Threads & Snaps

Alert: this post is sewing and photography. If they’re not your bag, you might want to skip this one.

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My first top — which was comfy but made with vintage fabric — but the dust within 24 hours of first wearing. I’m pretty sure the material sat in someone’s shed in the heat since circa 1980 or earlier. It was deliciously wonderful on the skin, was too big by far, and the material simply disintegrated, starting within a few hours of putting it on my body.

Fortunately that was only my “muslin”, my practice garment. The second top I made (sorry, no photos yet) was better made. It’s still too big, le sigh. I wore it for a few days, tossed it into the laundry, and will toss it on again soon.

If anybody who reads here also sews, there are at least two resources for free online sewing patterns for clothing, and they’re gloriously size inclusive. The old-school pattern companies — Simplicity, Butterick and McCall’s, primarily — have become ridiculously expensive. They’re limited in size and frankly I didn’t see anything in their lines that I liked.

But y’all. The free patterns online…

I can get a free pattern in my size for the milkmaid dress design shown left, which is what I decided to do with the purple polka dot fabric where I bought the whole bolt. And did I mention it was FREE??

The photo above left, which was doctored from the site where I got the pattern, is a little more va-va-voom than the version I’m making. One, my version will be made from cotton, which by nature ain’t’ fancy-schmancy. I won’t be wearing it off the shoulder, either, because HAHAHA with my boobilage? Nevah!

Likewise, I’m not wearing suicide shoes any time soon.

The photo at right was my sofa tonight. Free patterns are printed out in “tiles” so you can print on letter-size paper. Then you have to tape them together and cut out the pieces.

So far, the two sites with the best free clothing patterns are Mood and Fabric Store. Other sites offer free patterns for tote bags, etc.

Nothing wrong with a good tote bag. It’s just not my current trajectory.

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If the banner photo at the top of this entry didn’t clue you in, we actually made some photography runs over the past couple of weekends.

It’s still hot as Hades out. But it’s our rainy season, and it has indeed rained a few afternoons and evenings now. Our temperatures aren’t what any rational person would consider “comfortable”. They are, however, enough lower to make it less dangerous to be out, at least when we leave early in the morning.

So we went out shooting. (With cameras. We don’t do guns at our house.)

 

This was a bit of a departure for me. The original is the dusty version with the smattering of a green field. It was decidedly “meh”. However, I DID like the weathered wooden triangle, so I Frankensteined a sky from another photo I took, adjusted light and tone, and used AI to trade in the field for a beach. I like it. I’m just not sure where the line is between “a photo I took” and “complete fabrication”. Somewhere around 3/4 of the beach photo actually is from my camera, albeit more than one photo cobbled together. The 1/4 that isn’t from my camera is nonetheless a key part of it, though.

This photo of a crop duster midair isn’t cropped. That’s how close we were to him at one point. (Not complaining a bit – he could see us snapping photos and decided to give is an airborne “howdy!”)

Closeups were kind of a theme, with this little native cottontail almost close enough to reach out and pet. Not quite – a zoom lens definitely at play here. I was in the car, though, and close enough I’m shocked he didn’t dash away long before I got close enough for this snap.

Obviously this one isn’t a closeup. However, the colors, trees, and bisecting lines of the light pole give a sense of this being four-way symmetry. Look closer: it isn’t. It WAS the day after a downpour, when the parking lot at Joann’s turns into a small lake. So the lower half of the photo is reflection. The top, though, borders on optical illusion. It’s close — just not an exact match.