#letterbird

Alright. I’ll see what I can do to help you. In order of asking:

Where to find cloth: I mostly buy my cloth either at Joann’s fabric or at fabric booths at SCA events. I don’t like buying cloth online unless I have to. I would recommend doing an internet search for fabric stores in your area and checking them out. Of course, you can order fabric online but I don’t recommend it if you’re just getting started.

You don’t need to know as much about fabric if you can touch it when you buy it, because if you know you’re looking for 100% cotton chintz with a chevron pattern you can search for that online. But if you only know that you want something soft, not fuzzy, and green, you’re much better off going through a store and looking at the stock.

What measurements do you need: This depends on what you’re going to be making. Here’s a generic illustration covering most measurements you might need.

(Source)

You probably won’t need all of these measurements for any one garment. Getting your back measurement is hard to do on your own, so it helps to have someone measure that for you. For a tunic, the important measurements are shoulder to shoulder, bust, waist, hips, arm length, and neck to wherever you want the tunic to stop.

If, heaven forbid, you don’t even have a measuring tape, you can wrap a ribbon or a piece of string around yourself and then measure that with a ruler.

How much cloth do you need: This depends on how much seam allowance you’re going to need. In most cases, I use a rolled seam, so I need about three quarters of an inch more than the actual size of the finished garment.

If the cloth is a type that tends to fray, cut the pieces about half an inch to an inch larger than you normally would, then put in a French seam. Whenever I buy cloth, I tend to buy an extra half a yard to a yard in case something goes wrong with the piecing.

But in general, try laying out a garment with the same amount of fabric on a table, get an idea of how much you’d need to duplicate it, and then add half a yard.

Advice for getting started: Do not be afraid of patterns. It isn’t cheating, it isn’t tracing, it’s using the same resources used by the entire industry from professionals to beginners.

Especially if you want to make trousers. Trousers are some of the hardest garments to make and the easiest garments to become terrifically uncomfortable if made wrong.

As with most creative endeavours, the first few projects are going to be a lot more impressive to yourself before you get used to it. Unlike many other creative endeavours, the first fruits of your labour are more likely to stick around and keep being used long after you start getting good at it.

Also, this applies to most things, but especially sewing: when you make a mistake, pay attention to how you made it. Once I sewed a sleeve into the neckhole twice because I was tired. Now I always pin the sleeves on and then hold up the garment and look at it to make sure I’m not doing anything quite that stupid. And sometimes, I was about to, because no matter how long you’ve been sewing you can do something stupid if you aren’t paying attention.

Basic pocketing:

If you’re making trousers, I really recommend buying a pattern with pockets. if the pockets in the pattern are too small, just make them longer. Sadly, you cannot make the pockets wider than the leg of the trousers because we are not timelords. This tutorial on extending pockets in jeans can easily be applied to making your own pants, just skip the step of making pockets that aren’t large enough in the first place.

But if you’re making a skirt, things get much easier.

Let us say you’ve cut out a basic panel skirt, which is three to six trapezoids attached to a waistband. (the waistband could be a tube covering elastic, or a folded over piece of fabric with a fastening like a hook and eye or a button)

This pattern can be used on any fabric that does not have a pattern with a distinct top and bottom, and is easily adjusted to make it fit pretty much anyone.

Fold your fabric neatly in half (it’s folded badly in the picture just so you can tell it’s folded). 

Fold over the large rectangles cut out at the bottom. These will be your pockets.

The narrow rectangles at the top will become your waistband and can be any width you like. If your waist is smaller around than the fabric is wide, you’ll only need to cut one, but be sure to cut it twice as wide as you want the waistband to be (plus seam allowance) because it’s going to be folded over.

Cut the rest of the fabric into trapezoids as long as you want your skirt to be. Of course, the trapezoids will only form on the fold, and across from them you’ll get two triangles. Sew two of them together, bam. You’ve got another trapezoid. I recommend putting the panels with a seam down the middle on the sides and the big trapezoids you cut in the front and back, this makes it look intentional.

