2011 In Review -- Part 2: Dresses

Moving right along with the "what I sewed in 2011" theme, next up is dresses.  It's funny, I started the last post feeling like I had sewn piles and piles of skirts last year, when in fact I only finished four.  On the other hand, I felt like I didn't spend much time on dresses last year, but when I started looking through my closet and the photos I took in the last 12 months, I realized I actually finished three dresses in 2011, and heavily modified one purchased dress.

Part of the disconnect there is that for years, I sewed mostly costumes and gowns.  I always ended the year with a gown/cocktail dress for the semi-formal Christmas party MB's office throws every year (for instance: 2008, 2009).  But this year, his office changed plans for the party and ended up making it casual (I wore the blue satin skirt from the last post), so my sketch for the gown I wanted to make this year has gone unmade.  Without that bookend to my year, it felt like I didn't do all that much dressmaking.

The other part of it is that while I did sew or modify four day dresses in 2011, as of now only one of them is in rotation in my closet.  But I'll explain that as I get to each dress.

The first dress I sewed in 2011 was actually part of my fall 2010 sewing list that I didn't quite get to before the end of the year.  I'd wanted a 1960s-ish wiggle dress for awhile, something that looked like wool without the itchiness that would necessitate a lining and add bulk.  When I found a synthetic brushed flannel in this awesome gray-brown, the whole project came together.

I started with a muslin pattern I made years ago (possibly originally based on McCall's 5232? honestly can't remember now) of a princess line dress that I know fits me -- and with my 28J bra size, getting a princess seamed dress to fit smoothly is no easy feat.  I folded the full skirt of the muslin in from the hipline downwards, since I knew I wanted it fitted, and then fiddled with the seams to get the fit right once I could try it on.

Once I had the fit perfected -- tight and wiggly and very Joany -- I added a band of the same fabric to the underbust.  I found some buttons that matched the fabric beautifully and played around with the placement (since they're non-functional) until I found the most flattering location.  I put a looooong invisible zipper at center back, quite nearly the whole length of the dress, so that it would open up enough to easily get into and out of.  I also played with the hem length quite a bit, eventually going with a couple of inches above my knees, a bit shorter than I usually do, but it felt like it worked for this dress.  I experimented with a few inches below the knee too, but it ended up looking too much like a costume rather than like a nod to the 60s.

I unfortunately didn't have a single real photo of this dress on me, nor do I have a dressform to photograph it on (but that's a topic I'll get to in the next few weeks here), so I figured out the timer on my camera and took a couple of shots in front of my front door (one of the few bits of blank wall in my house with a flat surface nearby; I have a feeling we're going to get to know this bit of wall real well on this blog, lol).  You guys will have to forgive my photography and photo-editing skills, just as a general rule.

I love the way this dress looks on me.  I feel like I stepped out of MadMen, but the length still makes it feel modern.  I wore it a lot in the first half of the year, but as with so many other things, my hip joints decided that wiggle dresses are right out, and I had to retire this dress from daily wear.  I'm holding on to it in the hopes that my hip joints will be able to handle this sort of fitted dress again someday, but for now it languishes at the back of my closet.  On the bright side, knowing that I could no longer wear this without pain helped quite a lot when I set out to make the houndstooth pencil skirt mentioned in the last post.

The second dress I made in 2011 was another of my pre-Paris sewing projects.  I really liked the idea of a black jersey dress for travel, the sort of dress you can wad up and throw in your suitcase, then pull it out, give it a shake, throw it on with heels and some accessories and look amazing.  I looked around at pictures online of travel dresses to get a basic idea of shapes and styles, and then dove in without any other guidance.

I started with a black light-weight cotton-poly jersey, more silky than tshirty but still stretchy, that I found at JoAnn's.  It doesn't wrinkle at all, no matter what I do to it, so it's perfect for this sort of dress.  I cut it into a really basic tank dress shape to start out with, no closures, just pull over my head.  It was rather baggy to start out with, especially with just the side seams for shaping, so I added a strip of fabric at the underbust, which I turned into a drawstring casing.  I put a bit of ribbon through it so I could cinch in the underbust, then did a little shirring at the shoulders.

