Finished reading: Three Simple Rules by Nikki Sloane 📚🎧
“There was something about trains.” 💬📚 Reading Sarah MacLean’s These Summer Storms while actually on a train.
My First Skirt Sketches 🧵
Here are my first sketches for my Skirt Skills class with Brooks Ann Camper. I did a yoke for each waistline because my tummy hurts often enough that I want a friendly waist for it. I also sketched with real shirts I actually have, tucked in, since I often do tuck in. (Usually with a French tuck, thanks Tan France!) My plan for my skirt is to make something lightweight that I can wear to my job as an elementary school librarian early in the school year, then transition to fall and winter with leggings. Each sketch includes a pattern inspired by fabric available from Spoonflower and a bookish graphic tee that I actually wear to work.
Brooks Ann has a great way to create a custom croquis to draw clothing designs on your own body, which is how I got these sketches that actually look like me.
Sketch 1: Pencil skirt
The pattern inspiration for this skirt is Stack of Books by Kassi Simpson and the shirt is It’s Me Hi I’m the Librarian by Yaquetees.
Sketch 2: A-line skirt
The pattern inspiration for this skirt is Red Crimson Pink Blush Roses by Elda & Oak Design Studio and the shirt is the Book Nerd Floral Unisex T-shirt by Out of Print.
Sketch 3: Tulip skirt
The pattern inspiration for this skirt is Pumpkin King Stripe by Disneybound Dresses and the shirt is the What’s More Punk? t-shirt from the Mt. Pleasant (VA) Library Friends.
Drawing these was super fun and has really inspired me. I’m beginning to understand and imagine so many possibilities for designing my own clothes, especially for cosplay.
I’ve been thinking about going back to a hand-coded website for a while now. I don’t want to lose the functionality I have at my current site, so I’ve created a staging site where I will work on brushing up my coding knowledge. You can follow along at handcoded.kimberlyhirsh.com.
Finished reading: Managed by Kristen Callihan 📚🎧
📚 In Animal, Vegetable, Junk, Mark Bittman writes 19th century farmers wouldn’t let land lie fallow or rotate crops because it made the most sense to force land to yield the most profit. This led to soil exhaustion. I think the same thing happens when we try to extract maximum labor from people.
🔖 Read We Cannot Give Up on Each Other by Kelly Jensen.
I really needed this today.
The page isn’t turned, and the book isn’t closed. There are chapters still being written, chapters still to be written, and people who are eager to be brought into the story to help make it what we all deserve.
Swatching my little fabric stash
In her Intro to Fabrics lesson, Brooks Ann links to an article she wrote for Threads Magazine called How and Why to Swatch Fabrics. She includes swatch cards in this article, so I printed some up and went to work swatching my little fabric stash.
None of these are fabrics I’ll be using during the class, but it’s good to have a complete catalog and to get some practice ahead of the swatches I’ll be looking at for the class.
First up, a couple of quilting fabrics I used for my first sewing projects with my new machine (I think I got it in 2020):
The these are both woven cotton, one with a blue moth print and one with a seafoam green background with white manatees on it. I used the first to make napkins and the second to make a pillow.
The next two fabrics I bought for making pillows, too, but so far I’ve only made one. These are also quilting cottons. One is a black background with Pokémon in white circles, which I used for the pillow I posted about earlier. The other has dragons and white stars on a navy background. I’m planning to make a pillow for my sister with this one.
The last couple of swatches are a celestial Jack Skellington quilting cotton I’m planning to use to make my sister a pillow and an interlock knit tarot card print I’m planning to use to make myself a maxi skirt based on the Brit + Co Sewing 101 class instructions.