EXCHANGE INTERFACE

After making a Regency-style dress yesterday, the join points on my right leg muscles are absolutely on fire, and my back is making twingy feelings. Actually everything on my right side that twinges is all twinging today. Eyeball, upper gum, wrist, fingers, lower back, gluteus maximum, calf point...

I just want to lie down. Pain is tiring.

But the dress, so far!



I don't like the way I've done the zipper, but I'm not sure I have an alternative right now.

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A few links.

Canto Mooncake Recipe
Very classic, non-blog style recipe.

If we’re going to be shameless about bodies and sex, do it. Talk about menstruation, childbirth, menopause, everything. Use all of it to think about God. Have a theology of periods, preached from the pulpit on Sunday morning.

How the New Testament Turned Marriage in the Ancient World on Its Head
It's an actual essay with an abstract and downloadable bits. I was going to read this, but I'm not sure I have the brain for it right now.

“Classical Fundamentalism” vs “Ideological Neo-Fundamentalism”: How do we change lives?
I'm not sure I understand all this, but it's surely interesting.

Women-Only Housing in Britain
This is an interesting article to me: in part because I fall into the demographic space of a single, childless woman, but not into the demographic space of a woman who can't afford her own roof and lifestyle. In Jane Austen language: I am Emma Woodhouse, rather than Harriet Smith or Miss Bates (well, I might be Miss Bates, but if so nobody has yet set me down Emma-style).

Finally, I've been going through my old journal entries and found this rant. How little has changed about my id in 14 years...

No sooner announced than cancelled, alas!

I think I'm still going down to stay, though. Nice to get out of Sydney for a bit. And it's right before the Anzac Day holiday, too. Plus, the garden party may not be on, but that doesn't mean other things won't be.

In the meantime, I'm drafting myself a set of Regency stays off various patterns, etc.



This is the toile, or test-version. Mostly to work out the pattern and fit. The final one will be made of linen.

I'm also drafting a Regency shift. The full set of clothing I should like to make is: shift, petticoat, day dress, evening dress. The evening dress may-or-may-not conform to traditional Regency styles. I'd be satisfied with a modern dress in the Regency style (including zipper). But if I can fit historical-style stays underneath, I would really love to do it.

I really should clear off the desktop, push all the computer stuff back, and use that as a drafting table, etc. at night. I haven't had a specific table for cutting and drafting in IDK how long (wait, 4 years, because I set up the study like this when I started work with this place). It won't be difficult, just...messy. Because my desk is messy and full of stuff.

I've been sewing facemasks.

Not the super dooper ones that keep everything out, just the ordinary, 'don't touch your face, protects you from basic heavy spatter' ones, with space for an insert. They're not great, they won't last very long, and so long as proper clean practise is undertaken for using them, then we can do this.

Other than that, the 'old lady sewing group' (they'd have my head if they knew I'd described them like that, but honestly, they're all older than me by ten to forty years) has taken to sending pics of their weekly work to the main organiser who puts them up on the quilting blog. Tech only goes so far with these ladies.

My 'mod squad' has started Zoom sewing sessions where we're all on Zoom but sewing at our own tables. This is pretty much what we do when we meet to sew, but we're usually all in the same room, so it totally works. And yeah, it's harder to wander over and take a look at people's stuff, but it's still the social chatting and interaction that we crave from each other.

Apart from that, my local group had a Frocktails event that was supposed to take place last Saturday, but was turned virtual - you were encouraged to take a photo of yourself and your dress with a drink. So many of us did! #virtualfrocktails is the instagram tag if you're interested - and it was worldwide!

I actually posted a few photos, because I had a few dresses that I hadn't had much of a chance to show off. A hot pink 'tea dress', a silver-grey cocktail dress (that I barely fit into), and a knit that could be 'business casual' if made out of a less fancy material.


And a glam profile photo!


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Oh, and I dipped a bunch of truffles that were leftover from Christmas. And then some marzipan.

And while dipping them, I realised the spatula head looked a bit like Elvis hair. So I and my sister made Spatula Elvis. She did the outfit, I did the guitar and the photography...



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Anyway, more sewing today: I'm going to sew together a bunch of squares that have been sitting around forever. Just sew them together into a quilt top and then decide what to do with them, if anything.

Oh, and finish off those facemasks. *sigh*

Sewing post ahoy!

The Eva Knit Dress is a pattern which won some kind of dressmaking pattern-drafting competition a few years back (2013?) and people who sew their own clothes were all gaga over it.

However, a little surprisingly, it's really difficult to find pictures of it on Instagram, and equally difficult to locate decent links on Pinterest.

Nevertheless, I figured I'd make a 'muslin' of it, out of a fabric that I've had for about 10 years and used in two projects (the Number Six Cylon dress, and a summer 'lounge' wrap).

Blogged about it here, and pretty happy with it!

( one pic under the cut )