Somewhere along the way, I'm not quite sure when or how, but the shoulder-to-underbust length got a bit too short.  If I tied the underbust tie nice and tight, I could make it stretch downwards and fit, but it naturally didn't want to hang in quite the right place.  I did end up wearing it once in Paris, layered with a jean jacket and scarf, but I wasn't thrilled with it and haven't found myself reaching for it from the back of my closet.  Over the summer I pulled it out and took my seam ripper to the underbust portion.  So now it's back to baggy, but I still feel like there's a kernel of something good in there.  For now, it's in back in my sewing stash, but I'd like to take another swing at it in 2012.

Apparently the third time was the charm when it came to dressmaking in 2011.  The third dress was a sundress I made shortly after getting back from Paris (though I seem to remember delusions of grandeur about somehow finishing it before the trip).  For the last few years I've really wanted a soft cotton dress in a black woven fabric with little red flowers.  I looked for months and months for fabric that matched what I imagined, looking locally, on my trip to the LA fabric district, and online, but couldn't find anything.

Then one day I found myself in the quilting cotton section --  home of cheap, stiff, badly printed cotton that really isn't suitable for dressmaking, for the most part.  But as I was looking at a black and white polka-dot fabric that consisted of really nothing but a black print on one side of white fabric, somehow inspiration struck.  What if I dyed it?  I made my first foray into dyeing purchased fabric in 2010 (for my Hit Girl skirt) and absolutely loved the results.

So I bought a couple of yards of the black-with-white-polka-dots quilting cotton and a packet of red dye (I love the iDye products but I can't say for sure if I used it for this project, as my local JoAnn's tends to have a pretty limited selection of colors) and threw it all in my washing machine.

The results were a wonderfully customized fabric that was bright orangey-red on one side and black with red polka-dots on the other side.  The dye also seemed to have improved the drape of the fabric, even more than just washing it would have.  If I remember correctly, I dyed the fabric before the Paris trip but didn't get around to sewing it until some time after we got back.

When I finally got back to this dress, I decided to use Vogue 8648 as a jumping off point.  I wanted to do the full-skirt option, but when I started laying out the fabric, I realized I was a bit short on the yardage.  Since I was worried that I wouldn't be able to replicate the exact dye shade I had achieved the first time around, I decided to just "make it work" as they say.  I made a muslin of the bodice, adjusting the princess seam over the bust to the curve that I know works for me, and shortening the underbust to waist length (a tad more than I should have, turns out), then cut out all the little bodice pieces, trying to waste as little fabric as possible.  I narrowed the skirt to 3/4 of a circle and shortened it to just barely knee-length, to try to get as much out of the yardage I had.

I love the way this dress turned out, though of course I can see all the small faults.  The skirt is just a touch longer in the center front and back than on the sides, which really only becomes apparent when the black petticoat I usually wear with this slips down a bit and shows at the sides but not in the front.  I don't think anyone else has ever noticed, but in some photos it's a bit more obvious:

I used hem tape for the first time with this dress, since I was trying to get every last inch out of the fabric.  I really liked hem tape, and have used it a few times since, but the idea of having to pick that all out is what's stopped me from fixing the length issues.  Like I said, I usually wear a net petticoat with this, but occasionally I'll layer it with my old muslin peasant skirt instead, and the skirt still has a nice amount of loft.

I would definitely like to make this pattern again, and have a white cotton sundress idea bouncing around that it might be perfect for.  The straight-skirt view is probably not a great idea for me, but there are a lot of skirt variations that would work well with the bodice.  If I made it again, I wouldn't shorten the bodice pieces quite so much, and I would of course buy enough fabric this time, but otherwise I wouldn't change much.

Later in the summer, I finally broke down and bought my first dress from ModCloth.  As a general rule I really like the ModCloth styles, but I've been a bit leery of their construction and fabric quality, and of course nothing has fit me off the rack for nearly 20 years now.  But I saw that they were having a sale, and their Brunch At My Place dress jumped out and yelled "buy me!"  It had just the sort of 60s shift feeling I'd been longing for, and I loved the lace fabric.  It was on sale, they had a few left in my size, so I gave in and bought it.

Of course, shift dresses aren't a great shape on me -- without structured waist definition, I can look a bit like a lumpy sack of potatoes, as my grandma (whose figure I inherited) has always said.  So when the dress arrived, I wasn't surprised that it looked kind of meh on me.  But sewing skills to the rescue!  The fabric is dark enough that I was able to put in two long, thin elliptical darts without losing the basic line of the dress.  I pinned and fussed until I figured out where I wanted to put the darts, running from my bust point to my hipline, and taking out a total of about 6" from the waistline.

