sewing 101

on thursday, leslie held of the MIT theatrical costume design shop gave us a helpful sewing workshop. i left with so much more practical sewing skill than i came in with.



it was amusing to see the breadth of sewing machines that materialised in the classroom. people lugged their 50lb vintage singer machines and electronic LCD-screen-bedecked embroidery brothers alike. i fell in the love with the avocado green mechanical monster with mod futuristic styling and an open bottom.

here's what i learned:

general

• there are two needles, one upper (visible) and one lower (bobbin, invisible).
• always turn the flywheel TOWARDS you. never ever turn it away from you.
• thread goes through the tension disks and through the take-up.
• thread the needle from front --> back, or right --> left.
• when you pop the bobbin in, make sure it spins CLOCKWISE. the bobbin tension is usually okay to leave it alone.
• pin perpendicularly to sewing seam (needle can jump over the pins)
• a "walking foot" is great for automatically adjusting for tension
• sewing machine requires regular oiling for maintenance
  

stitches

• basting
• the longest stitch ("4" on the knob)
• good for temporary seams, easy to rip out
• the stretch stitch is stronger, more durable
• zigzag
• for stretchy knit fabrics
  
• stronger stitch
• set the parameters for length and width of stitch

fabric

• the selvage is the finished edge of the fabric piece
• the strongest axis is parallel to the selvage (straight grain)
• the 2nd strongest axis is orthogonal to the selvage (cross grain)
• fabrics are always weak and stretch out on the bias

needles

• recommended: schmetz needles
  
• sizes are 9 to 18; 14 is common use, 16-18 for thicker fabrics like denim
• need special needle for leather
• need ballpoint needle for knits
• insert needle into machine with flat side towards the back
  

hems

• first finish edges with a zigzag stitch to prevent raveling
  
• fold once, then twice over, and then hem

zippers

• use zipperfoot, which is also handy for sewing wiring or cording
• use basting stitch to seam two pieces together
• press seam open with an iron
• put zipper face-down on the seam
• pin in place
• sew down, across, and up (U-shape)
• wiggle needle to manuever through teeth
• rip out the basting seam

invisible hems

• use the stitch that looks straight with poking out to the left
• first finish the edges to prevent unraveling
• fold once, then another in the other direction (accordion-style)
• sew so that most of the stitching is on the edge, but the tips of the points barely catch onto the fold of the fabric
• use color-matching thread!

so now i'm super-excited. i don't yet have a personal machine, but for now i'll use the ones in the lab and check out the singer store in davis square (it was closed when i stopped by this weekend). hopefully leslie can teach us the basics of patterning and draping in later weeks.

next time i'm at winmil, i'll take a look at their fabric selection and see if i can make myself an easy A-line skirt next weekend...

complication of gender

so for class, i decided to go with the women's version of the electronic weapondry arsenal belt. it was ideated as a reaction to this:



points and observations:

• the humongous majority of people you see with electronic gadgets clipped to their belt are men. business men overrun the pack, with their cellphones, blackberries, and pdas strapped around their bellies. the few women who do similarly are only because of their professional uniform, such as for policewomen or military women. business women, those who may need to get in touch with others with ease and speed, still never tend to wear the 'toolbelt.' phones and things are tucked in purses, to avoid disrupting the female silhouette or to keep the immediate nonessentials out of sight.
• men tend to display their gadgets openly. there's a study where men just whip these things out in public, exhibition-like, much more than women do. [there's a study out there, link to it here later]
  
• i liked how the women of early iran (our week 2 reading) wore their garment pins as both feminine symbols and also secret defensive weapons. the same objects that might culturally delineate or commoditise the women could be used for their own personal advantage.

so, the idea was a female version of the toolbelt, one that kept a women's stash of tools or 'weapons' handy and accessible, enabling a feminine sort of secretive power.

so here's the physical prototype of the femininised belt. i got some stretch lace at windsor button and illustrated how it could hold personal electronic objects such as a cellphone, blackberry, or pager. more personal objects that might be needed for immediate access could also be housed on this hidden belt, such as a vibrator or a sentimental object. i liked the image of it being obscured beneath a skirt, invisible, and then exposed as needed for the benefit of the wearer. the woman can be empowered without being encumbered.

