2021 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

Laura_Elsewhere

@PipneyJane - the check is the tablecloth!  
The pockets and skirt are all the same (plain green!) fabric; it's only the lining of the pockets that is the cotton-print. 

The skirt is in the olive-green linen, which was a very kind present a couple of years ago. I made a calf-length, full-circle skirt which has been brilliant EXCEPT that... I've never known fabric behave like this in my life before. 
I put it through several full-length 60-degree washes and even a 90-degree wash, trying to get he excess dye out of it, and it was still pouring dye so that my hands turned green taking it out of he washing-machine afterwards. Eventually I got the excess dye out, but then it was left with these ugly white crease-lines across it, where I can only assume the chopped-short linen-fibres had broken in the multiple machine-washes - you can see one on the green pocket there looking like a chalk-line. They are everywhere, at all angles, really awful if you wanted to use the linen for anything formal or nice - thankfully disguised in a very full skirt.
After all that hot-washing I made my first, full, long skirt and hung it for five days before hemming it. Despite that, and despite only ever totally-cold washing, over the next few months, the front, full-length buttoning-band shrank (it was on the grain) while the middle of each quadrant, cut on the bias, lengthened. The difference now is around eight inches, ie CF, side-seams, CB are all shorter, and the midpoint between each are all longer, so the hem is not uneven but massively swoopy. I've left it on the grounds that I don't want it as short as the shorter bits, and with such a huge difference people will think it's deliberate....

But such weird fabric... I'm expecting this may do similar - it's a very informal skirt, to wear like a pair of jeans for everyday, for gardening, morning walks, etc., so it doesn't matter about the odd white lines and the hem going funny. It was very very kind of my friend to send me some as a surprise present but, well, there are reasons why cheap linen is cheap...!

PipneyJane

Laura_Elsewhere said:

@PipneyJane - the check is the tablecloth!  

< blush >  Where is the roll on the floor laughing icon, when you need it?  

The skirt is in the olive-green linen, which was a very kind present a couple of years ago. I made a calf-length, full-circle skirt which has been brilliant EXCEPT that... I've never known fabric behave like this in my life before. 

I put it through several full-length 60-degree washes and even a 90-degree wash, trying to get he excess dye out of it, and it was still pouring dye so that my hands turned green taking it out of he washing-machine afterwards. Eventually I got the excess dye out, but then it was left with these ugly white crease-lines across it, where I can only assume the chopped-short linen-fibres had broken in the multiple machine-washes - you can see one on the green pocket there looking like a chalk-line. They are everywhere, at all angles, really awful if you wanted to use the linen for anything formal or nice - thankfully disguised in a very full skirt.
After all that hot-washing I made my first, full, long skirt and hung it for five days before hemming it. Despite that, and despite only ever totally-cold washing, over the next few months, the front, full-length buttoning-band shrank (it was on the grain) while the middle of each quadrant, cut on the bias, lengthened. The difference now is around eight inches, ie CF, side-seams, CB are all shorter, and the midpoint between each are all longer, so the hem is not uneven but massively swoopy. I've left it on the grounds that I don't want it as short as the shorter bits, and with such a huge difference people will think it's deliberate....

But such weird fabric... I'm expecting this may do similar - it's a very informal skirt, to wear like a pair of jeans for everyday, for gardening, morning walks, etc., so it doesn't matter about the odd white lines and the hem going funny. It was very very kind of my friend to send me some as a surprise present but, well, there are reasons why cheap linen is cheap...!

Hmmm... Yes, I remember that troublesome skirt.

I won't blame you if you end up throwing both skirts in the compost bin after a few wears.  Nightmare!

- Pip

PollyWollyDoodle

I’m in agreement, I wouldn’t want that print on show! It makes a lovely lining though.  That’s an interesting approach, I also have a bad habit of losing heart with a project and shoving it away for months at a time, I wonder if that would help me to get on with some of my UFOs? I seem to have lost my mojo for anything at the moment, I am not sewing, knitting or mending which is unlike me.

Laura_Elsewhere

@PollyWollyDoodle, I know quite a few keen needlewomen who have found themselves struggling this last year; you aren't alone!

I do think it makes sense to start with a project you really *want* to have made - not one you feel bad about, not one you re doing out of duty, but something you *want* to wear or use... 

And for me - well, making all the design decisions at the start is a revolutionary idea. I don't think I ever have done this before! I typically make fairly major design changes - OR realise I left out something vital and end up with a waistband pieced from five different pieces at different angles, or have to make drastic alterations like when I realised I had cut the front, the two back pieces and only ONE side-panel of a skirt from limited fabric (I ended up cutting the side-panel in half and using half on each side, with a much narrower extra bit squeezed in behind each), or when I had to cut two wide pieces and two narrow pieces, and had one wide and one narrow remnant of fabric and managed to cut the narrow pieces from the wide bit of cloth, thus making it a major problem to cut the wide pieces from the narrow remnant (I had to sew tape alone the edges to create a seam allowance in order to make the seams wrk right on the cu edges, oops). 

