Picnic Print Top + Pants

 

before Tim and I met, eloped, and hit the road, I spent years and years dedicated to fashion design and making my own clothes. I've tried to continue over these last fist-fulls of years, but with living in tiny apartments and moving so often, I was never able to have another permanent sewing space. then when we moved to Maine and started cheer, I broke both my sewing machine and serger altering cheer uniforms. that was about two years ago. then, this last Christmas, Tim surprised me with a new Brother sawing machine, and he had the idea that I could turn the sunroom (my favorite room in the house!!) into a sewing room. I'm so excited! and today, I spent the last few weeks building the space 😊.

 I am so excited to get started again and teach Evelyn along the way. Yesterday, we went to the fabric store and picked out fabrics and patterns. Shes been really into wide collars and long-sleeve tees lately, and she really loves the sailor pants I always wear and has been asking for her own. 

Today was the inaugural sewing project day, and I made Evelyn a pink and white picnic check boat neck top with long sleeves. I definitely felt a little rusty (esp bc i was learning a new sewing machine at the same time), but it was also a super instinctual and fun project (though little kid sizes are tough to sew on machines). 

Making clothes is so fun because you get to figure out better ways to do things as you go. After I finish making the pants, I am going to start on a vintage-pattern dress. I have an idea to find all the vintage patterns I can and make all the clothes (just on the sewing machine and no serger), so I can learn all the techniques. It'll be fun to hunt down vintage patterns too. (Do you remember the nonfiction book about the woman who learned to cook by making every recipe in The Joy of Cooking?).

marathon sew.

i feel just like my mom today.

for the past two weeks i have been designing and sewing new clothes and mending and refashioning vintage clothes and thrift store finds. i sold and/or donated everything i never wore; clothes that got too big for me or clothes that are just not part of the way i want my wardrobe to feel or to look. my wardrobe is one of those things that i am terribly attached to and my sewing room is just an extension of all of that. 

the year i was born my mom kept a day diary of all of the clothes she made and what she wore to work for the day so she would not wear an outfit too often. and before that she would marathon sew on her days off, making three piece suits and dresses and such.

this is her at seventeen or so. she made the outfit and the swimsuit:

all morning i planned out skirts and blouses i can make to match sports jackets i already have and it just struck me how much the same things can be.

i will be posting the clothes i am working on soon, at least a few before i leave for DC next week.


this is a pair of shorts i made yesterday from a pair of ink covered jeans i picked up from the thrift store for 50 cents. i love them.

in the meantime, i am going to pick my mom's brain about suit jacket tailoring (i have an electric blue vintage jacket) and a red calvin klein dress i need to alter.


see you later, alligator.

teenage dreams are hard to beat.

originally i attempted to separate my fashion and design blog from my writing blog, but it seems impossible for me to disassociate the two, because everything i have been working towards is on the level of the other and all of the clothes i make are to cover up all of the skeletons i write about in phantoms and the space program. i grew up in a house that my parents slowly built, together, starting when they were 18, with a garden and animals and an enormous wandering world. both my parents, if they don't know how to do something, they learn it. they put it into practice. they master it and it becomes their own.

 

part out of necessity and part for the fun of it, through grade school my mom made almost everything i wore. i had the most killer harem pants in third grade and the most delicious jumpers all in crayon colors. she would sew clothes out of fabrics i liked while i painted tee shirts in her sewing room. i constantly had to try on the shells to make sure they fit and the end result would fit perfectly. in high school she made every single gown i ever wore and even now she still makes the most intricate and beautiful and completely mind blowing things. things that it is going to take me thirty years to learn how to do. (dresses and tops and skirts she has made for herself that i have completely bogarted and wear out dancing and to the ballet). i did not fully realize how talented my mother is until i went to the metropolitan's "model as muse" exhibit last summer and saw all of the hand sewn couture Dior and YSL gowns. instantly i thought, hell my mother makes things more intricate and far better formed that this! and it was all so hilarious! every visitor was so serious, like the were at church, and it was all such a funny little occasion. i couldn't wait to get back and harass her about new things and i felt so lucky to have such a cool mom. so part of all this will be about my mom and what she makes (though she has no idea i'm posting such things she's really shy about her talents).

part is going to be about my friends, because i love them and they are all the most beautiful girls and they are fun and they totally animate my ideas. part about all the stupid things i read-- i read everything, nonstop-- because everything informs everything else and it's all more like a circle, truly. and in my life, design is synonymous with art and beauty and the natural world. it's about creating a face to present. it's a functional perspective. i grew up surrounded by a beautiful world, creating a face to meet the day on the other side of the gate, where the rest of the world keeps time.

partly it's a tremendous escape. a way of locking myself in for days, giving up the ghost and forgetting the world, focusing on the perfect cuts and stitches and lines and curves. of getting it right, of watching every single twin peaks episode, being in the room nine hours and just glowing because it came out aces. it is putting faces and arms on ideas and feeling.