an interesting suggestion would be to design a skirt to go along with this garter belt, with strategic slashes and pockets, so one could just reach into the slashes to fetch the cellphone. i like the idea of the woman as enigma, where there's much more than expected behind the surface.

there were a lot of interesting projects presented last tuesday, though the most seemingly successful ones had to do with dealing with issues of hair. hair as a signal of masculinity, or removal of hair as a signal of femininity. it's such a human thing--we're mammals! we're hairy! though how each gender formulates its conventions on how to manage it or display it establishes the weird cultural norms we associate with hair and grooming rituals. control of one's own hair sort of aligns with control of one's own gender. interesting how nefarious areas of hair in particular places on the body really associate with enculturated behaviors, ideals, and expectations.

tending to gender

okay, so for tomorrow i have to construct some sort of wearable item that 'complicates gender'. everything i think of seems to either be woefully uninspired or completely tangential.

one is a jewel-encrusted belt with hotdogs tied all around it. kind of like a combo toolbelt and belly decoration, juxtaposing a shapely waist with phallic stuff all over it. kind of messy.

another idea which i think would be cute and succinct, but maybe too simple, is an apple necklace. like, taking an apple, drilling an off-center hole through it, and threading a ribbon through it. tying it prettily around a girl's neck is a simultaneous thought of a prominent adam's apple and of the female sexual imagery of fruit and desire. i like the idea of food and the body. maybe i can take a banana, smoosh it, and rub it all over one's tender skin. that would smell really good with a dash of cinnamon.

but i digress.

brainstorming impending...

stuff that's typically male:

• businessman stuff: ties, bowties, suspenders, leather belts, pinstripes, cufflinks, oxford shoes
• uniforms in general
  
• facial hair, mustaches, beards, hairiness
  
• boxer shorts, men's briefs
  
• phallus (i know i'm making a stretch, here)
  
• low voice, adam's apple
• muscular, angular form
• manly fragrance
• strength
  

stuff that's typically female:

• skirts, dresses
  
• ruffles, lace
  
• floral elements
• jewelry, frivolous adornment
• heeled shoes
• soft materials, silky, drapey
• longer hair length
• shaved skin
• fruit and flora symbolism
• sweetness
• domestic elements: apron, housedress, gloves
• particular headwear: bonnets, fancy hats
• breasts, hips, curves
  

hmmm. i don't know if i'm getting anywhere here. now that i have gloves in my head i have that awesome image in my head of elbow-length opera gloves. mmm.

you know how all those awful corporate monkeys have every known electronic device strapped to their belt? like pda + blackberry + phone + pager + camera all hanging off their waists. kind of like an futuristic sword belt, an array of all of one's tools of power. why don't women do that? is that because we don't have belts? we have more dignity? we carry everything in a bottomless bag? we like to keep a clean silhouette? it would be awesome to have something like miz lara croft, where our digital accessories were conveniently strapped to our limber thighs. think how a computer geek would quiver if he saw a lady hike up her skirt to answer her cellphone. definitely more statement-making than hunting through her bag for the umpteenth time.

more thoughts later.

making oneself

last thursday was an interesting constrast from the tuesday's critique and discussion roundtable. we were whisked away to a large room, donned our disposable tshirts (i sacrificed my mit beavers shirt; brown never did suit me), and went to wrapping ourselves in layers of gummed paper, mummy-style, to create body doubles of ourselves. cheapo egocentric dressform factory!



method similar to this: gummed paper dress form

i was a huge rush, since i wanted to attend the beginning of class but had to leave for the sigur ros concert (which actually started on time, a reassuring move). i wonder if my form dried successfully before i left. it was a soggy, soggy day, so the hair dryers were indispensible. thank you gemma for crossing my heart!

i may try doing a duct tape model as well. maybe this coming weekend?

thursday concerts may be killing me this semester. why oh why, royksopp, why oh why, beck, do you have to perform in boston on thursday nights?

graphical taxonomy

so here's what i brought to last night's class. click on it for a larger version, and where you can really see the revealer reveal... ooh la.