Thankfully ModCloth had cut the lace on the grain (thank you ModCloth!) so I was able to use the geometric nature of the lace to perfectly line up the darts.  I repeated the darts on the lining as well, which is made from a thin jersey material that thankfully doesn't fray, so I was able to leave the seams unfinished inside.  Once I was happy with the darts, I chopped a couple of inches off the bottom and rehemmed it, to give it a more 60s mod feel on my 5'1" frame.

While I was in there chopping up the dress, I also took the ties off the sleeve ends, turned under an inch or so, and threaded elastic through the casing I had just made.  The sleeves are much less fussy that way, and stay at whatever elevation I push them to.

I wore this dress quite a lot last fall, usually with opaque black sweater tights.  When tights started to become an issue for my hips in early December, I cut the top off that pair and turned them into stockings (which I'll have a separate post about soon), which I wear with garter clips to keep them up.  I haven't worn this dress with my tights-turned-stockings yet, and I'm a bit worried it's too short to comfortably wear with garters, so this may become a warm weather dress, at least until I get some better/shorter garters.

So for all that, the black-with-red-polka-dots sundress is the only one I still wear with any frequency.  Thankfully in southern California, even January offers a few days when it's warm enough to wear a sundress, but I would like to get some of these others back into my rotation, if I can.

Next post, I'll tackle the costumes I made in 2011!

(Model: me.  Photographer: me, plus my handy dandy timer.  Makeup from Faerie Organic, lipstick from Afterglow in Courage, nail polish from No Miss in Miami Red, shoes from Gabriella Rocha. Special co-star: my front door.)

This work by http://sheliesshattered.blogspot.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

2011 In Review -- Part 1: Skirts

Reading through some of my favorite sewing blogs (Gertie's New Blog For Better Sewing, Elegant Musings, Wearing History, and Male Pattern Boldness, just to name a few), there seems to be a rash of "What I Sewed in 2011" posts going around -- and I love them.  Seeing all the beautiful things my favorite bloggers created last year really makes me kick myself that I didn't start blogging my own sewing earlier.  I did post on Twitter about my sewing projects fairly regularly, but I still don't have as many photos of my finished projects as I would like. I'll try to channel that into motivation to keep blogging throughout 2012, and to take more photos.

My memory being what it is, I'm going to break my 2011 projects down by category rather than by the month that I sewed it in -- skirts, dresses, costumes, home decor and disability aids, and gifts.  I think that'll cover everything.

2011 was definitely The Year Of Skirts.  I started off the year still easing into a retro aesthetic in my everyday wardrobe, and as part of that I challenged myself to wear skirts and dresses more often.  Skirts are an easy, quick sewing project comparatively, and I often don't even use a pattern when designing and sewing skirts, just work from my measurements and initial sketch.  The simplicity and ease of skirts has put me off them in previous years -- why sew something simple and easy to fit when I could be tackling the fabulous and precisely-fit? -- but throughout the course of 2011 I came to really love sewing skirts, and have several more sketches and ideas for skirts to make this year.  Of course, by the time October rolled around, I was suddenly quite glad that I'd found my love of skirts, since my joints could no longer handle wearing jeans and pants!

The first skirt I sewed in 2011 was for the trip my husband (who I'll refer to as MB here, for his Twitter account MarcusBlack_) and I took to Paris in April.  By that point I was already having trouble wearing jeans, pants, and fitted skirts for long periods of time, especially when travelling, so I thought a full gathered skirt would be the most comfortable for the twelve or so hours we were going to spend flying from southern California to Paris, while still looking cute when I stepped off the plane.  From there I started thinking about black-on-black textures and the idea of several types of semi-sheer fabric layered together to form a 3D effect -- specifically black lace, chiffon, and tulle layered on top of each other.

In the search for high-quality black lace with a scalloped edge (I love full skirts but hate hemming them, so I'll always use the selvage edge of the fabric as a hem if at all possible) I made my first pilgrimage from Orange County up to the fabric district in LA.  It was a little nerve-wracking and I somehow managed to miss going to Mood while I was there, but the collection of little fabric stores, holes-in-the-walls really, was amazing.  I scored a gorgeous French lace fabric (and even haggled for the price!), along with chiffon and yards and yards of netting and tulle.

