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Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Making Patterns and Sewing Clothes

I just recently was going through boxes of photos ranging from 30 years ago to pick out some pictures for my daughter's up coming wedding. Yes.....photos. On real paper in envelopes with celluloid negatives. Remember? Before digital cameras. Before photoshop.

It was like digging into a box of memories. Remembering when and where I took these photos. Pictures of my daughter as a baby, a toddler, a gangly pre teen and finally a beautiful young woman. Pictures of people I haven't seen in 30 years. Pictures of people I don't even remember who they even are.

While scanning many of the early photos to put onto a disk, I realized just how much sewing I used to do. Almost all my daughter's best dresses and outfits were those that I made for her. Most of my clothes were made by myself for myself. We were poor, collected food stamps for a while, and had to make do with what we had. Even so, we got by pretty good and we look spiffy in our home made clothing.

This got me to thinking about our current economic situation and reflecting on my previous post about "Going Galt". Why pay top dollar for clothing that is poorly made, doesn't fit, probably made in Guatemala or China and continue to contribute to the "machine".

So, my creative juices started to flow and I pulled out a book that I've had for some time on making custom clothing patterns. I'd forgotten how easy and fun it was. When I was younger, ahem...thinner and gravity wasn't such a big drag on certain parts of my body, the patterns from McCalls or Vogue worked just fine. However, it seems a little alterations are in order.

If they can do it on Project Runway, heck yeah........ so can I. One more thing to liberate myself from the yoke of government control.

2 comments:

  1. I wish I was better at sewing. I LOVE looking at fabrics in the store. There are so many gorgeous ones. But they're so expensive that sometimes it seems cheaper to buy clothes.

    If you do start sewing make sure to share your work! =)

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  2. you know, there are companies online that'll scan your boxes of photos for you. it would take forever on a flatbed. www.thedigitalconvert.com is one i ran into recently and has good prices. since your kids are getting married and moving out, it would probably be nice to get all those pics on disc so they can see 'em too.

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