the Tabularium

Today, we celebrate #SEASLUGDAY!

This somewhat educational post is prettier when read on this page. 

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People who are blind from birth will gesture when they speak. I always like pointing out this fact when I teach classes on gesture, because it gives us an an interesting perspective on how we learn and use gestures. Until now I’ve mostly cited a 1998 paper from Jana Iverson and Susan Goldin-Meadow that analysed the gestures and speech of young blind people. Not only do blind people gesture, but the frequency and types of gestures they use does not appear to differ greatly from how sighted people gesture. If people learn gesture without ever seeing a gesture (and, most likely, never being shown), then there must be something about learning a language that means you get gestures as a bonus.

Blind people will even gesture when talking to other blind people, and sighted people will gesture when speaking on the phone - so we know that people don’t only gesture when they speak to someone who can see their gestures.

Earlier this year a new paper came out that adds to this story. Şeyda Özçalışkan, Ché Lucero and Susan Goldin-Meadow looked at the gestures of blind speakers of Turkish and English, to see if the *way* they gestured was different to sighted speakers of those languages. Some of the sighted speakers were blindfolded and others left able to see their conversation partner.

Turkish and English were chosen, because it has already been established that speakers of those languages consistently gesture differently when talking about videos of items moving. English speakers will be more likely to show the manner (e.g. ‘rolling’ or bouncing’) and trajectory (e.g. ‘left to right’, ‘downwards’) together in one gesture, and Turkish speakers will show these features as two separate gestures. This reflects the fact that English ‘roll down’ is one verbal clause, while in Turkish the equivalent would be yuvarlanarak iniyor, which translates as two verbs ‘rolling descending’.

Since we know that blind people do gesture, Özçalışkan’s team wanted to figure out if they gestured like other speakers of their language. Did the blind Turkish speakers separate the manner and trajectory of their gestures like their verbs? Did English speakers combine them? Of course, the standard methodology of showing videos wouldn’t work with blind participants, so the researchers built three dimensional models of events for people to feel before they discussed them.

The results showed that blind Turkish speakers gesture like their sighted counterparts, and the same for English speakers. All Turkish speakers gestured significantly differently from all English speakers, regardless of sightedness. This means that these particular gestural patterns are something that’s deeply linked to the grammatical properties of a language, and not something that we learn from looking at other speakers.

References

Jana M. Iverson & Susan Goldin-Meadow. 1998. Why people gesture when they speak. Nature, 396(6708), 228-228.

Şeyda Özçalışkan, Ché Lucero and Susan Goldin-Meadow. 2016. Is Seeing Gesture Necessary to Gesture Like a Native Speaker? Psychological Science 27(5) 737–747.

And implies that gestures have grammar. I mean. Holy. Shit.

My latest comic for The Nib was written by my friend Mike Thompson- it’s his first published comics work! 

The Nib has been a steady source of income and a huge support to me and many other indie cartoonists for years. They publish amazing work, but will be cut loose by their financial backer in July. You can read the official post about it from editor Matt Bors here.  They are still running their kickstarter-funded print magazine, but have to put digital publishing on hiatus until they figure out their next steps. If you’ve been thinking about supporting their membership program, now would be a good time. They have levels from $2 to $40 per month. I really don’t want this to be my last Nib piece! 

Thank you for your suggestion! We all go through weight fluctuations in life, so it stands to reason our clothes should be able to fluctuate with us.

Resizing your clothes used to be a very common practice before the advent of fast fashion. Fast fashion sizing is extremely flawed, especially when it comes to plus size fashion, and we're stuck with a lot of vanity sizing, so it's a good skill to have regardless of whether you're looking to mend something old or buy something new.

How to upsize clothes:

Introduction:

There are many different ways to make a garment larger. The following list is not exhaustive, just a few ideas to get you started.

