Greenstorm's Journal

-20C last night, probably -30 tonight. Last night was a windstorm and I think it snowed, but everything blew so much it's hard to tell. The outdoor tap was frozen this morning, even after I stoked the fire. I ended up putting a toque on the tap and turning the fire way up (this 24-hour period I'll go through three loads of wood instead of the usual 1) and it finally thawed around 2pm.

Everyone has had a bunch of water and food. I couldn't dig the cord out of the ice to give the muscovies heat so I gave them a ton of fresh straw. The front of the pighouse blew off (that A-frame is just falling apart) but when I went out to fix it in the sunshine I lost most of my visual field due to a migraine and had to come in for a bit. It's dark now, I'll go out and carry a ton of straw to the pigs and put the front back on for them, hopefully I'll be able to see this time. I hope the visual thing is just the normal non-pain parts of a migraine and going out there won't launch a full one.

House is warm, I've got a bunch of wood split for the next few days, but really when it's this cold I just want to hunker down inside and stay safe.

Last couple days I've sewed a test sock and a test fingerless glove. Both need alterations (fingerless glove needs width added at the wrist, sock needs to figure to how to angle the toes instead of going straight across). I wore my test Marie Claude all day today and it seems ok under the polar fleece I have on. The sleeves are just that touch snug. I think the reason the back is a little weird is the whole thing is sitting tilted backwards, that is, the shoulders are sitting too far back on my body, maybe because the back of the neck comes up too high on my neck (because I sewed the band on messily?). Tempted to make a big shaggy thermal pro version of it anyhow.

Ooof, ok, it's dark and work is over. Wish me luck on the migraine/whatever it is.

I made up the stasia tee today in my less-stretchy test fabric. Right out the gate I lengthened the torso by 3", since I both have a long torso and hip-box and I like shirts to overlap with my pants rather than hitting me at my pants waistband. I went with size 20 based on the garment measurements (rather than the body measurements and suggested size for those, which would have put me at a 16). I don't mind the stretch of a fabric doing some work when I'm moving, but I can't wear clothes where the fabric is stretched against my skin at all times since that's actively painful to me. Most garments made with stretch fabrics are supposed to be snug, so I was grateful to have finished garment measurements on this pattern to play with.

This is the first time since high school I've done set-in sleeves. The weird double-curve of pants crotches I understand well enough. I feel comfortable drafting patterns and messing around with different hip or leg shapes and widths, and I can digest how to draw the crotch curves pretty easily despite having to look it up each time. With set-in sleeves I just don't understand how their going together works to give the shape and mobility it does; you're basically inverting an arc and working it into another one and it's WEIRD. Plus I have complicated arm/shoulders: my shoulders are slanted, one is higher than the other, my deltoids are pretty big, and my biceps are too big. By too big I mean I pretty much buy shirts by whether they bind my shoulder/upper arms, and not by whether they fit any other part. So I know I'll have to do extensive work to come up with a pattern that actually fits those areas and it'll be hard to think my way through it.

Once I have the first one done, I'll know how to alter future patterns no problem, and I'll even be able to measure the flat paper of new patterns and shift accordingly.

But here I am at the first one and it needs some work. The shape of the torso from my underarm to my waist is pretty good. I'm glad I lengthened it and that works great. Seems like a lot of shorter people make these patterns, many of them say they're for 5'6" or shorter folks, so that's probably safe to do anyhow right off the bat.

I accidentally sewed the sleeves on inside-out. That is, what was supposed to be the inside of the fabric was on the outside; the seam was on the correct side of the fabric at least. That was fine, I still matched the front to the front and the back to the back, and the stretch of the fabric will be the same. This is what test garments are for: catching not just size issues, but the first set of careless errors I make because I'm concentrating on trying to sew the shoulder seams evenly or whatever.

The sleeves are definitely too snug. It's wearable, when my arms flex they don't rip through the fabric or anything, but they feel constrained and the fabric is stretched pretty snug. I'd say there's zero to very slight negative ease in the sleeves. So I'll definitely need to widen the sleeves by about an inch in the next one.

I'm a little less certain about where the sleeve joins the body. There's lots of room there, but because the scoop neck is so wide and I hadn't put in the neck band yet, I'm not sure if there's extra room from that join being too big, or from the shoulder of the garment sliding outwards along my sloping shoulder with no real resistance from a neckband and creating extra space. I guess putting on a neck band and checking on the mock-up is the logical thing to do there.

Th scoop neck is big and uncomfortable for me. I'll need to experiment with smaller neck openings (I tend to like smallish V necks) but I also think a big cowl neck dropped into that opening would be lovely. I also am curious to see what bringing it up into a funnel neck with a zipper in it would be like, but that would require a sturdier fabric. All things in time.

So that was my first iteration of this one. My next iteration will be faster to sew, I expect; it will also probably be size 18 instead of 20 (assuming the sleeve area still feels a little loose after I put on the neckband) with the sleeves given an extra 1 - 1.5" of width from the bicep down.

I really don't enjoy this part, but it's necessary to get to the point where I bang out six different shirts that fit perfectly in two days. That part is rewarding.

I also have a raglan sleeve pattern and I plan to make up a mock-up of that. I need to see which ones are the most closely-but-not-snugly fitted with less excess fabric around the arms to get caught up in layering but the most motion.

That's all my head can take for today. Tomorrow is the neckband experiment and then the next mock-up.