The lower layers of the skirt were composed (from the inside outwards) of a short black jersey lining, then tulle, netting, chiffon, and finally lace, all gathered (and gathered and gathered -- I really need to get myself a gathering presser foot, omg) onto a black jersey waistband.

I broke a shocking number of needles sewing this skirt, especially considering how delicate each of the layers are.  I remember being in the final few days before we left for Paris and trying to get the lace overlay for the waistband attached, and my sewing machine simply would not cooperate.  It's usually very reliable and hardy, but machines really do know when you're down to the wire, don't they?  I ended up hand-sewing the last of the waistband into place, sometime after I took this photo:

I did manage to get it finished in time, if only barely, and added a cute little black satin ribbon tie to the front right hip, as the lace isn't stretchy but the jersey lining is, and the skirt has no other closures.  I wore it on the plane to Paris in complete comfort (other than the fact that the lace likes to grab ahold of both my charm bracelet and the zipper on my leather jacket) and out to dinner while we were there at least once, if I remember correctly.  MB snapped this photo of me in our apartment there, which is unfortunately one of the best photos I have of the skirt.

The hemline hits right about at my knee, which is a length I find myself gravitating towards.  At 5'1" and short-waisted, I find that tea-length looks odd on me except for formal dresses, and even then I have to play around to get the exact right length.  But knee-length is always a safe bet.  I also managed to avoid doing any hemming on this skirt, by using the scalloped edge of the lace and the selvage of the chiffon at the hemline, and leaving the tulle, netting, and jersey all unhemmed, as they don't fray.

When I finally broke down and bought a petticoat last fall, it was primarily to go with this skirt.  As puffy as it is on its own, the extra fullness at the hem provided by the petticoat really makes it cute.  I love all the skirts I made in 2011, but this is definitely my favorite.  It's got a somewhat retro vibe, especially with the petticoat, but isn't from a strict time period, and there's a subtle shabby-chic thing with the way the lace wears that I just love.  It's probably the one piece in my wardrobe that best describes me.

By the time we got back from Paris it was time to buckle down and start sewing costumes for DragonCon, so I didn't get back to skirt sewing until the fall.  With my ability to wear jeans and pants quickly fading and another trip (this time to Walt Disney World in Florida -- I have no idea whose idea it was to travel this much in 2011, but never again, seriously) coming up, I knew I needed more skirts.  Practical skirts.  Skirts I could run around Disney World in and not worry about ruining them.  Skirts not made of French lace.

Between October and the last week of November, I sewed three skirts and started a couple more, which I hope to finish sometime this year -- a pretty fast rate of sewing for me, especially as my health also took a dive around that time.  In more or less chronological order, the three skirts I finished were the jersey maxi, the blue satin, and the houndstooth pencil.  (And again, please forgive the cell phone pics and vacation shots.  I really do need to get  better at photographing my creations this year.)

My inspiration for the jersey maxi skirt was Elle Apparel's lovely tutorial on jersey maxi skirts.  I went with a fairly heavy black cotton jersey that I picked up at my local JoAnn's, and decided to cut it on the bias to give it some extra drape and flow.  Using Elle's tutorial as a jumping off point, I drafted a simple pattern from my measurements and cut the front half of the skirt on a 45° bias.

For the back of the skirt, I decided to use a technique I'd last used on the formal gown I made in 2008, where the center back seam flares out significantly, creating a great drape in the back, especially when cut on the bias.  (I'm sure there's a technical term for this, but for the life of me I can't remember what it is, and my Googlefu is failing me.  Anyone out there know what the correct term is?)  I used the same simple drafted pattern that I'd used for the front, but cut extra space at the back center seam.

I drafted a simple waistband and facing, and used Elle's instructions for sewing with elastic thread in the bobbin (a first for me!) to give the waist a bit more fit.

Of course, the skirt ended up being huge on me.  I didn't want it to be too tight, as that would irritate my hip joints and defeat the purpose, but I always seem to underestimate the amount of stretch in both jersey and bias.  Combine those two and even working directly from my measurements, the fit ended up a bit loose.  I took in the side seams a tad, and over the past few months I've gotten used to the fit.  When it's fresh out of the dryer, this skirt fits like a dream, with the waistband hitting right below my waist and the hem just barely floor-length.  But the more I wear it, the more the waist loosens up and the skirt gets longer and longer, until eventually I'm tripping over it and hiking it back up my hips.  At which point I just throw it in the wash again and start the cycle over.

