Back After a Gap...

For various personal reasons I have not been blogging lately, but several people (I'm looking at you, Rosanne!) have told me they miiiiiisss meeeee!  So here are some random updates to tide you over until the next scheduled post (a long research-y one will go live on March 25th) or the next time I write one (not sure when that'll be). 

HELPING FRIENDS SEW

Though I've been in a creative slump, I have had fun in the past few months helping friends sew!  One, a newbie who'd never sewn anything before, made herself an elegant and glamorous evening gown!  She did great!  I'll post about it soon-ish.  Another, an experienced seamstress, had an interesting project: a 1960's Vogue pattern that needed to be graded up and altered to fit her.  We worked on the muslin together for two days.  I'm excited to see how her test-dress comes out! 

THE WANNA-LIST AND THE HAFTA-LIST

Both are shorter.  But still... umm... let's move on to another topic, shall we? 

THE DELINEATOR

A customer at the fabric store where I work informed me that the Multnomah Central Library downtown has an archive of The Delineator, and you can ask for them and make copies!  (Can't check them out, though, for obvious reasons.)  To prove that this was so, he made copies for me and my co-worker the next time he visited the library.  Made my day!  I also learned that Butterick still has copies of all their old patterns and you can request them from the company.  Worth checking out! 

PATTERN GRADING

I got a Toolfully Pattern Grading Rulers for Christmas, and I'm super excited about the potential to size my own patterns up or down, and to make one-size-per-envelope vintage patterns fit me.  I still want to make Anne Adams 4882... I'll have to grade it down.  Alas, the instructions that came with the rulers are a bit opaque and occasionally lacking in referents.  Or diagrams.  They say things like "The design of the pattern on the tool permits you to identify the middle, so where the grading size changes."  Then I look at the pattern printed on the ruler and see no middle mark, and none of the subsequent directions tell me what I'd need the hypothetical middle for anyway.  On the up side, the inventor Diane Destiel has a YouTube channel, and some of her videos show the grading rulers in use, so I will learn that way and pass my learning along via this blog.  See one, do one, teach one.