in case anyone is looking through the notes trying to find the original artist it’s will mcphail !! feel free to check out his site but also here are some other things he made too !!
The best part is that they were inspired by a diary entry from 1775, written by a 12 year old tailor’s apprentice who had been left unsupervised all day and decided to make a suit for a cat. Here’s a link to the blog post about it, but I’ll just paste the whole diary entry here:
“I had been at work about two months when Christmas came on – and here I must relate a little anecdote. The principal [the tailor] and his lady were invited to a party among their friends…while it devolved on me to stay at home and keep house. There was nothing left me in charge to do, only to take care of the house. There was a large cat that generally lay about the fire. In order to try my mechanical powers, I concluded to make a suit of clothing for puss, and for my purpose gathered some scraps of cloth that lay about the shop-board, and went to work as hard as I could. Late in the evening I got my suit of clothes finished; I caught the cat, put on the whole suit – coat, vest, and small-clothes [breeches] – buttoned all on tight, and set down my cat to inspect the fit.
“Unfortunately for me there was a hole through the floor close to the fireplace, just large enough for the cat to pass down; after making some efforts to get rid of the clothes, and failing, pussy descended through the hole and disappeared; the floor was tight and the house underpinned with brick, so there was no chance of pursuit. I consoled myself with a hope that the cat would extricate itself from its incumbrance, but not so; night came and I had made on a good fire and seated myself for some two or three hours after dark, when who should make their appearance but my master and mistress and two young men, all in good humor, with two or three bottles of rum. After all were seated around the fire, who should appear amongst us but the cat in his uniform. I was struck speechless, the secret was out and had no chance of concealing; the cat was caught, the whole work inspected and the question asked, is this your day’s work? I was obliged to answer in the affirmative; I would then have been willing to take a good whipping, and let it stop there, but no, to complete my mortification the clothes were carefully taken off the cat and hung up in the shop for the inspection of all customers that came in.”
Look what I found an bought on holiday in Malmö @pepurika !!! So good to read this in my tent at the campsite in the sun (did I squeal in the middle of the busy bookstore? I might have)(am I 46 years old? Yes I am and I will squeal if I want to)
Throwing a Fit was a one-day fashion pop-up hosted by Rorisang Lu and Sassima on 1 August 2026 at Magnolia Foundry in Gaborone, Botswana. More than a retail event, it was designed as an immersive brand experience that introduced visitors to the worlds of both fashion houses through storytelling, craftsmanship, and personal interaction.
The pop-up featured a curated selection of garments, including sample pieces, archive designs, and ready-to-wear collections, allowing guests to explore the brands up close. Visitors were encouraged to engage with the creative process through displays highlighting garment construction, fabrics, design inspiration, and the journey from concept to finished piece.
The event focused on creating a luxury yet welcoming atmosphere where guests could experience fashion through all five senses. Music, visual merchandising, tactile fabric displays, fragrance, and refreshments helped transform the space into an environment that reflected the identity of the brands rather than simply functioning as a shop.
Community and connection were central to the experience. Guests had the opportunity to meet the designer, learn about the stories behind the collections, network with other creatives and fashion enthusiasts, and participate in interactive moments throughout the day. The event also celebrated personal style through its "Best You've Ever Looked" dress theme, encouraging attendees to express themselves confidently.
Ultimately, Throwing a Fit served as a platform to strengthen the relationship between the brands and their audience, showcase independent Botswana fashion, gather valuable customer feedback, and lay the foundation for future pop-up experiences and creative collaborations.
There's a group that makes clothing with ink stained hands to show each time the fabric was touched with human hands to make the garment. The purpose of the piece is to bring attention to the hidden labor of sewists in the garment industry
To be fair - while all your clothing was made by "a person on a sewing machine," many of those sewing machines
Aren't easily available to you, and
Take a notable amount of training to use (especially, to use without damage to your hands) (Not "months of training." Just. Not "here's the instruction pamphlet; have fun.")
However: The sewing machines that are reasonably available to you, will make clothes you can wear and enjoy wearing. (Industrial sewing machines can sew for 8, 10, 18 hours without breaking down; the one you buy at WalMart cannot. Some industrial ones can sew through 4 layers of denim; you can find a machine that does that but you won't get it by accident and it will cost more. And so on.)
Basic sewing machine - enough to get started making clothes - is under $200. (Industrial machines start at ~$2000 and go up from there.) Super Ultra Cheap version is under $100; not recommended unless you know you'll be able to throw $350 at the hobby in a couple of years when the simple one is just really too limited anymore.