MB had trouble getting a half-way decent shot of me in the skirt once it was finished, but the skirt, the lighting in our kitchen, and my "I'm sewing today and not going anywhere" hair and makeup didn't help anything.  It's really much cuter in person, promise.

I wore this on the plane to and from WDW, and it was comfortable, but I prefer the black lace skirt for travel when I can.  That said, this is by fair my most comfortable skirt ever, and what I live in at home most days.  I'm wearing it as I write this -- it's gotten to the stretched out and cat-hair-covered phase, so needs to  be thrown into the wash again soon, lol.  I have leftover jersey fabric from this project still.  My attempt to make a wrap dress from it before the WDW trip was an exercise in frustration, but eventually I want to pull it out of my stash and whip up another skirt or two, in shorter lengths.

For the next skirt project, I was inspired by this skirt from Margaret Howell's Fall 2011 collection:

In my stash I had the remains of a terrible costume skirt I made in high school (before I realized how much I hate narrow-cut dirndl skirts) -- roughly two yards of dark blue polyester satin with one seam, a machine hem, and a draw string waist.  It had been sitting in my stash for at least twelve years waiting for a remake into something wearable, and this seemed like a perfect excuse.  While following Elle Apparel's maxi skirt tutorial, I saw that she had another tutorial for what she called The Gilded Skirt.  Using that and the inspiration pic as a jumping off point and my strictly limited amount of fabric as a limitation, I dove in head first.

The contrast satin stripe on the inspiration skirt was something that I definitely wanted to keep, and it gave me a perfect way to use the reclaimed satin without ending up with a shiny polyester satin skirt.  I wanted to get as much fullness at the hemline as possible, given that I was only working with two yards (likely a bit less), so after picking out the old back seam, the first thing I did was figure out how tall I wanted the shiny stripe to be, and then cut that plus seam allowance from the original hem of the skirt.  Given my hatred of hemming, I used the hem I had sewn in high school, though I did end up picking out the stitching, ironing it nice and flat, and then re-sewing it with a hidden hem stitch using the correct tension, to eliminate the puckering the original hem had.  (It's always nice to see concrete examples of how your sewing technique has improved over the years, isn't it?)

For the body of the skirt, I flipped the fabric over, so that the matte underside became the right side.  Using Elle's recommendation for slightly more fabric in the back, I divided up the two yards of satin into one front piece and two back pieces.  Since I wanted the new skirt to be shorter than the original skirt, I had plenty of fabric length to work with, and drafted a simple waistband (higher in the back and lower in the front, which I've found over the years I really prefer) from the upper section of the old skirt.

The pleats were nothing more complicated than a bit of math to see how much fabric I needed to fold over in order to make the body of the skirt match the waistband, then dividing that amount of fabric evenly between several pleats.  I did inverted pleats on the back sections, just like Elle's Gilded Skirt, but in the front I played around with different pleat types until I found a combination of number and size and location that I liked the look of.  I tacked down the pleats, attached the waistband and the stripe, put in an invisible zipper in back, sewed up the side and back seams, and called it done.  This is another great example of why I love sewing skirts so much.

Like the black lace skirt, this one hits right about at knee level.  It has a nice amount of fullness on its own, but I tend to wear a little white muslin peasant skirt I made years ago as an underlayer to this skirt, both for warmth and for loft.

It got a good amount of wear in WDW and the matte side of the satin held up just fine.  Random fact: MB hated this skirt while I was sewing it.  Hated it.  Once it was finished and I tried it on with the tights and shirt I'm wearing in the above photo, he did a 180 and suddenly loved it.  Every time I've worn it since then, he's mentioned how much he likes it.  I'm not quite sure what I wasn't communicating well about my design, but it ended up just like I had imagined it, and I'm just glad MB loves it as much as I do now, heh.  It's probably his favorite of all my skirts, while for me it ranks a close second after the French lace skirt.

(Also in the above photo, the little black suede purse I designed and sewed a few years back, after giving up on ever finding The Perfect Handbag in a store.  I love that thing so much, though as you can see from the safety pin, it needs a little repair.  Handbag sewing is a little more fiddly and annoying than clothing sewing IMO, just trying to get into all those little corners, but it's so worth it.  That is by fair the most used piece I've ever sewn.)