Grading patterns:

If you're making your own clothes, it's always useful to know how to modify a sewing pattern. The easiest way to adjust a pre-existing pattern to your size is slash and spread grading. First, you need to define which spots on the pattern need extra space. You then cut your pattern in that spot, and slide the resulting pattern pieces away from each other until you've got the size you need. Use paper to fill in the gaps. To ensure the resulting pattern makes for well-fitting clothes, make a mock-up and add, move, or remove darts where necessary to adapt it to your body type.

The image below shows potential slashing lines on pattern blocks for an AFAB body. Unfortunately this was the only diagram I could find, but know that other types of patterns use similar line placements. Each line is a spot that allows you to add extra space. To read more about this process, check out the corresponding article by Threads Magazine.

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To make your clothes easier to let out in the future, make sure to provide ample seam allowance when cutting out your pattern pieces. This surplus fabric has several different uses, including giving you some wiggle room for when you need to size up your garment.

Now, let's take a look at pre-made garments.

Lengthening clothes:

A garment that's too short on you is easy to modify. Just add more material!

If it's a skirt or a dress, add ruffles to the bottom. Ruffles are easy to make by hand or with a sewing machine. You could also add lace, or wear the item with an underskirt.

For pants, let down your hem or sew on a new cuff. If this isn't enough, maybe consider turning your trousers into capri pants or shorts.

As for shirts, sewing an extra layer to the bottom edge is the easiest way to go, too. You could even combine two shirts into one to get an extra long shirt.

Another option is to cut your item in two and insert extra fabric between your separated garment parts.

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Letting out seams/darts:

Remember how we made sure to have ample seam allowance earlier? When a garment has surplus fabric in the seams and you only need a little extra space, you can undo the seams of your garment and sew them back together again, this time with a smaller seam allowance than before. The Spruce Crafts has a pretty good tutorial on how to let out seams. You won't be able to make major size changes using this technique, but if you only need a few centimetres, this is a good way to go.

A lot of garments also have darts. Darts are fabric folds that are sewn down in strategic places to help the fabric follow the body's curves. If a dart doesn't fit you the way you want it to, then unpick the dart and try on the garment. Either leave the dart open, or pin the dart in place however you want it, then take off the garment again and sew the dart back together.

Be careful not to rip the fabric when using a seam ripper. Also note that removing entire darts may change the garment's fit.

You can also add custom darts to achieve a better fit, but that's a topic for another time.

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Adding extra fabric to your garment:

If we need to add more room than seam allowance or darts can provide us with, we need to add extra material. Remember those slashing lines we looked at earlier? If you're working with a pre-existing garment rather than a pattern, those are the perfect places to chop up your clothes and add in extra fabric.

Check your sewing stash for fabric that's similar in weight and material to your original garment, or go thrift shopping for an item you could use to upsize your garment. Long skirts and maxi dresses are a great source of fabric for alterations like these!

Lace inserts are also a fun choice to add some room, and if you're working with a knit item, you could even knit or crochet your own custom insert.

Define the area where you want to add extra fabric on your item, and measure how much you need. Draw a straight line on your garment with chalk/soap. Make sure the line doesn't cross any important structural or functional parts of your garment like darts or button holes: refer to the slashing diagram we saw earlier if you're not sure what spot to pick. Cut the line open (or unpick the seam if it's situated on a seam), and add in your extra fabric. Finish off your new seams so they don't unravel later on, and you're done!

You can add straight strips of fabric for extra width or length, or you could use flared panels or even godets to make your item flair out.

Want to see this technique in action? Check out this video by Break n Remake:

Some ideas:

This Pinterest user cut a straight line down the front of a t-shirt and inserted a lace panel to add extra width in the front of the garment.

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Busy Geemaw cut open the side seams of a shirt and used flared panels to add some extra width in the bust and hip area.

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This person added a panel to the sides of a pair of jeans to give them more space in the hip area. You could easily use a long straight panel or a panel that flares at the bottom to resize the entire garment instead of just the hips, or use a wide piece of elastic for extra stretch.

