tsavo-witch

[tsavo-witch]

Tailoring your own clothes

So a little while back, I reblogged a post about tailoring your own clothes. The gist of it was this (IIRC):

Someone was wondering why even people on TV with non-mainstream-TV-approved body shapes always look so good in their clothes. 

The long and short of it is: their bodies aren’t better than yours. They just have people tailoring every single piece of clothing they wear to flatter their figures. 

Off-the-rack clothes aren’t made to look good on most people’s bodies. The advice in the post was buy clothes that fit the largest part of you, even if they’re too big elsewhere, and have them altered to fit. 

That post hit me like a lightning bolt. I have a curvy figure. I’m not plus-sized, but I’ve got a small waist and large hips. Which is great in certain types of clothes (dresses, mainly), but means that if I don’t wear fitted t-shirts or blouses–if they fall straight–I just look sort of… boxy. I need clothes that go in at the waist. 

My grandma was an amazing seamstress, so when I needed clothes fixed, she was around to tailor them. When she got into her 90s and her eyesight was too diminished for her to sew, we started going to a woman in our neighborhood who’d lost her husband and had started doing alterations to bring in some extra income. OF COURSE I looked good back then. I had a tailor.

Then I moved away from my parents without really knowing How To Adult and would go to Target to get clothes and just get depressed by them and never realized how much of an advantage having people who could tailor my clothes (and, you know, parents to pay for having them tailored…) had been. 

So. I have a 1970s Singer Fashion Mate sewing machine that is designed to weather the apocalypse–I got it at Goodwill for $20. 

And I have begun researching how to tailor your own clothes. If anyone else was wondering about that after that last post, here are some helpful links I’ve discovered. 

When and Why to Get it Tailored - This article is (annoyingly) set up as a slideshow, and focuses on getting a professional to do your alterations rather than doing them yourself, but it’s got some good advice nonetheless, such as:

Basic alterations that can make a huge difference, such as adding lingerie loops to keep bra straps in place (SERIOUSLY MY FAVORITE DRESSES FROM HIGH SCHOOL ALL HAD THESE AND WHY DID THEY DISAPPEAR IN EVERYTHING I WEAR NOW?), adding snaps between the buttons on button-down shirts for larger-busted women (you know how sometimes they gap? there’s help for that), etc.

Average prices (at least on the East Coast) for basic alterations: replacing a zipper will run you about $20, while tailoring pants or a skirt to fit your hips and butt will be about $35.

If you want to get a garment made of special materials (leather, fur, beaded/embroidered silk) altered, go to someone who specializes in working with that material.

What NOT to try to alter.

How to find a tailor.

Having that perfect dress that you love so much duplicated and how much that will cost.

Learning Alterations - Great step-by-step tutorials on basic alterations like how to take in the waist of jeans (essential if you have a smaller waist and larger hips, because it’ll stop them from riding down every time you bend over or sit down).

Tailoring Ready-to-Wear - A full-on online course from Craftsy (costs $24.99) with videos and individual lessons on everything from hemming pants to lengthening them to altering shoulders and armholes to adding hidden zippers.

Plus-Sized Fitting and Design - Another online course (this one’s $34.99) that looks like it focuses both on alterations and on actually making clothes that are flattering to plus-sized forms.

Alterations and Tailoring 101 - Not a how-to post, but this one has a lot of useful information and ideas, such as identifying which garments to alter.

Alterations Needed blog - A whole blog on this stuff, with a lot of detailed how-tos. It focuses on fixing things to fit if you’re shorter than average/petite, but contains a lot of great advice for anyone (like an entry on why button-down shirts often bulge in back and how to fix it). 

Pinch and Pin your Shirt - Super-quick video tutorial (aimed at gentlemen), but useful for anyone who wears button-down shirts on how to fix a baggy shirt. 

If I find other helpful tutorials, I’ll add them. If you know of any, please let me know!

[tsavo-witch]

hold on i have a take that’s going to upset people

[tsavo-witch]

Was talking with my therapist about how it's possible to completely lose one's own identity to people-pleasing - when you grow up being constantly preoccupied with concerns about what other people want, and the ideal outcome is always whatever makes everyone else happy, it's possible to simply not learn to know yourself at all. If the only thing you've ever strived for in life is to make everyone else happy, you just never pause to think what you want, or what you would enjoy, independently from anyone else's desires.

As an example of this, I recalled that for the longest time, I just didn't listen to music when I was alone, because the thought never occurred to me. I didn't have my own taste in music, I was fine with listening to whatever the people I was with wanted to listen to, but whose music would I be listening to if I wasn't with anyone else? She thought this was a great observation, and gave me a homework assignment to find a song I like, just on my own and for myself, and show it to her next week.

So I guess my therapist is about to learn about the existence of mongolian folk metal.

[tsavo-witch]

Paladin™: when you’re kinda feeling cleric but also want to Stab

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scroll down for a pupper

APRIL FOOLS! IT WAS A KITTY INSTEAD!!

Hope everyone has a scare-free April Fools day! ^^

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frog

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Screeeeching at this meme a girl I went to high school w posted recently

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anyways. drag kings have been around for decades & are equally as important as drag queens. drag masculinity faces serious erasure & that’s a problem. support your local drag kings

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And l feel like Hermes could have a Daddy Electric vibe

my little cousin confidently declared that mother nature had a counterpart named daddy electric and i feel like this concept needs to be explored

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A fully grown adult commented on that reddit post of "My cat got upset when my girlfriend spanked me" with "maybe you weirdos shouldn't be physically harming your partners" and I'm losing my shit adfklhsglk

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Bleh, had to cut some of my alocasia's back to corms today. But at least they aren't dead, just unhappy with me.

[tsavo-witch]

I made some Emotional Support Toffee this evening. It's an English toffee with added herbal tonics and some dried herbs. Its then topped with salted pepitas, black sesame seeds and dark chocolate.

This is a kitchen spell to boost my reserves and support me as I start a new job.

I also made a chai butter toffee (today l learned the difference between English Toffee and Butter Toffee) as a prosperity spell.

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If you don't pay your taxes, the Government comes after you. Who do you think you are? Someone rich perhaps?

Nope, I was reposting my boyfriend's exact words. He's from rural virginia, and I was amused by his thought process. Direct action can be a useful tool, when used in the right p and Ace at the right time.

[tsavo-witch]

I keep thinking about that one post that was going around talking about the potential origins of cheese and everyone immediately jumps to it must've been rotten milk that they ate out of desperation. But I'd like to posit that the first cheese was probably someone adding an acid to warmed milk and realising it splits it. Like it's not that big a stretch of the imagination for someone to think "oh I like warm milk but I also like this acidic fruit, I wonder if I can mix them". From there a little experimentation on separating the new curd from the whey and you've got a simple fresh cheese.

I dunno I think the reason I wanted to make this post is just that we tend to desscribe a lot of discoveries around food as desperate acts of starvation and not genuinely thought out experimentations based on observations like every other form of human knowledge. Ancient people weren't stupid starving unwashed masses and it's important to remember that. They were people who could think and deduce and logic their way through things as good as you or I.

[tsavo-witch]

Found this in the comments of Shaun's latest video on Andrew Tate, in which he talks pretty extensively about how important it is for men to find ways to be confident in their genders without trying to adhere to, or enforce, anyone else's ideas of manhood on anyone.

Highly recommend checking it out.

Anyway. I rarely see folks talk about the positive impact transmascs have on manhood as a whole, and I think it's important to acknowledge and celebrate that.