For the third and final skirt of The Great Skirt Push of 2011, I really wanted a plaid pencil skirt.  Really really.  While looking for plaid fabric at JoAnn's (didn't have the time or the energy for another trip up to the LA fabric district, sadly), I came across this lovely soft cotton woven houndstooth fabric, and decided I liked it better than any plaid.  I love the look of pencil skirts, but given the issues I was having with pants at the time, I knew I couldn't go too tight with it, or it would put too much pressure on my hip joints to wear comfortably.

I used Vogue 7937 since I had it in my stash and had used it to make a pencil skirt several years ago (which is sadly far too tight to wear anymore).  I went with view A (without the belt loops) and cut it a bit loosely.  The pattern is very straight forward, and with just the two back vents as the only even somewhat complicated bit, the skirt went together rather quickly.  When I first tried it on, the skirt fit in the waist, but through the hips it looked like I was wearing a size or two too big.  I brought it in little by little, making sure I could sit without pain each time I took it in.  It's still not quite as fitted as I would like, visually, but it's as tight as my hip joints can handle.

I wore it on our first day in Disney World (we went to Animal Kingdom, where the set design continues to astound me), figuring that as the week went on, my hips would be less able to handle an even somewhat fitted skirt.  I loved it and wish I was able to wear it more often.  For a day walking around on vacation, it's great.  For sitting in the car or on an airplane, not so much.

And that's it for The Skirts Of 2011.  In addition to these four, I have a gray wool skirt I sewed in 2009, a floor-length spring green wrap skirt I sewed in 2002 or so, and a purchased dark green knee-length wrap skirt from 2005ish.  Between those and the handful of day dresses I have, I'm managing life-without-pants pretty well.  I would definitely like to sew more skirts in 2012, and have sketches for two or three ready to go.  And this time, I'll blog about them as I finish them!

Next post I'll cover the dresses I made in 2011.  Until then, thanks for reading, and please do leave a comment to say hi!

This work by http://sheliesshattered.blogspot.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Hello, World

I'm finally taking the plunge and making my own sewing blog, after years of voraciously reading the sewing blogs of others.  This blog will focus primarily on my own sewing (and designing and drafting) for clothing and costumes for myself, as well as the occasional gift or home-decor bit.  I'll try to keep non-sewing posts to a minimum, but by way of introduction, here's a bit about me and what you can expect from She Lies Shattered.

Both the blog name and the screenname I use throughout various points on the internet -- GlassCannon -- come from a poem I wrote in 2008:

She lies
  shattered
Proverbial glass cannon
  backfired
Fire smolders, smoke
  dissipates
She lies shattered.

The top definition for "glass cannon" on UrbanDictionary.com is "a person, weapon, or vehicle which has a high output, but a low defense, life, durability, etc."  The term comes from video games -- my background and occasional profession -- but I've found it describes me as a person fairly well.  In personality I'm feisty, opinionated, passionate, and creative, but physically I'm rather fragile and easily exhausted.

Eight years ago this week, I started experiencing pain and instability in my hip and knee joints.  In the decade leading up to that sudden onset, I had been diagnosed with two autoimmune diseases (Alopecia Areata and Hashimoto's Thyroiditis), but both had been diagnosed quickly and were fairly well under control.  But this was something new, and something that baffled the doctors.  Every day things like sitting or walking became painful, and my joints would give out for no reason.  Multiple Sclerosis was the first suspect, but when that was ruled out, my ever-growing army of doctors moved on to Rheumatoid Arthritis, then Lupus, Fibromyalgia, Autoimmune Peripheral Neuropathy, Ankylosing Spondylitis -- the list went on and on, each new disease eventually ruled out.  I was put on opioid painkillers, shuffled from specialist to specialist, and did my best to minimize the symptoms by cleaning up my diet and the chemicals in my environment.  The latest theory is a genetic disease (as several of my siblings are now showing similar symptoms) called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and one of my major goals for 2012 is convincing my doctors to look into it seriously.  But after living with this thing for eight years, I'm no closer to a diagnosis, and the disease continues to progress.

As of this month, my primary symptoms are still pain and instability in my knee and hip joints, but over the years it's spread to my other joints as well, particularly my shoulders, elbows, ankles, and fingers.  Sitting for too long causes my pain to spike up, but so does walking for too long, or standing still for even more than a few minutes.  I get exhausted easily as well, and so live my life by the spoon theory, rationing my energy and splitting up tasks that healthy people take for granted over the course of several days -- I can't shower and go grocery shopping in the same day, for instance.  From 2004 to late 2010 I structured my employment as a video game designer around telecommuting, contracting, and consulting, full-time when I felt up to it, part-time or not at all when my illness flared up.  In January 2011, I decided to take a sabbatical from the entire industry, and while I do miss it and the amazing people I got to work with, I don't miss the added stress and drain on my already meager energy supplies.