(Image source)

This person added a godet in the back of their shirt in order to get more space in the back.

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Blue Corduroy enlarged a pair of shorts by opening up the side seams and adding in strips of fabric.

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You don't need to resize the entire garment if you don't want to. For example, One Brown Mom turned this ankle-length skirt with a too small waistband into a well-fitting knee-length skirt by taking advantage of the skirt's flared shape.

(Image source)

Conclusion:

Throughout our lives, our weight will fluctuate and our bodies will change. There's no shame in this: it's just a fact of life. Therefore, knowing how to upsize an item that is too small for you is a useful skill to learn.

Fun fact! This is a Dmanisi skull from Georgia, another type of hominin to us. 

Notice that jaw? When we lose our teeth, over time our jawbone heals the gaps, making it smooth, so when archaeologists discover skulls centuries later they can tell whether the tooth was lost after death (as the bone didn’t grow to cover the hole) or during the individual’s life.

The majority of this jaw has healed, so this person would have lived a number of years with basically no teeth. The age of this skull, according to wiki, is 1.8 million years.

This means that millions of years ago this person had a diet with soft, easy foods, and that others in the group would have known, understood, and helped by specialising their foraging for this one individual.

First the Hobbits/Aragorn travel out of Bree and into a barren wilderness. After struggling for days through barren plains and disgusting marshes full of so much nothing, they arrive here:

A bare, melancholy landscape in the middle of nowhere.  The music is bleak and lonely.

There is nothing around except a pile of broken ruins on a far hill. 

Aragorn’s reaction is to say, basically to himself: “this was once the great watch tower of Amon Sûl .” 

And you realize that the lifeless landscapes these characters have been journeying through for the past few days used to be part of a beautiful, vibrant kingdom that no longer exists. 

And that Aragorn understands that, and feels that loss, but the hobbits don’t.

Then they set up camp on Weathertop. The hobbits all put their things down and start to relax….but Aragorn stands up, and walks away.

Then he stands on the edge of Weathertop, and looks out over he landscape:

It actually took me a while to notice that you can see his silhouette under the overhang, against the clouds:

And while this moment is tiny, it reminds me of a moment in the book. When Aragorn and co. arrive at Weathertop in the book…..Aragorn suggests they all look out over the top, so that they can see the same view the ancient kings saw when they used Weathertop as a watch tower.

And that’s what I feel like Aragorn is doing in this little moment– surveying the horizon the way the ancient kings used to do before everything fell apart.

And I love that because…. there’s a recurring thing in the films where Aragorn comes across symbols of  his kingdom, but the symbols are always decayed or broken. The most obvious example of this is Narsil, the Sword that Was Broken.  (And Aragorn’s character arc in the films is about learning that his kingdom, though it seems hopelessly broken, is not beyond repair.)

Aragorn is a king in exile.

The Nazgul were once “great kings of men.”

Weathertop was once a watchtower that belonged to a fallen ancient kingdom–a kingdom that a man like any of them might’ve ruled.

Aragorn the King of Gondor goes to Weathertop as “Strider.” And nine great kings of men go to Weathertop as Ringwraiths.

So Aragorn, a king who has wandered for so long in disguise that he’s  beginning to lose his sense of identity….and the Ringwraiths, kings who have already utterly lost their identity…….battle in an ancient watchtower of the King, a watchtower that has become ruins/is also losing its identity.

It’s like the line from the books: “all that is gold does not glitter.”

 On the surface, the battle at Weathertop is a Ranger defending the hobbits from a group of monsters in the abandoned ruins of an old hill. 

But underneath the surface, it’s a battle of kings–the destined King of Gondor battling these ancient corrupted kings in the ruins of their fallen kingdom. 

To note:

FR: concentrer /EN: focus

FR: écureuil /EN: squirrel

FR: pingouin /EN: penguin

Also, this webring has citrus, so be warned!!!!