As I’m shifting the balance of my time away from paid work to other activities I have been knitting and listening to podcasts. I need to watch my hands but I also need something to help keep my focus. The current shawl I’m working on is straight knitting. I mean, I’m queer but it is simple garter stitch with some counting. This is not complex enough to require full attention but fine enough work I can’t look away from my hands. This isn’t making it any clearer for you, is it? Oh well! Moving on!
So I’m sitting and knitting while burning through podcasts. I adore “And the rest is science”, “Smartless” and anything by the Welcome to Nightvale crew. Lately though, I’ve been craving handicraft podcasts, especially about clothing design and sewing. Clothing design was a passion of mine in my youth, I had wanted to be a designer. My bedroom wall was covered with reams of clothing designs, comic book characters and story ideas. I had a large spool of newsprint and I would unfurl arms length, beige paper and fill it with words and drawings.
Ten years later, when my kids were born, my mom helped me make piles of clothes for them, Michel and myself. My mother-in-law would gift me fabric and I would make curtains, bedsheet sets, quilts, diapers…EVERYTHING. We would sew around the kitchen table with highchairs, meals, and dogs underfoot. It was productive and fun in a chaotic and cozy kind of way.
Math is the theft of joy and one day I calculated out the cost of making Michel his dress shirts. Even with the cheapest broadcloth the material costs were about $35 a shirt because patterns, buttons, thread and interfacing all added up. This was ignoring my time and it was taking about a week to make a shirt. These were equivalent to $300 shirts and I was desperately short on time. I eventually set aside sewing as a way to make ends meet. I loved it but the time, space and money weren’t in my favour.
There was another reason though. After being pregnant I could not get a reliable fit for myself. I had a plus size dress form, I bought patterns with stretch but things did not fit right. The disappointing results sapped all joy from this hobby. I blamed my lack of skill and unruly figure.
Fifteen years later I do want to pick it back up. I love the tactile experience of sewing and the clothes are of a quality that far exceeds any “ready to wear” garments available to me.
Where was I? Right, I’m sitting, knitting and listening to a Threads podcast from 2024 about a new sewing pattern company, Style Falcon. It’s a 30 minute listen. I like using the podcast as a fancy timer to stay focused on knitting but also a nudge to take breaks. Remember, this is a sidequest, a mindtoy and then MY MIND IS BLOWN. The conversation drifted to how most women’s clothes are designed around an hour glass shape of an 18 year old woman. Some companies have been using the same silhouette since the 1940s. Yes, the bodies of World War Two teenagers are what the pants on the rack are designed to fit.
If you have ever sewn a garment you are familiar with first creating a fitting muslin to then find out how you have to modify the pattern to fit. Common adjustments are about where your bust sits and how long your inseam/pant leg is.
At the heart of making cloths is fooling a two dimensional fabric into cover our dynamic three dimensional bodies. This is advanced mapping planes algebra, the OG 3D printing. Here small differences matter.
So as the conversation goes along they speak about mature bodies, from post-pregnancy to post-menopausal, you know, things that happen to us that change our bodies after the ager of 18. And then they mention how skin gathers at the top of the knee in middle age and senior folks. I remembered getting thes super cute pants that fit my waist, thighs and butt but were surprisingly tight just above my knee. I blamed myself of “letting myself go” but OF COURSE MY BODY IS NOT THE PROBLEM. This is “a thing” as we mature, just like more skin and muscle on our backs, forward rolling shoulders, thicker waists and bulkier upper arms. There are examples of exceptional women aging like Helen Mirren or Jane Fonda who defy the trends, the vast majority of us have different proportions in our fifties, sixties and seventies than we did when we were 18.
I’m so thankful for the excellent Threads podcast and the beautiful designs available at Style Falcon. Clothing fit is a feminist issue as it is deeply tied to ageist and ableist ideals. To catch excellent patterns and discussions look for the Sew Over 50 hashtag,
