A tutorial, today!  Sometimes you need to iron a garment with gathers; if you put the iron right on top of the gathered area, you'll cause creases and make the area flat instead of full, so you need a different technique. 

Today's post will be about how a skirt works, what undergarments are ideal, how to keep a slip from slipping, how to wear a skirt, et cetera. 

While checking out at Fabric Depot the other day, I got to chatting with the cashier about our UFOs (UnFinished Objects).   She mentioned that she has a modular shelving unit with eight slots, and each has a UFO: she doesn't allow herself to start a new project unless there's an open slot, so she never has more than eight projects going at a time.  It made me wonder exactly how many UFOs I have sitting around my place!  I've organized them roughly by how much work needs to be done to finish them, so I can get the easy stuff off my plate first.  So here's my list of UnFinished Objects, not including things on my to-do list which I haven't started:

I love to sew for my sister.  One year I made her a Teens Era ball gown (an early exercise in draping), and another year two winter hats (the Russian ice hat and the red tam).  She lives far away, though, which makes garment fitting tricky... you may recall last year's project to make a block of her body so I could customize my dress form here in Portland?  I got mixed results sewing from it: peplum top--good fit, bad style; pinwheel top--good fit, okay style; denim blazer--bad fit). 

Recently, I visited her again, this time with a plan of attack: I brought some patterns to work with, and while I was there I pin-fitted them to her and made muslins.  This was even more helpful than the block in teaching me about the challenges of her body shape... working just with muslin, I was able to replicate her body, but working with pre-made patterns I was able to see how her body most deviates from the average body that patterns are drafted for. 

Moreover, while I was there, I re-visited the denim blazer, altered a few of her Ready to Wear (RTW) clothes, and made a cute nightcap for my niece.  All in all, a productive visit! 

So in the upcoming weeks, you can expect posts on the following (I'll add links in this post as they come live):

ALTERATION - adding back darts to a RTW sweater
A Child's Nightcap
ALTERATION - Round Neck to V neck
McCall's 4968 - Blue tunic top, muslin
Butterick 6134 - Red Raglan-sleeved Top
ALTERATION - another go at the denim blazer! 
Draped Pencil Skirt

Happy New Year, gentle reader(s)!  ;) 

This post is a grab-bag of recapping 2017, showing off my Christmas gifts, and looking forward to 2018! 

As 2017 is done, I have now been blogging for a year.  I find I enjoy it as much as I feared (yes, it has been a huge time-suck!), but that it's also done what I hoped: kept me accountable for finishing projects and served as a portfolio I could point potential clients and interested friends to.  On my first post, I said I'd limit my posting to once a week, but soon I had such a backlog of posts and so much to say that I upped it to twice a week: Mondays and Thursdays, usually. 

The past few times I've been online, my browser has recommended the following article: "What you don't do affects you more than what you do — and it's the secret to getting anything you want in life".  A ponderous title, but an interesting article all the same.  The author highlights Daniel Day-Lewis as an example of someone whose success comes from intense focus, and the habit of choosing carefully what to focus on, and eliminating the rest.  I've talked of this before, when I mentioned the "specialist" choosing to focus their efforts, and so achieve excellence.  But this article makes an interesting distinction between how most of us approach decisions-- "what to do"-- and how Daniel Day-Lewis approaches them--"what to cut". 

In my life recently, I've suffered the consequence of lack of focus.  The internet doesn't help: I open my browser and it instantly recommends articles I might like (case in point: the article that inspired this post).  My favorite bookmarks are arranged along the top, so I can open tab after tab and see what cool art my sister has made, what The Dreamstress is up to, et cetera.  Even if I logged on with a goal in mind, I "just quickly check" all the other things, and there goes my focus. 

But if the question is not "what should I click on" but "what don't I need in my life right now", then the internet itself goes right out the window.  Truth is: I've got a backlog of posts on my blog that I can schedule to post twice a week for the rest of the month, without me.  And I don't have any email-related business to deal with, either.  I could close my lap-top and slide it under my bed, and this blog (heck, the whole Internet) would chug along quite happily without me.  While I'm at it, I could cut sleeping in and watching NetFlix; they're not serving me well!

In fact, I think I will.  See you next year! 

Well, it's been over a week since I've posted!  My three regular readers must be in withdrawal!  ;)  In previous months, I've managed my blog by creating a long queue of posts (often written multiple posts in a single marathon session) which I schedule for upcoming Mondays and Thursdays.  Then I ignore my blog for a while and work on sewing and photographing things while the blog marches on without me.  I check in to see if people have commented.  What happened last week was that I ran out of scheduled posts at a time when I was too busy to make more, and hence the dry spell.  However, being busy with work is, as my Dad says, "the right kind of problem"! 

So what have I been up to?  Click Read More for an overview.  There will be no pictures or geekery today, though. 

My name is Karen Roy.  I have always sewn, but only about three years ago began making clothes and patterns for clothes.  I have now reached the point where people other than myself want to see them (or even wear them!), so I'm starting this site. 

WHY BLOG?
I have begun this blog as a way to keep track of my sewing projects and share them with friends and family, as well as to cultivate discipline in meeting deadlines and to become a better writer.

In the past I have resisted blogging, for various reasons that would take a whole post to explain.  For now, suffice it to say that I limit my online activities in order to prioritize in-person interactions.  For the past several years, I have not used the internet for much besides email and reading other people's blogs.

So what has changed?  Only that I am now sewing things for other people as well as myself.  With sewing as a side-business, it becomes useful for me to have a portfolio I can point potential clients to.  And, as I hinted before, time management and deadlines are a challenge for me, and I could use the accountability of an audience to keep me on task.

Finally, having learned so much from various sewing bloggers, I want to be a resource, in turn, to other people.  Not that I am an expert -- far from it!  I am mostly untrained and learning as I go along.  But “simply by its existence, example is enabling,” writes Roxana Robinson, in her book Georgia O'Keeffe.  I shall honestly present my work (as well as my struggles and failures) as an example, in the hopes that some reader will think "I can do that" and will try.

ROBES DE COEUR
The name is a pun.  A robe de cour is a French "court dress" (defined excellently here).  "Coeur" is the French word for "heart".  Since I love clothes, especially formal, old-fashioned ones, "robes de coeur" means "dresses of heart".  (I can't vouch for whether it's grammatical in French!)  It is partially a statement of intent--I aim to make clothes the wearer loves--and partially a philosophy: we should care about how we cover ourselves.

GENERAL TOPICS
sewing
clothing
values

READERS
If you search online for "blogging tips", a common one is to have a particular reader in mind when writing, to stabilize your tone and keep a conversational style.  I am writing for someone like myself. 

As it happens, I am verbose.  I enjoy reading in depth and writing in depth.  Plus, I often work with slow, old computers, and nothing is more irritating than to click on a link and watch it take forever to load, only to find a measly 400 words, in simple sentences, with extra space taken up by large headers and pretty but unhelpful pictures.  I care about ideas, and my ideal reader does, too.  I enjoy reading well-constructed essays, and I want a readership who appreciates the same.  I am a bit of a geek about esoterica, and I hope fellow geeks will enjoy my posts.  So my posts will be the kind I like to read. 

FREQUENCY OF POSTING
Once a week.

POSTING CODE
I pledge to be honest, respectful, and positive.  If anything I post falls short of this pledge, I ask my readers to tell me, so I can correct and make amends.  In turn, I ask commenters to follow the same code.