This skirt is so.... straightforward...! 

(Less fun, mind you )

TwibbleDee

PollyWollyDoodle said:

I’m in agreement, I wouldn’t want that print on show! It makes a lovely lining though.  That’s an interesting approach, I also have a bad habit of losing heart with a project and shoving it away for months at a time, I wonder if that would help me to get on with some of my UFOs? I seem to have lost my mojo for anything at the moment, I am not sewing, knitting or mending which is unlike me.

If they only sit for months, you're doing better than I am!  I've got some several years old that I should finish up!

TwibbleDee

Spend: 2 more pairs of capris, so 8 coupons there, and one more fishing/travel skirt - in purple, which is actually a dark lavender, so 7 more there.  Down from 58 remaining to 41!

Laura_Elsewhere

I have a shell-pink satin dressing-gown sitting over there *looking* at me, pointing out loudly that I cut it out more than two years ago... and the crimson culottes remain flyless after a couple of years or more...

But no-one will ever beat my Gran - 3 or 4 years ago I hand-sewed a simple little hem on this baby-vest, made from wonderfully soft very fine twilled wool-flannel, in new-born size.

Gran cut it out, sewed most of it, by hand, sewed the lace edging on, made the buttonholes at the shoulder-straps, did the little bit of embroidery... there were two, slightly different decoration but beautifully-made, but both unhemmed along the bottom. She made them when expecting Dad who was born before the War...!
I put a hem on one about 18 or 19 years ago for one cousin's first baby, and the other a few years ago for the other cousin's first baby. Both cousins were very close to our Gran but being younger they have fewer memories, so I was really pleased to pass on something she had made. 

So that's about 80 years between starting the baby-vest and finishing it - oh, and three generations! 

PipneyJane

That is a beautiful baby vest, @Laura_Elsewhere. 

Personally, pretty much all my crafting procrastination involves hand sewing. It doesn't matter if it is a button, a seam in a knitted garment or some embroidery.  I think it's partially due to the light in the lounge and partially due to my sewing box having migrated upstairs.  (Oh, and having to move a box of wine to get to the sewing machine.)

I will finish "When You Are Off Duty" this weekend.  I promise!  I have the brain space now to work out the collar. and then I can sew it up.

- Pip (famous last words)

Laura_Elsewhere

I hadn't really thought about why I don't finish things before now - it's just how I've always been, a bit slapdash, happily inventing as I go... 

With autism, there's a Known Thing whereby some of us, when faced with a decision that isn't straightforward, find it very difficult to decide. If there are obvious benefits or risks, it's easy enough, but when it comes down to questions like, "front-fastening or cenre-back zip?" then there isn't an obvious right or wrong, so I lose all confidence in my judgement and 'freeze'. 
After a few weeks, I want some sewing to do so I start something else, because the previous project needs a decision made and I don't know what to decide. After a few months, it's ether buried under new Awaiting-Decision projects or else it's made me feel so guilty that I've deliberately put it away. 

I just hadn't realised til now that I don't have a single WIP or waiting-to-be-made project that is just needing me to do it - they all need me to decide things before I can get on with it...

It's my 'freezing' when faced with a simple design decision (you can imagine how easy this makes things like meal-planning for the two of us, etc.). 
So by actually making all those decisions at the start and writing them down with the reasons WHY, it makes it a lot easier for me!

PipneyJane

Laura_Elsewhere said:

I hadn't really thought about why I don't finish things before now - it's just how I've always been, a bit slapdash, happily inventing as I go... 

With autism, there's a Known Thing whereby some of us, when faced with a decision that isn't straightforward, find it very difficult to decide. If there are obvious benefits or risks, it's easy enough, but when it comes down to questions like, "front-fastening or centre-back zip?" then there isn't an obvious right or wrong, so I lose all confidence in my judgement and 'freeze'. 
After a few weeks, I want some sewing to do so I start something else, because the previous project needs a decision made and I don't know what to decide. After a few months, it's ether buried under new Awaiting-Decision projects or else it's made me feel so guilty that I've deliberately put it away. 

I just hadn't realised til now that I don't have a single WIP or waiting-to-be-made project that is just needing me to do it - they all need me to decide things before I can get on with it...

It's my 'freezing' when faced with a simple design decision (you can imagine how easy this makes things like meal-planning for the two of us, etc.). 
So by actually making all those decisions at the start and writing them down with the reasons WHY, it makes it a lot easier for me!

Your counsellor has given you a really good technique that we can all use.  It isn't just an autism thing, Hun, although the autism may make it more difficult.  A lot of people lose confidence in their decision making and then second-guess themselves so many times that they end up going round in circles of indecision.

- Pip