A wheel rediscovered

Last year I found myself in the position of exploring knitted jacket design in public. This was a daunting prospect as I have no design training, and most of the audience had more knitting experience than I have.
But it turned out that most in the audience had not met the technique of using cling wrap to prepare individualised patterns. Searching on the phase,"Saran Wrap Sloper" will give detailed descriptions online. This technique always fascinates, revealing strange and unexpected qualities in cling wrap. And it provides a number free way to generate a basic pattern block, which can be a comfort to those of us who may be sensitive about the disconnect between health and beauty ideals, and the reality of our own bodies.
The cling wrap antics turned out to be the highlight of the series. I wrapped a wide range of figures, the child shaped doll I used for demonstration, and variously shaped and sized women.

Wrapping Elizabeth in cling wrap. Place lengths of plastic without creating tension, otherwise the body will be squashed and your basic pattern block will be distorted. It is possible to buy narrow rolls of cling wrap, handy for the neck and armhole areas. If attempting this at home, use a premium brand of clingfilm, this is no time for trading handling quality for economy.

Marking in seam lines and edges.

Enjoying the mysteriously transformed cling wrap, which has assumed form and memory. The soft plastic shell has been cut off the subject. I wrecked only two singlets before I worked out that making the first cut along the centre back, with a strip of paper left underneath the wrapping, minimises the chances of snipping holes in undershirts.
By the end of the series of workshops, it had become obvious that everyone, including the child shaped doll, is broader across the front of the chest than across the back. For some of the subjects the difference is too significant to be ignored in designing or adapting garments.

A standard two dimensional construction is not going to work for this subject. If the bust measurement is evenly divided between the front and back pieces, the back will be too wide and the front will be distressingly inadequate.
Having made this useful discovery, and started improving my designs by allowing space where it is needed, and eliminating it where it is superfluous, I have gone on to discover that I am reinventing the wheel. My good friend Von opened my eyes to the fact that all the best old drafting references draw bodice fronts wider than bodice backs. A friend quoted her late mother, a professional dressmaker, advising that the front edges of a coat or cardigan should always overlap, even if the garment is to be worn unbuttoned. And it is not as if this design wisdom has been entirely forgotten. There is a Show Studio Design Download of a Martin Migiela basic dress pattern with the bodice front pieces, and the skirt back pieces, drawn with added space for the areas of greater curve.
To see plenty of examples where this principle has not been followed, browse a gold mine of shared knitting experience, the project pages of Ravelry. Then chose or adapt a pattern that respects a 3D body.

Location:

.....just the wrong clothes. PS

Yesterday I spent the day in Maryborough, not cycling through the sweltering countryside with my companions. Looking for cool and sedentary diversions, I found myself at the Maryborough Flour Mill Gallery
http://www.maryboroughflourmillgallery.com.au/index.html
home of the extraordinary Sew What collection of vintage, antique and toy sewing machines
I recommend a visit if you are passing that way.
Added attractions of the venue are the coffee and biscuit (included in the price of admission ), chairs and couches to relax in and retro reading material to browse.
As I leafed through the thoughtfully assembled folder of fashion articles from the 1940s and 50s, I was struck by the appearance of the models in photographs. Compared with fashion photographs you see now, the models then look almost pudgy. And as we know, on average we are bigger than our parents and grandparents. The publishers used quite a bit of artists' fashion illustration too. In the artwork, the models are elongated, have exaggerated shoulders and minimised waists, and look just like the real live models used in fashion display now!

..... just the wrong clothes

For years I have been crediting Billy Connolly with a wise saying, only to find that it is something that Swedes say all the time, "There's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes."
Billy said this on the cliffs near Wick, on what appeared to be a cold, wet and windy winter night such as you might expect by the northern tip of Scotland. When I saw this on the television I was surprised by a wave of nostalgia for this bleak landscape that I had never seen in real life. But one of my Great Grandfathers left Wick to try his fortune in Australia on the goldfields. I was touched to think of his grandson, my Dad, choosing to spend his working life in an equally harsh and beautiful Mallee landscape, battling a quite different set of climatic extremes.
But never mind the weather. It is one of the disappointments of modern life that many of us seem to be stuck with the wrong clothes for our shapes, our taste and our activity. In the dim past where I spent my youth, the range of clothing on sale matched fairly well the range of sizes to be clothed. And any dress shop with the slightest pretension to style, would have someone to do alterations. And then there were dressmakers, whose services could fit within quite modest budgets.
We are assured that we are much bigger people than our recent ancestors, and I believe it. But our wardrobes haven't adapted to changing shapes. Take this sentiment, attributed to Calvin Klein, "if a woman can't be bothered to keep herself in shape, I can't be bothered to make clothes for her" (he had been asked why he did not offer clothes over a certain size). Now that arrogant remark probably hides a truer explanation which might be expressed, " If I were to extend my range beyond that size there would be increased design and manufacturing costs due to altering the proportions to suit different shapes, and having to use different cutting layouts and more fabric. It is easier for me to make the cheapest possible versions of my designs, display them on models chosen to make the clothes look good, and hope the buyers are intimidated enough take whatever measures are needed to make themselves fit into the clothes I offer for sale"
Personal alteration by surgical means is a recent phenomenon, which seems to have become more common as the infrastructure for personalised garment provision has become scarcer. And the various branches of the weight loss industry are booming
My new year's resolution is to put more effort into designing and making humbler clothes. Clothes that will do their best to be comfortable and becoming to the wearer. Watch this space to see how it goes

Granny's squares.

Back in the 1930s, my grandmother made a cot blanket for my then baby sister. Not that she was my baby sister then. I wouldn't appear on the scene for quite a few years, by which time our Nana had departed it. My sister treasures this blanket, and has managed to keep it in near perfect condition, giving us a priceless glimpse at the colours of the family knits in the 30s.
I waved the iPhone over it a few times last night. Funny how I remember it as having no blue. A mistake, clearly. However the old rule, "blue and green should never be seen without a colour in between " has been followed.




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"So you don't just press a button?"

One of the advantages of procrastination is inevitable reflection. It is now several weeks since the very satisfactory MKAV Seminar, and time has worked to the surface my stand out memory, The Human Knitting Machine,seen by the lucky crowd on Friday evening.

Can I divert for a moment to note that our President, Angela, gets my vote in the category, Geniuses I have Known? The sheer number of ideas, and speed with which she moves on to the next thought might sometimes obscure the brilliance of her efforts, but the Friday night demonstration demands preservation.

This was machine knitting stripped back so far that even the machine was gone. This was machine knitting at its clearest - one needle, one stitch. You want more stitches? Have as many as you like as long as you can find a needle for each stitch. What can each needle do? It can either knit or not knit. If it doesn't knit, the yarn can pass over the top or underneath the stitch. And that's all. Everything else, the push buttons, the punchcards, the electronic controls, they are just means of telling each needle to knit or to not knit without the effort of hand selection.

I'll leave it to some subsequent video recorded performance to explain exactly what was done. For now you can just admire the knitted results.



Della wearing the knitted piece




A closer look at the knitting

At the other extreme, I caught part of a Barbara Fletcher workshop on hidden techniques in the Passap E6000, the most sophisticated domestic knitting machine available to us. What an extraordinary range of knitting interests covered! From the very simplest to the most complex machine any domestic machine knitter is likely to meet.