petticoated swashbuckler

1. borrowing misery from future

2. carrying grief of the past

Future you will thank you for not pinning your ability to enjoy and get any sense of achievement on having the base energy levels of a teenager.

Using your fabric efficiently? Makes total sense. No objection to that.

But specifically designing patterns such that every single part of a length of fabric is consumed by it? You're setting people up to fail. For one, you can really only do this with patterns made mostly of rectangles and right triangles, which can only make a very narrow range of garments that simply do not play nice with many people's bodies (especially bodies with lots of curvature). For another, a zero-waste pattern is also a zero-error-tolerance pattern. One wrong cut or measurement and the whole thing's toast. The wiggle-room that a more standard pattern allows also allows you to fix problems when they occur.

If you make a zero-waste garment and never wear it because it looks bad on you? That's not actually zero-waste. If you start a zero-waste garment and can't complete it because you made one little mistake? That's not actually zero-waste.

But more importantly, the whole idea of 'zero-waste' as a desireable outcome is antithetical to the methods and traditions of sewing. It's a form of functionless, guilt-driven, aesthetics-first minimalism that has no place in actual sewing practice. The scraps of fabric left over from cutting a pattern are incredibly useful. Larger pieces can become parts of new projects. Smaller pieces can become patchwork. Even really tiny scraps can become stuffing or batting or kindling or any number of other things. Home sewing has always been about not wasting things, but the way to not waste things is not by piously making only garments that suck, it's by repurposing, reusing, and recycling everything you buy. Once that fabric reaches your house, 98% of its environmental impact has already happened.

2) any vegetable is better than no vegetable

Aro and ace activism is healthcare reform, so that no one needs to rely on a spouse for health insurance, so that healthcare is available to everybody regardless of income, so that no one’s lived experiences or basic dignity are dismissed or overridden by doctors

Aro and ace activism is well-funded and expansive public transit, so that you don’t need to have someone on hand to drive you places if you are incapacitated, so that you don’t have to pay for an ambulance if you need to get to the hospital quickly

Aro and ace activism is disability and elder care services, so that no one needs a spouse to care for them, so that no one needs children to care for them, so that marriage is not a bind for disabled people, so that people on disability who want to and can live alone can

Aro and ace activism is community-building, it’s public events, it’s free social activities, it’s mutual aid, it’s activities that bring community members together without socializing relying on just a romantic partner

Aro and ace activism is developing a culture of believing when people tell you who they are and what they want rather than assuming you know them better than they know themselves