...Anything under $50 (new) is A Gimmick. They're not all worthless but they're very limited. They're more "you can learn how a sewing machine works with this" than "you can make clothes with this." (I mean. You can. But you can make clothes with a needle & thread, too. And while it takes longer, you may be less frustrated than using a $45 "beginner sewing machine.") Some of the gimmick machines are very useful for their specific purpose - they're ultra-portable, or good for repairs, and so on.
But if you are on a very limited budget - less than $50 can get you started on making clothes. And bookbags. And pockets to add to clothes you already have. And hats. Bathing suits, if you decide to get ambitious. (Stretchy fabrics are challenging, esp on a simple machine.)
You can make socks with a sewing machine but I really don't recommend it.
Shifting public thoughts on sewing machines from "every third household has one" to "exotic crafting hobby" is part of how the damn capitalist regime forces people to put up with clothes that don't fit actual human shapes and/or fall apart after 5 washings.
Also, sewing machines are one of those things that is often much better to buy used, because in the old days they used metal gears and now the gears are nylon and don't last as long. If you want to get a sewing machine and dabble, I highly suggest looking on Craigslist or at estate sales for a used one. Mine cost me $30 and would have gone for much more, adjusted for inflation, when it was new. But people inherit sewing machines or want to give them away all the time, so it is very worth checking on the used market near you if you want to get into sewing clothes but aren't sure where to start. You can often get a lot more sewing machine for your buck than if you buy a new one.
This is all good information, but fails to address why people associate homemade clothing with looking like shit: poor fit.
You can make stunningly gorgeous and fashionable pieces of clothing with the basic straight stitch that used to be the only stitch sewing machines can do. Maybe a little strategic hand sewing just to tack some key points down. Fancier stitches can do some nice things, but they’ll never make a garment look better on you. That’s all in the fitting. Fitting is the real skill.
That’s good news if you’re thrifty because fitting a pattern takes only low cost tools and materials. Straight edges, measuring tape, adhesive tape, children’s washable markers, tracing paper, and cheap test garment fabric. You can get books on fitting at libraries, online archives, thrift stores, magazines, and online tutorials. Personally I’m a fan of In-House Pattern Studios.
Sewing pattern sizes and proportions are not based on actual human proportions, they’re based on standardized pattern blocks that make the sizing math easy. You will not get a garment that looks good by picking a pattern + size and making it without alterations. There’s nothing wrong with your body, and there’s nothing even really wrong with how random the pattern sizing starts as, there’s just no standard body shape to begin with so anything would be wrong for most people.
You need to find what your key measurements are, cut apart a traced copy, and move the bits around so it’s your proportions with your desired ease. There are as many different opinions as there are sewists on what those measurements are, how to move them, and how to figure out if they worked. That’s why library books are helpful to get a lot of perspectives from people teaching you a whole method, not One Neat Trick with no context. I like the In-House Pattern Studio method the best and the most important 80% you can get free with the newsletter signup (she doesn’t sell the information and only sends things occasionally after the initial tutorials).
This is how important fit is: about 4 years ago before top took off literally 10 pounds of boobs but while I was binding, I made a really cool shirt with rainbow skulls and floral collar + placard. I did give it a lot of ease, but never so much that it looked baggy. I agonized over the fit, and it was fit to my body as it was at the time. I ended up getting top surgery like a year after that and was bummed my shirt wouldn’t fit me right. But it did. It fits my body so well even with a smaller chest and still looks very masculine on me.
I’ve also gained a bunch of weight and am frequently very anguished about my clothes no longer fitting. (I don’t care what weight I am, I just want it to stay there.) Most of that agony is that the way our clothes are cut is deliberately hostile to weight changes in ways our ancestors clothes were not, but that’s a different rant.
But! My cool rainbow skull shirt still fits! It still looks good on me. It doesn’t pull in weird places or restrict my movement in ways that set off my skin sensitivity. Because it actually fully fits my proportions. Something no purchased clothing has ever done, and can never do.
People complement it and I get to tell them I made it and they’re blown away. I could have made the whole thing with straight stitches. It’s the fit and creative use of fabric (pattern matching problem solving) that makes it look like it’s a designer shirt.
It’s not the tools and it’s not the machine that make the garment good, it’s having the knowledge and willpower to confront the exact shape of your body and fitting it.
I feel like tumblr should be bigger fans of The Blues Brothers. It's a movie that has everything we value as a community. Attention and respect to pioneering black musicians, open hostility to nazis, open defiance to police, Carrie Fisher with a rocket launcher and flamethrower, a soundtrack that goes hard as hell, John Belushi so blasted on cocaine that he continues to do somersaults despite having a broken ankle. It's got it all!
