Dorky Details

Threads #149 June/July 2010 arrived a few days ago. Yesterday I glanced at "One Pant, Five Looks", dismissed all the "looks", garnered the depressing news that shank standards have been deprecated, stuck a marker at "Vintage Presser Feet", and closed the book.

This morning I picked it up while waiting for DH to come out of the shower, didn't want to spare enough attention to read "Vintage Presser Feet", read "Five Looks". As I expected, it was all techniques I've been using for decades, but the insistence that an added tab must point forward rang a bell.

Sometime in the twentieth century, I gave up trying to imitate an old^H^H^H vintage pair of jeans that had triangles set in the seams near the ankle -- one could snap the tabs together in back to confine one's pants legs for cycling -- because my flat-felled inseam pointed the wrong way. But one could sew the side seams backward to match, and buttoning the straps together in *front* would work even better, and never mind that front-pointing tabs look dorky, these are working pants.

I got a few splashes of cold water while typing this, of course. The reason for snapping in back is that the leg is straight in front. My problem wasn't wrong-way, but that the inseams point opposite ways. Well, I suppose one could button one leg in front and the other one in back. But above all: safety pins work better!

Still, maybe I shouldn't have skipped "Free-Motion Embellishment" just because all the "beautiful" examples looked as though one had run a lawnmower over the fabric. If DH should take up caving again, I might take up free-motion embroidery again.

(Cavers use all parts of their bodies as feet. This leads to a lot of patching and darning of caving clothes. But I gather that nowadays one can buy Cordura coveralls.)

I'll close with an unfair snark at the dart-and-tab "pant look" for proposing that one eliminate the side seam so that one can add a dart to provide a side seam to insert the tab in.

Unfair, because including instructions for carving a dart out of a side seam would have expanded the instructions from half a page to two pages -- two pages the author didn't have -- and would have made a simple operation seem very complex.

Not to mention that the idea of putting a tab into a side seam is one that anyone who wants it can think up on his own.

Joy Beeson

Reply to
Joy Beeson
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Mumble years ago, when I was still riding bikes, I used to put snaps on the inside back hem of the jeans, one just a bit behind the outseam and the other where it fell naturally. I'd just snap the two halves of the snaps together, forming a dart at the hem that kept the legs out of the chain. Dorky but functional.

Yes, and spandura (spandex/cordura), too. Less likely to get hung up on lemon squeezes.

Threads seems to be actively courting the newbies that are a bit farther along than 84 Strange Things To Do To A T Shirt -- I guess that's inevitable, because the average age of their subscribers kept climbing each year.

I was down at Powells (huge new/used book store) a few weeks ago, and stopped by the sewing section to see if there was anything new worth having. Young woman was looking for dress embellishments, but not seeing much in the new books with color photos and very wide margins. I pulled Sue Thompson's Decorative Dressmaking off the shelf (she'd passed it up because it was "old") and got her to actually look at it. You could see the light go on that black and white drawings =/= useless book.

Joy, you might want to look at the discussion of the pivot sleeve over at

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like your kind of modification to me, if it's not something you alreadyknow.

Kay

Reply to
Kay Lancaster

I tend to solve all sleeve problems by making them very wide and gathering them into the armhole, but I've got seven tabs open and intend to try to comprehend this.

Hey,

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isa page I saved a diagram from, intending to try out the idea, and thenI couldn't remember where it came from when I wanted to refer to it. Joy Beeson

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Joy Beeson

Finally did try out the idea, and used it to make sleeves for my new jersey. Some sketchy photographs are down near the bottom of the file at

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.

Reply to
Joy Beeson

I glanced over your report and I'm impressed with your work. And I really like the idea of linen for 'bike wear' - better than any of those fancy synthetic fabrics when it comes to hot and humid weather or sweat-producing activities. Mind you, I can understand that many athletes prefer something with a little less weight and more elasticity for their doings, but for 'rough cycling' it's just perfect. And your pants protector is very clever; reminds me of the protectors archers use for their wrists. Nothing can be said against a bit of drama! ;-)

U.

Reply to
Ursula Schrader

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