Category: Style and Wardrobe

We have been looking at china.  

What does this have to do with sewing and clothing you ask?  Surprisingly, a great deal.

I wanted new china.  I don't particularly like what we have and use everyday, although it was a great improvement over the china we had before: china I liked more style-wise but disliked contextually.  That china was a wedding gift to my DH and his first wife; she didn't want it, he kept it.  The stuff we have now is the result of protracted negotiations and was a compromise for all parties; neither one of us was happy, but we could both accept it.  It is time for a change.

As we were looking at china, looking at what is available, what we have, and what I actually like, as opposed to what I was expected to like, I was struck by something.

 

Apparently my taste in china runs to extremes, as it actually does in many other things as well.  I tend to like very plain, simple, modern pieces, things one of G's cousins calls "stark", or very ornate embellished pieces.  As for the majority of china patterns, which for the most part fall in between these extremes, there is very very little I like, although I am drawn to a few simple patterns with strong bands of color and little embellishment, patterns with an almost architectural feel.

What struck me was that I could apply this knowledge to my wardrobe as well.  I like very simple austere clothes, and I actually can do minimalism on occasion and pull it off, but I can't stick with it.  I am also drawn to very dramatic, sometimes highly constructed, pieces.  And then there is my love of the dramatic accessory and interesting color combinations.   

And yet, although most of my clothing choices tend to be fairly classic, I feel  rather blah and discomfited with fairly classic ways of putting things together.  I need, in my clothing choices, to stick with very simple structured pieces, almost to the point of being stark, or go for a strongly  decorous effect, and I feel compromised when I try to take a middle path.

I spent a little time perusing china patterns just to make myself a kind of visual guide.  I think over time it will prove quite clarifying.

I am sure there is a way to work this out without looking like I am going to a monastery one day or a party at Versailles the next.  

A package arrived in from J Crew today.    Three items were ordered; one item will be sent back.  One item is perfect.  The fate of the third item has not yet been decided; it is not quite what I hoped for but appears to be more versatile than I expected.

First the failure, a failure I did in fact anticipate.  Since I don't have a J Crew locally however, sometimes there is no alternative other than to click and risk having to return.

This little silk number looks like somthing I shouldn't be able to wear.  And it was surprisingly more attractive than I anticipated.  I wanted to wear it with a particular skirt, but it looked horrible with a skirt, made me look like a big purple blob with a skinny neck and skinny legs sticking out the other end.  With slacks however it was enchanting and even slimming.  But it is so badly made: the zipper poking out at an unattractive angle,  the seams wonky and puckered.  It isn't worth buying.

The neckline and the top two ruffles look great with a wide black belt however, making me think that I should make a blouse with the top ruffles and the scoop neckline and soft billowy sleeves.  I would wear it with the wide belt and slim tailored pants.  And if I hadn't tried this shirt I never would have thought of it.

Second:  A simple belt is the perfect item.  Narrow.  Pretty. What more can be said.

Third: A grey scoop neck tee with three quarter sleeves.  

Now I have been looking for the perfect scoop neck tee in the perfect shade of grey since I finished this sweater in August.   I would have thought it would be easy to find a scoop-neck grey top, and it was, but not the right scoop-neck grey top.  It's not that I haven't been wearing the sweater, I have, but I always wanted to wear the sweater with a particular pair of pale grey pants but I've never found the right top. I've been to the stores and come home empty-handed.  I've shopped online and sent everything back.

I would have happily made a gray top, but  I don't have the right shade of grey jersey in my stash.  In fact I have very little neutral solid-color jersey in my stash, always figuring I could just buy a tee if I wanted one.  So much for that idea.

Nor could I find the right shade of grey jersey online.  Emma One Sock had one, but it was sold out before I started looking.   Pale, cool grey does not seem to be the color of the moment in the fabric world. 

I converted two turtlenecks into this top, but it was too casual.

So when I saw this grey top on the J Crew website, I ordered it, always hopeful but not really expecting it would work.  And  was pleasantly surprised.  It is not quite as low cut on me (there is that long upper torso showing up again) and it is fairly flattering although not perfect.   

The neckline is not quite what I wanted however:  I wanted a simple modern band, preferably with a little width to it.  I wasn't looking for gathers although this neckline isn't bad.  The combination of gathers peeking below the beaded edge of Mine gives it a bit of a Tudor feel; it is not perhaps the look I was aiming for.

On the other hand, I just looked and Emma One Sock does have the perfect shade of grey jersey now so I could just order it.  The pants are already getting a little loose.  Light grey pant fabric is well represented in my stash so I could just set the two pieces aside, ready and waiting.  Mine, after all will be with me a long time.  Why compromise now?

I've been thinking a lot about sewing of late.  Thinking. but. not. yet. sewing.

You can tell that.  It doesn't mean I am not going to sew again.

I realized that for a long time I didn't sew because I just didn't like the way I looked.  I was heavier than I felt comfortable being.  And I didn't want to sew anything for me.  That is changing now.  I still need to lose more weight. You could ask my doctor or look at any estimates of how much one should weigh, and if i told you my weight, you would understand, but I am not going to go that far on a public blog.  Besides, although I am pretty much happier with how I look and feel now, I still feel a little pudgy and sluggish, so I will lose the weight.  But I am ready to start investing my time in sewing a few things for this somewhat pudgy body.

