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Sunday 10 January 2016

I've been away for a while...

2014 and 2015 were pretty horrible years for me. Lots of reasons, but mainly because I live far away from my family and my father was ill, so I spent quite a bit of time travelling to the other side of the world to help out. For this reason, my blogging post had to take a back seat for quite a while, but, hopefully the start of 2016 will bring a renewed vigour and I will get my life back on track.

Not all was bad, though. In 2014, I bought a lovely wide format printer, and I have been plugging away at Illustrator and have produced a small range of patterns for knit fabrics. I've been selling them at our local knitting mill factory shop, and at craft fairs.

 I am tired of looking at garments which are mass produced, and are just tight tubes of knit fabric, which in my opinion, make you look like coloured sausages.

"Coloured sausages?" I hear you say.... Well, this is what I think about knits, and how they make you feel.

As I am now on the second half of my 6th decade, my body has changed quite a lot from when I was younger. There are deposits of cuddly bits in places I wish there weren't. I know this is natural, as much as I want them to go away, I have a feeling they are going to be around a long time!

Knit fabrics are so comfortable, they stretch and cover the body. Often, they feel just like a second skin. Woven fabrics never feel that way. If a woven garment is tight, you will know it for sure. A knit fabric will probably just stretch a bit more over the tight bits and you just don't notice the pounds packing on. Have a look in the mirror at your back view. You cant feel the tightness of the Knit top, but in the mirror, if you have a bit of excess cuddly stuff above your bra, it will show. And so will the other slightly wobbly bits! I do wonder whether the T shirt revolution is responsible for the obesity problem in the world.

However, knits are my fabric of choice, I don't think a day goes by without me putting on at least one knitted garment, be it a shirt or skirt, or both. I just love feeling comfortable in what I wear, so I wanted to take my pattern experience into a new area.

For a while I was doing some work with a 3d program, Optitex. You make up a pattern and then digitally sew it together and fit it onto an avatar. At the time, I did not know how to adjust the fabric qualities on the program, and so the patterns I produced fitted the model beautifully, draping over the body, rather than hugging the torso tightly. I printed off the pattern, measured myself, and cut a basic T shirt out. Sewed it up, and popped it on. The resulting garment was fitting, but not in any way tight. It covered my belly and swept over my hips, and I was, after accepting the fact it didn't fit as tightly as I was used to, that it did actually look a lot nicer than a normal T shirt!

I was hooked. Out went all the square, short tops in my wardrobe. I am now making myself new garments, longer than before, with lovely curvy sides. They feel lovely, and I think I look lovely in them too.


I have taken this basic shape and made a collection of garments for both Apple shaped people, like me, and Pear shaped people.  Apples and Pears was born, and I hope it will grow in the coming year.

3 comments:

  1. I'm sorry to hear you had a rough couple of years and hope you managed to find some time for yourself amongst it all. It sounds as though you got sewing and designing done which is very cool.

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    1. Oh well, all families have bad times and good times too... I am hoping now I will have the energy to devote some real time to my little pattern making empire!

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