I made a doggie bag...for my doggie.

Hello all.

This is the reason for this post today. I love her and invite you all to follow her on instagram.

If you haven't followed my Royal Chrome adventures from a few years back, I invite you to revisit those wacky times.

A few more bags I made! I'm on a roll!

I made some more bags! These are quilted, super sturdy, and outfitted with some cute fabric.

Take a look, and buy one! Yay!

Back to my sewing machine!

I made Rowlf and he's awesome!

Hello lovely people. I hope your week was awesome and that your weekend is gonna be just as awesome if not more awesome.

I've been busy as usual, working on patterns, making some costumes I hope to be able to talk about in the next month or two, and oh, I made this Rowlf puppet.

1970s flappy/newsboy hat

Hi all! Hope you had a great weekend.

I spent my weekend drafting a pattern and making a slew of hats.

MnM 2013 progress projects

Hello lovely people.

I thought I'd give you all some progress on some of my MnM projects.

Cool Vintage things on the Internet

This week I have a cool Flickr photo stream called Black History Heritage

Great images from all types and dynamics of Black History.

Negro Soldier by Thomas Heart Benton 1942

Black Jockey in riding silks

African American Couple

Take some time and flip through. There are some great images there. Thanks Black History Heritage!

Remember, if you all have some cool vintage related, of color, plus size, or fashion resources online, please let me know by sending me and email and I'll happily share the links.

Thanks!!

Cool vintage things on the Internet

Hi everyone!

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. I'm just resizing the robe pattern and frankly, that's not much to write a post about.

I did want to introduce a new segment to my blog. I'm thinking of doing it weekly, so we will see. I find a lot of cool stuff online, and people send me a lot of links that I think are awesome so here is Cool Vintage things on the Internet.

The blog Autostraddle has a series called '150 years of lesbians' where you see lovely ladies from the early time of the photograph to today. So many cool styles and clothes.

These are two of my favorite images they compiled from all over the web.

If you all find any cool links, blogs, etc that are of the vein of my interests of this blog (vintage sewing, size issues, women, people of color) pass them along so we can all get a kick out of them!

Have a great day!

Reclaiming the word 'Stout'

It's so strange that if you are lucky enough in life, after a certain age you can actually be at peace with some of yourself.

I'm not a very politically correct person, but I do have sensitivities and I also don't walk on egg shells when it comes to body size. I remember my mother saying my legs were like 'hammocks' when I was about 9. I remember being called 'buffalo' in middle school for years by a boy in class. Growing up I was only allowed a 'sliver' of cake or pie or whatever else it was that was making me fat, and I distinctly remember when I was about 11, my mother asking me if I was 'okay' when I didn't want an ice cream cone.

Wow, it looks like I had a pretty horrid childhood in those above few sentences, doesn't it? I didn't in the least. My late mother was amazingly encouraging of my creative side, I left home and grew into my own person, loosing nearly 50 pounds when I became vegan. I came home and got hit on by that boy who called me 'buffalo' when I was a child, and now that I am an adult, I feel no need to sit and take any comment toward my size. As a result I have a very sharp tongue.

This all brought me to thinking how we actually think of ourselves, visually. I think sewing helps. I haven't bought RTW in about 3 years. I don't have to worry about the crazy inconsistency of modern clothing sizes, or the tent like garments or to the opposite, the unnecessarily 'sexy' paper thin see through tops. It's not as if you can bluntly guess in sewing, "Oh, I'm this and that," and get amazing results. A lot comes down to math. And what is math? Honesty.

Being honest in how you see yourself is more valid than how sensitive in what you want to be called. If you have a gut, say so. Its not as if no one else can't see it. Thick thighs, fine. Fat arms (raises hand), okay. Double chin....yeah.

Plump, Curvaceous, Zoftig, Voluptuous, Plus Size, Rotund, Stout, Fat

My politically correct size index. I left out a few, and some might say rotund is worse than stout, but some people love the compliment their boobs being 'rotund' so there counts the word's extra bonus points.

First off I don't think anyone wants to be fat. Period. Thats not what I'm taking about. Just like I don't think people want to be short, or unwillingly bald, or old, or have bad skin. Duh! But ample (which is my favorite word next to stout) has been expected since the beginning of time.

I just decided that for me, and for the styles I like, I was going to find the most relevant identifiers I could and see how they were in their element. And when I think of larger women from the 30s, I think of Lila and Rita Sue.

Carnivale was an awesome show, but those two women, who were sexy unapologetic and stout, helped me identify with some of the characters. The show starts in 1934, so I looked through my NRA marked Lane Bryant catalogs and I see them, and the target customer the clothes were aiming to. Not women ashamed of their size, but wanted something that *was* their size, made to flatter their size. Not the constant notion of, 'You need to change to fit our clothes because smaller is overwhelmingly better,' that we get today.

I mean really, in the modern context of weight appearance, what we call fat is really what was fairly normal back in those times.

Take modern Lane Bryant for instance. Those current models are average weight, or straight sized. That is plus size today. So the fashion industry jumps from a size 2-4 to a 10-14 for plus. Wow. So if straight sizes are fat, what are fat sizes?

Look at this progression of Lane Bryant Catalogs.

See how ridiculous it all is?

I'm also not talking standards of beauty. Those change with each gust of the breeze.

We've gone from The Venus of Willendorf

to Ruben's Venus to Twiggy and beyond. Wow.

Acceptance of your body, which I know is not an easy thing to reach is empowering. But really, the older you get, don't you get more and more tired of standards that are applied on the wind? I know I do because I've never looked like the modern standards, but I do look like the oldest Venus (except I have feet and a face). If I had lived back then, I would have had the body of a goddess.

Naw, I'm cool with living now. I like deodorant. :)

New Toy!

Ah, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds...

I dont know a thing about knitting.

Anything.

At all.

But while on an excursion to a neighborhood thrift store, I came across this Brother Knitting Machine in its box! The plus was the manager of the store said that it was from the estate of an avid sewer, who took great care of her things. The bad news was there was no instruction booklet.

In the store thanks to my iPhone, I furiously googled the heck out of this thing. I found some model number relatives listed on eBay and around the web, but something told me not to let this go. I chatted with the manager again, and was able to get the marked price of $100 down to $30. He said that he didn't think he'd see anyone as excited about this device as I was. How nice! Now I owe him a sweater.

This model is the first of its line, and is from the mid 70s. Apparently accessories are hard to get for it, but we will see...

Now the quest to find the instruction booklet was just as lovely. I found a free copy online via a painful popup window forrest, but it was a bad scan, and half the pages were cut off. Then I found the manual for sale in the UK, but it didn't sell. I contacted the seller and asked if they would list the manual as a BIN. Sure enough they did and its on it way to me as I type!

Im excited about this device I know nothing about, and doing a craft I know nothing about. Even found someone who used it on their blog. So much mystery...But its a toy! Yay! I just hope I can put it to use.