chris liked the amorphous, amoeba-like shapes. somehow i have cravings for doughnuts and coffee [cups], all of sudden... :)

the readings for thursday are rather interesting. the 'dressed to kill' paper was pretty speculative, but had a lot of plausible (?) theories based on reeeeally limited information. honestly, i had to pretend i could see the pins in the engraving like the helpful little caption told me i could. and the 'biege epoch' is downright hilarious. i can't imagine the writer, the editor, or the publisher releasing that with a straight face. i mean, i would be impressed if it were actually well-written, but it's bad taste with bad writing! amazingly priceless.

hoping i can make the beginning of thursday's class...

beginning on the right (well-shod) foot

this will be a quickie since i'm tired and have a full plate of work set out for me tomorrow, but just a summary of tonight's class, where we all introduced each other and presented the taxonomies we had prepared.

for thursday, there are three entertaining (i'm trusting chris on here) papers on clothing and gender to read, and our assignment for next tuesday is to create something wearable or somehow using the body to complicate or redirect gender. i suppose the papers will help, but definitely a tall order at first glance. there was a suggestion to look at particular situations, historical periods, or critical theory papers to narrow it down to a specific problem to address. it can be constructed out of any feasible material, and bring it to class to be modeled by some warm body. for some reason i started envisioning a candy necklace that morphed and grew into this ungodly pastel beard. sweet and icky at the same time.

anyway, i went first tonight on the taxonomy thing, and i guess my presentation was refreshing that it was (1) on real paper and (2) hand-drawn. this sort of exercise, since i ended up being so freeform with it, was a lot more enjoyable to me with pencil and paper. i messed around with the silhouette idea, got a little out of hand, and then really isolated the formal quality of clothing--pieces of fabric that rests on our body while also accomodating our strange extremities. hence, holes for our neck, arms, legs, feet, etc. my attempt was to group together garments on a purely physical basis, and sketched out things that were of common topologies. (jim would be proud, i think.) for instance, things with three holes include cardigans, shrugs, and pants. things with six holes include fingerless gloves. for some of the categories i attempted to think outside of the conventional western-style pieces and make up some of my own that had the requisite topology but a different construction, such as a one-armed sweater, a floor-length revealer, or a wetsuit that accomodates a cellphone. as chris pointed out, i defined a space, and then sought to fill in some of the more imaginative stuff that still can function as clothing that we know.

will scan and upload as soon as possible, tomorrow or thursday.

it was completely surprising and very interesting to see so many different takes on the assignment. even on something so simple, you could see some people's design styles or personal agendas so easy and so quickly.

i do have to find this japanese photographer who takes pictures of people and their amazingly extensive clothing collections. somehow that's what really makes any collection work--relating it back on how it truly defines the collector, the persistent lover.

taxonomies are taxing

the assignment for today is to create a taxonomy for clothing. taxonomy, "division into ordered groups or categories." clothing, yet a gazillion ways to organise, to filter, to evaluate, to shape. an exercise so simple a middle-schooler can do it, yet the breadth of complexity ends up snowballing with each thick and sticky layer of culture, identity, and gender.

i found some highly amusing references on the web when i googled 'clothing taxonomy.'

my favorites:

• tikaro's a taxonomy of boxy clothes features a detailed little venn diagram focused on skater punk (fred perry), british working class (ben sherman), and west coast hot rod (chochie casuals). i like how 'your uncle in the merchant marine' is diametrically opposed to 'avril lavigne.'
  
• every category of goth you ever dreamed of is at corpgoth to perkygoth on gothicunity. i feel most closely tied to the noodlegoth--those on the ramen/macaroni/spaghetti/pasta budget. don't forget the udon and the thai kitchen pad thai.
• joho writes about ("taxonomy and tags") how tagging has dramatically killed the conventional rules of taxonomy. take that, aristotle. but seriously, every item can now have an infinite number of definitions and categorizations, which is great, but how can one standardise which tags are more definitive and which are more frivolous?
  

