I wonder as I wander...

I can't stop thinking about this medieval girl and her dog ❤️🥲

for example: if you are team jacob in twilight, is it because you believe he is the better match for bella or because you would personally prefer him?

obviously this is about any ship, so please fill in the names with the ship that you most are into.

do you want to talk to verizon's help desk because there's an error on your bill? to access a real agent, you have to pay for Verizon Access+, only 5.99 a month.

want to filter out all the fake job postings from the real ones? subscribe to Indeed: Advanced Tactics and only verified postings will appear on your dash.

sick of the infinite ai slop? buy Google Premium; it'll automatically detect ai within a site and gives it a credibility score. with premium plus, you can shuffle high-credibility results to the top.

do you want a "luxury" experience? well, you'd have to pay for that luxury, and since the company sure doesn't want to pay its employees; the cost would fall to the consumer.

"There's a giant hole in your esophagus. Parts of everything you eat or drink will get into your chest cavity and cause life-threatening infections. You are absolutely not allowed to eat or drink in any way. But you are fed via this tube and can wetten your mouth a little, if you feel hungry or thirsty please let me know." -> buys himself a hotdog 5min after this conversation

"You just had major surgery on your guts. Your intestines have been cut and sewn together. You are only allowed to eat liquid food for a few days so the wound can heal. Solid food could get stuck or in the worst case tear open the incision, which can become very dangerous." - orders a pizza and eats it in secret, doesn't tell us until he gets septic

I could fill a whole book with people I throughoutly informed about this and chose to ignore the advice either way.

You could argue that it's their body their risk, but in the end we will be blamed either way because some people are unwilling to take responsibility for their own mistakes.

I respect the choice of ignoring medical advice but it's unfair to blame us when the consequences are more dire than what you hoped for.

#their idea of manhood is still centered around being a Provider and Protector and Successful and having power over others and money and gal

#AND they define masculinity as that which is Not feminine.

#so as more and more thing become universal - they feel backed into a corner as masculinity is "taken away" because NOTHING is immune #to femininity anymore - and all the things they define themselves by are becoming unisex and therefor not masculine.

#and to them the ONLY solution is to push back and keep women out of those spaces and force them back into "truly feminine" things. #despite constantly preaching strength they are all too emotionally weak to consider the alternative.

Part of socializing and having friends is being a good listener even when you don't actually give a shit about the subject.

Your are hurting other people's feelings when you bluntly respond with "Anyway..." and then change the topic.

It can not always be about your preferred topic.

I have several pet peeves about historical costuming. While I try not to get too annoying about it (cough stop calling the straight front corset an "S bend" cough), it's time to get on my soapbox about boning.

My credentials: I am a published dress historian specializing in 19th-century Western womenswear. I have handled and studied hundreds of bodices of varying qualities, from Maison Worth couture right down to cheap, home-made clothing. I have also made these things myself and understand how technique affects results.

There is a tendency when sewing bodices to bone every single vertical seam, as it keeps them taut and reduces wrinkling.

But it's a massive fucking drag and sometimes you still get wrinkling! (And, if you're using steel boning, it weighs a ton.) So, consider going without.

--Hey, what??

Yes. Here is an interior shot of a c. 1897 bodice that has boning in every seam. Theoretically, the standard to which we aspire--right?

This used to be in my collection (KL 24.26) and the pattern is available here. It has since passed into new hands.

There are fifteen bones in that bodice. You can tell the maker wanted it to go as fast as possible, so they used a catch/cross-stitch to whack it all on.

My soapbox message today is that actually, proper fitting is FAR more important than boning every single one of your goddamn seams. Also, no boning is accurate too. See exhibit B:

This is a c. 1890 bodice. There are zero bones in it.

This is still in my collection; KL 26.5. Haven't contemplated patterning it yet.

Boning is, to some extent, a practical consideration (see above note about tautness). Equally, it is a mark of quality, expense, and time period. What do I mean by this?

Quality and expense: Bodices by better dressmakers, who charged higher prices, tend to have finishings that go above and beyond and represent a serious labor commitment. These two bodices are a good comparison for that; you can see that the blue one (which is silk, by the by) has the seam allowances pinked (the zig-zagged edges) while the tan one's raw edges were fully bound (a royal pain in the ass and major time sink, but looks fantastic). Equally, you'll sometimes see very nice, expensive bodices lined in china silk, while the cheap ones get lined in cotton.

You don't really need a silk lining or bound edges for something to be functional or even beautiful. The pinking did the "preventing fraying" job just fine. Equally, adding boning can sometimes cover up a bad fit job. Throughout the period, some bodices do not have any boning; some have partial boning, and some are fully-boned, and the correlation is very much [more expensive] 🤝 [more boning].

Time period: Boning is temporal--meaning that amounts increase as the century progresses. I have found that even by the 1880s, it is somewhat rare to find fully-boned bodices anywhere outside of couture establishments. Before that period, it's almost unheard of. But in the 1890s, you start to see a lot more boning at all levels of making! This might be a result of increasing availability (of boning in dry-goods and department stores; of pre-cased boning; and of different, cheaper varieties of boning) and also of changing sewing culture, with sewing books and magazines telling the reader to add boning to every seam.

Up through the 1830s, it's rare to see any boning.

From the 1840s-70s, the general rhythm is to bone the main pair of darts; sometimes both sets; sometimes sides; sometimes center backs. Usually not everything at once, and often the bones are quite short and just target the waist area. I *frequently* see bodices with no boning even in the 1870s, especially day bodices, and it's also common to just see 2-4 bones total, maybe 6 if they were really fierce about it.

With the long cuirass basques of the 1880s, boning helps to get around the wrinkling that comes with bad fitting and big hip spring from small waistlines. The 1890s took that and ran with it, and bodices in the 1900s are frankly over-engineered in every way, so of course they have it too.

Anyway, all this is to say that you don't have to go hard about boning bodices. Bone the closures if it's a lace-up situation, certainly, and boning can help if you don't have the skills to fit something perfectly. But in the long run, perfecting your fitting work (and wearing the right corset) will mostly obviate any need for boning.

See:

"Whalebones may be used, if desired, in all the seams, except the curved seams in the back, where they should never be placed, though some dressmakers put them in every seam. If a dress is properly fitted, and worn over a well-fitting corset, whalebones are not really needed in any seam." S. T. Allen, "Dressmaking at Home," The Woman's Book, vol. 1 (NY: Scribner, 1894), 256.

This post is directed at a dear friend of mine who likes to judge me when my makes don't have any boning in them.

See below: there is no boning in this bodice. The fitting was decent enough that it just didn't need it!

Bodice pattern is @mimicofmodes' Peacock Bodice, which is taken from an original (though I do believe the OG has some boning, lol). A very fun make from 2020. :)

of critters in clover