Leaving my video game job also allowed me more time to sew.  My mom taught me to sew when I was eight years old (so nearly 23 years ago now!), and I started getting more serious about it when I was in high school.  In addition to my body's illness-related weirdness, it's also weird when it comes to fit.  I'm 5'1", short-waisted, and wear a 28J bra size.  No dress has fit me off the rack since puberty, so in high school I started designing and sewing my own prom dresses.  I branched out from there to costumes and SCA garb, and in the last few years brought it full-circle and started sewing more daily-wear clothing as well.  I tend to sew mainly for myself and a few close family members.  I don't do commissions because of my illness, which doesn't respond well to deadlines, but I've tossed around the idea of selling finished pieces online eventually.

As my illness has progressed, I've started to use sewing as a coping mechanism.  In the past year, I've sewn several cushions and the like to make sitting at the computer or at the sewing machine less painful.  I've designed and sewn clothes that make me feel pretty, to help combat the depression that comes with living with a chronic painful illness.  And I sew as a creative outlet, to make something, finish it, produce it, and put it out there in the world, especially since I can't have kids and can't work.

And then this past fall, my illness decided it was time for a major wardrobe restructuring.  At first I couldn't wear jeans after a certain time of the afternoon, as the heavy material would irritate my hip and knee joints too much and spike my pain levels up earlier in the day than they otherwise would.  And then I couldn't wear jeans at all, no matter how early in the day it was or how loosely they were cut.  Trousers followed soon after, and then yoga pants, and most recently tights.

No jeans, no trousers, no yoga pants, no tights.  What exactly does that leave me to clothe my lower body?

It leaves skirts and dresses, thankfully!  In the last couple of years I've been gravitating more towards a retro aesthetic in my clothing and beauty routine -- vaguely late 1950s, early 60s, but nothing too strict or literal, and typically me-made, not actual vintage.  When I finally bought a petticoat in October 2011, I was thrilled to find that not only did it make my full skirts poof out in the cutest way, it also helped pad my hips from all the pain-inducing seating out there in the world.  I love pencil skirts and wiggle dresses too, but those are quickly becoming too painful to wear, sadly.

So that's me.  And this is my blog!  I've never really done the blogging thing before, so you'll have to bear with me as I find my sea-legs.  My hope for this blog is to document my sewing projects, especially from the perspective of using clothing design and sewing to cope with and accommodate chronic illness and disability.  I'd like to give back to the sewing blogger community that's so inspired and entertained me, and meet more bloggers with similar interests.

I'll try my best to update regularly, but as with everything in my life, my illness ultimately decides how much I can get done in a given day or week.  I'll post pictures of what I'm sewing and what I've finished, but they're likely to not be the beautiful full-outfit outdoor shots that I admire from other sewing blogs, at least not until I can convince my husband to take a few photos now and then, or until I can teach my cat how to work a camera.  And while I may post outfit photos from time to time, this definitely won't be an outfit-a-day blog, as most days I live in jersey skirts and fluffy socks and don't leave the house, lol.

This post is also the most I'll talk about my illness, in all likelihood.  It's a huge part of my every day life, so I'll make mention of it with regards to sewing clothing that helps accommodate my pain, but this won't be a health or chronic illness blog.  I'm not looking for suggestions on what new disease to research, either -- not only have I been through a list of potential diagnoses several miles long, but I try to limit the amount of time and energy I spend thinking about and stressing about a question that two dozen plus doctors haven't been able to figure out.  I want this blog to be about sewing with disability and chronic pain, not about reenacting the longest episode of "House" ever.  And even if/when I finally get a diagnosis, it won't suddenly stop my need for cute, non-pain-inducing clothing.

That said, I would love to meet other sewists living with chronic illness, so please drop me a comment if that's you!  And other bloggers into retro fashion and beauty, costumers and cosplayers (especially if you go to DragonCon!), knitters, gamers, geeks, designers, and everyone in between.  Comment here to say hi, or add me over on Twitter.  I'm looking forward to meeting all of you, and sharing 2012 with you.

Next up: what I sewed in 2011 -- coming soon!