.

So maybe what I have to do is the same thing over adjusting patterns, now. Either that or I've simply moved all that fabric I've got (enough for a full year's worth of new clothes) from one place of storage, to MY place of storage. I really hate that idea. So, it's back to school this afternoon...