There are however a few details I have been having trouble with however, namely what should I be wearing and what should I be sewing.  For a while I was posting photos over at SG on a what did you wear today thread, but I've been remiss about that lately.  It helped me a lot however, and I've been rethinking a few long-held prejudices about what I could and could not wear.

Then Robin over at A Little Sewing on the Side posted about her struggle with finding the right things to sew and mapping out her own proportions a  flame was lighted.   So yes, I stole part of my title for this post from her.  

The idea was nothing new.  I've read about body proportions before and I had some ideas about what my own proportions were, some of which were wrong and some of which were right.  I've also read Imogen Lamport's blog for a while, since I first discovered it, although I am not always good about commenting, having been a hit and run blog-reader of late.   So when Imogen wrote about Leonardo DaVinci and body proportions, I knew I had to do this one of these days.  But I kept putting it off.

I tried to cheat and figure it out from a photo.  But that didn't work well because it has been a dark rainy year and I have a dark house.  The two brightest rooms are not great for photography,  In the bedroom I have to have the camera down low, angled up to get my whole person in a photo, which makes my legs look long, but is not accurate.  And in the sewing room, the camera is a little high, not terribly high, but as if a 6'2" person was taking the photo, and when I tried to map out the body proportions from those photos it always looked like I had a huge head and short body, which was also unrealistic.

So yesterday I taped a big piece of pattern paper to the wall and had G help me take some measurements.  It was a lot of fun, and G proved to be an exacting assistant which is not surprising.  Try asking an orthopedic surgeon to mark "mid knee" and you will get all kinds of answers: "what do you mean?  The middle of the joint?" (that is below what I would call mid knee) "The middle of the knee cap, the bottom of the knee cap, the middle of the part that bends — that is not an anatomic description"….. You get the picture.  And the answers to those questions are not as simple because I learned that different books and "experts" mark these points at different anatomic points.  Go figure.

Being a person with an advanced engineering degree and an orthopedic surgeon, G was meticulous, having me help him balance multiple levels and rulers and Triangles while he calibrated exact points of my anatomy against the flat wall.   Leonard would hopefully have been proud.

This is what I came up with, and the experience has been very helpful.

My drawings are not as detailed as Robin's, but they work for me.  And the exercise explains a lot.  Drawing it out helped even more.  I can see better why some things work and why other things don't.  And it also caused some deep inner searching, revising of my views of myself, and cleared up a few issues that apparently had been causing a good bit of cognitive dissonance.

I didn't mark the actual measurements on the picture I showed you.  I'll just say I am 5' 8.5 inches, and it worked out perfectly on the wall.  And my drawing skills are not that good, and I got he knees drawn badly, and not necessarily in the right place, but I know what they mean.

I am longest in the top and bottom quadrants: top of head to center of bust and knee to floor.   The middle sections are the shortest.  After reading Imogen I had suspected this as this is where I put on weight, in the middle:  waist and upper hips then thighs.  But I didn't realize that I was that long in the upper part.   I knew I was longish, and I knew my neck was longish, but I didn't realize that the rest was so long.  Yes some ready to wear is short through the armscye area, but I don't always add length in that area on patterns.  Maybe I've just gotten used to higher armscye's and the patterns are cut low.  I do know that I rarely need to lower the bust point, and certainly not an amount proportional to the extra 12% shown in this mapping.  I still have to work out the details here.

It is in the middle two quadrants that I was surprised the most.  I've always been told that I am long waisted, and according to that diagram I am because my waist is the red line below the "ideal" waistline.  But I am long waisted because I am long through the upper torso.  My waist is perfectly proportioned to my bust point.  Not that it matters much.  My waist is not my smallest place at this point, but that is not uncommon either.  You should try listening to G try to explain to someone that the smallest part of her body is not her waist, that the waist has a specific anatomic location, and that medically speaking, that is the place that counts, not what is "smallest".

But anyway.  What came as a shock, although it shouldn't have, was how short I am from bust to break of hip, and if you factor in my actual waist, how really short I am from waist to break of hip.  That explains why so many jeans, even jeans that are not meant to look like "mom jeans" come up dangerously past my waist and onto my ribcage.  And it also blows my long held belief that I am long through the torso, Yes, I am somewhat longer than average because I am taller than average; the halfway point comes very close to where it should be according to the idealized figure.  In fact, according to my calculations, I am actually 3% shorter in the upper body than I am in the legs.  3% is not significant.  Still, this was just a shock.    So relatively speaking the halves of my body are pretty equal and well proportioned.  Somehow when I figured that out, the fir
st thing that came to mind was a certain well-known fitting expert saying "look at those short stubby legs" at a fitting class at a sewing expo many years ago.  Not so.

This explains a lot.  And slowly I am getting ideas for what I need to do. I need to play up the top and the lower legs.   It explains why sweaters like this cropped alpaca number I knitted last summer look so good, and why I am suddenly enamored of little cropped cardigans.  It means I can play with dramatic jewelry and fabulous shoes, both of which are weaknesses of mine.  

Speaking of which, when I told G that Imogen had said I needed to play up the neckline  and my feet and lower legs, which I took to mean I had to wear fabulous dramatic necklaces and gorgeous shoes he just started cackling uncontrollably.  

I wonder why? (smile)