okay, so back to what i'm thinking, which is everything and nothing at the same time. my first gut instinct was to plot out the x most influential designers (everything from yohji yamamoto to coco chanel) and then trickle down who has inspired who and pretty much link someone like yves saint laurent with a ponytail scrunchie. but i dont have an enormous amount of knowledge about fashion names and history. the book 100 fashion designers, 010 curators, looks like it might be useful in this particular regard. this taxonomy system would not only take care of the actual garments and their sources but also the names and general history that shaped these visions.

another thought is one of purely visual language. the language of silhouette, shaping to (or from) the human body. this one has lots of degrees of freedom--neckline, hemlengths, form-fitting or draping. i might go with this, though it's a design exercise on how to lay them out in a coherent, relating way. however, this is a minimal sort of taxonomy that throws things like context and connotation out of the window. but perhaps it will infer them through the visual spectrum. we will have to see.

and then i just brainstormed a bunch on other sorts of slants i could think about clothing. one strong spectrum was along the lines of protection vs. vulnerability, which types of clothing shield and which reveal. another is handmade vs. machinemade--industrial forms. attraction vs. deflection, inner vs. outer enforcement (expression vs. conformity), preciousness vs. commodity, physical restraint vs. freedom, ergonomic vs. generic form, etc. argh argh argh.

i'm going to try with the visual one and see how that takes. i'm, more than anything, curious about what people will bring to the table tonight.

pattern language @ tufts

so last thursday, we all went our merry ways to davis square, to witness the latest art exhibitions at tufts university. the one in particular to inspect was the clothing exhibit: pattern language: clothing as communicator.

the website has an interesting flash interface to scope out all the works, which has an amusing feature where you can move around the dress forms at one's whimsy. the spectrum of works was appealing, from historical iconic works on clothes (the felt suit; the yoko ono video) to the futuristic vision of humanity and clothing (the zipper dress; the firefly dress). the first thing that i thought was rather odd was the format of the printed descriptions of each object. there was this weird "need:_____, want:_____, source:_____" assignment on each placard, which either constrained or trivialised what the artist meant to say about each piece. also, a lot of the garments seemed dead on the wall. it was as if butterflies and moths were pinned to a surface, perhaps easier to inspect, but completely robbed of their livelihood and ethereal beauty. the meaning of clothing is so intrisically connected to its relationship to the human body and to others in a social realm. putting certain garments on the wall gave it a look-dont-touch atmosphere that is natural in a museum with paintings, but is unbearable with things you instictively want to touch and feel, or at least see in context on a real body. the projects with accompanying videos were much better to interpret, in my opinion, since you could see how they work in a human context. otherwise, the exhibit seemed quite deadened.

my favorite pieces would have to be the objet un dress (aka zipper dress) by galya rosenfeld and yoko ono's cut piece. the zipper dress focued more on the action of interacting with the clothing--putting on, taking off, reshaping, reforming--than with a particular style or material. the zipper, i can imagine, is very addictive to connect and disconnect, and the wearer's activity is completely enveloping, completely self-constructing. too bad the video was not at the exhibit, though it is viewable online.

and the yoko video is unreal. just the look on her face while some dork cuts off her shoulder seams. reminds me of the cibo matto lyrics...

my heart is like an artichoke
i eat petals myself one by one
though i can't stop plucking off
i can't see my core
i keep asking for you more and more
can you peel my petals one by one?
your hands are like a rusty knife
are you gonna keep on peeling me?

i mean, the other projects weren't necessarily poor. but i feel as though the exhibit could have been presented in a much more engaging way.

downstairs, we came across a spectacular surprise of mei-ling hom's silkworm grind. you could experience it even before finishing the last step on the stairs as the warm, sweet spices hit your nose. these enormous translucent coccoons spun lazily around a huge pile of ground spice, and was mesmerizing on many sensorial fronts.

chris c is my new favorite person

so it's actually happening -- a course on technology and clothing that's actually contextualised in a social, cultural, global sense, rather than worrying so much constructing heavy, alienating head-mounted displays and compounding wearable gadgets left and right a la robowarrior style. thank you so much chris csik for deigning to your grad students (who knows exactly how far the impact of seamless might go?) and providing a forum on campus to really enrich and enlighten this body of knowledge.

yesterday was the first class. more details on what and where forthcoming.