Add the pockets to the sides of the front panel, then attach the rest of the panels to each other. Then you attach the waistband. And finally, the hard part. Put on your skirt, with is more or less finished except for the hem. Stand on a chair and get someone to trim the bottom with the scissors parallel to the ground. The bottom of the skirt is now slightly curved, meaning it will look like it’s a flat line. Now you can hem it.

You can cut a curve onto the bottom of the skirt while not wearing it, of course, but if you do this it will not take into account your hips and bum, and unless you are a perfect cylinder this means that the back of the skirt will be higher than the back of the skirt. So find someone to help you trim the bottom. 

Now here’s the tips that will work with any skirt pattern: To help distribute the weight of the contents of your pockets, attach the top of the pocket to the waistband of your skirt and make the pockets wide enough to be attached to the seams of the skirt. This distributes the weight across the waistband and makes it more comfortable to wear when you’ve stuck a couple loaves of bread, your wallet, your cell phone, and the dead sea scrolls in there.

waste of time, and either way they didn’t want to deal with me because I would soon drop out or fail out and not be their problem any more. It’s better now that I have more confidence and can also keep appointments, because I can smile at them and ignore the undercurrent (that I don’t think they mean to send/ are aware of sending- and I sympathize, I do, because their job has got to be exhausting and the emotional labor of seeming friendly and approachable is probably awful), but- I don’t want to ask for anything that will tear away the camouflage of functionality/ dependability that I’ve built up. I’ve only just begun learning how to behave to make people treat me like a person, not a problem or a failure, and I don’t want to give it up in order to ask for handholding. Handholding would be great, though. Handholding would be /awesome/. I’d really like someone to teach me how much time to spend for different types of studying, and when to do that, and how to get my ADD brain to focus when I really need to accomplish the work. Do you have any suggestions? If not, or if you don’t have the spoons, then thank you anyways! I find your blog very helpful and I appreciate the links you post for ADHD/ADD resources.

Hmmm. Good question! It sounds like you want services that are less stigmatizing. I’ll try what I can come up with, and see if my followers can suggest anything. Because yeah, you can keep trying to work with DSPS, digging your fingernails into your palms and repeating to yourself, “I have a medical condition and this is a legal right.” But if your instincts are telling you that they’re not really helpful, let’s look into some alternatives.

How much money do you have? If hiring a private tutor is financially viable, you can google “[your area] ADHD coach” and try booking with them. It’s sad to say, but a lot of things that are seen as infantilizing/lacking moral fiber when they’re provided free suddenly acquire the lustre of being ~special~ and ~elite~ when they’re private businesses. “Wow, what a proactive go-getter!” they say, when someone doing the exact same thing in different circumstances is “lazy”. It sucks, but… if you have economic privilege, sometimes it helps to leverage it.

Consider student organizations that provide free/cheap tutoring or study groups. Often student unions, clubs, or fraternities help their members out with this kind of service, so if a lot of your classes fall in a certain area, or you hear there’s a good group on campus, you can try joining that student group to use those services. They’re not as expert, but especially if you have resources about ADHD that you can give them to explain what you’re trying, they’re often friendlier.

Especially consider going to your school’s faculty of Education or Educational Psychology and ask if they have student tutors for study skills. You might find a fledgling teacher or educational psychologist who can give you executive function tutoring in return for the experience of helping someone with ADHD.

Try getting a good resource on ADHD (like the More Attention, Less Deficit workbook) and finding/forming a student study group. You could go down to your school’s library and explain to the librarians, “I want to find people to learn better study strategies with.” They can help you book a quiet meeting room for it, maybe even help you advertise the study session, maybe even hook you up with a staff member who’s experienced in this area, so a group of you can work through the exercises and mutually hold each other’s hands. (While other people with ADHD are more distractable and these sessions can sometimes be chaotic, and you might have to use external aids like timers or music cues to indicate “study time” and “break time”, they’re also a lot more sympathetic and acquainted with your personal problems). Sometimes schools will shell out resources more willingly for groups of students than individuals