Frank Oz is the jail's discharge clerk when Belushi gets out of jail at the beginning.
Not getting into ending spoilers but Steven Spielberg plays a character who is pivotal to the climax of the film.
Ray Charles fires a warning shot from a pistol at a shoplifter.
They did location filming in a mall that had closed the previous year in 1978. The production fucked that mall up so bad that it remained abandoned until it was finally demolished in 2012.
A total of 60 cop cars are fucking destroyed in the movie.
It’s got Aretha Franklin as a sarcastic diner owner with her own back-up dancers. Chaka Khan is a soloist in the choir. And the whole scene set to Cab Calloway’s Minnie the Moocher is so spectacular I won’t ruin it for you.
Rewatching Truman Show for the first time in a long time, and the detail that’s stuck with me this time is the set design.
The characters drive modern cars and hock modern products, but it’s all presented with a veneer of 1950s wholesome applecheeked Americana. Truman’s life is presented as an escape for the audience from the drudgery of the modern day, and the aesthetic they’ve chosen for this is the post-war economic boom. This is the simple time, the movie says. This is the good time. Doesn’t the modern day suck? Let’s go back and see our friends from the days when life was good.
And it’s a lie. Truman’s life is a lie, and the image of white picket fenced suburbia they’ve presented is a lie. It’s an elaborate construction to recreate a false memory that’s comfortable for advertisers. The movie is a satire, but it’s also a very blatant statement against the nostalgia for a golden age which never existed. It’s a lie. It doesn’t exist.
I don’t know. I’m spitballing. I’m biased because I despise mid-20th century Americana and I naturally treat it with hostility, but it’s very gratifying to see a movie kind of agree with me.
Earlier in the summer, I went to Florida with my friend. We decided to visit a town nearish to where we were staying called Seaside, as we had heard it was a cute place. What I did not know at the time was that Seaside is the place where they filmed The Truman Show. It was a "master-planned community," constructed in the 80s to be the perfect beach town.
Seaside, FL
Seahaven
And yes, it really does look Like That. Not just in their tourist-agency photos, in real life it looks like that. Arguably the irl Seaside is even prettier than movie Seahaven, because the the office buildings where Truman works don't exist; the town is 100% cutesy homes and little shops.
Every single house is pastel with white trim and a white picket fence with the family's name on it in a handwritten font. The streets are paved with red bricks and lined with palmettos, and families bicycle past. The streets are clean, the lawns manicured, the sidewalks pristine.
Soon after we arrive my friend says as we walk, "God I wish I could live in a place like this. Imagine having the money to live in a place like this." I reply, "I don't actually know for me...it's gorgeous don't get me wrong, but there's no grime, you know? Where's the grime? I'd feel uncomfortable. It feels like there's not a dive bar for a hundred miles."
We reach the town center, which is a wide square lined with shops on one side, food trucks on the other. We have a lovely time looking through the shops, though I start feeling kinda weird, and I'm not sure why. Probably the extreme cleanliness of the area is making me feel off-kilter. And the surreal feeling of walking through areas I recognize from The Truman Show only adds to the weirdness.
We go into a clothing store, and it's crowded with people who appear to have stepped out of a Land's End catalog. It sells boring tshirts, shorts, and sundresses in whites and blues, all needlessly expensive. Employees walk through, refolding already-pristine shirts. So perfect. "Anyone buying from here is so rich they can probably smell the poor on us," my friend jokes, "that's why they have so many employees refolding things, it's to fix anything we brush against." "Or even breathe on!" I add.
We continue on to the grocery store where, in the movie, Truman finds Marlon stocking the vending machine and first tells him he suspects his world is wrong. I buy some pasta salad there to eat for lunch (all the cafes are quite expensive), and we find a place to sit and eat. As my friend finishes up her food, I write a postcard to my sister, telling her about my trip overall and my day in Seaside, describing the town as 'vomit-inducingly picturesque.' (It has been weeks since my visit and she still has not received that postcard)
Lunch done, we decide to walk down to the beach and have a swim. And I realize something about the surreal feeling. "Weird question," I say to my friend, "have you seen any non-white people here? Am I imagining that?"
She pauses. "The lady cleaning the bathrooms?" she asks.
"No I mean vacationers. Guests, customers. Other than you, I haven't seen a single one who wasn't white."
"...No. I haven't either."
And now that we see it, we can't unsee it. It's a wealthy area, so I had been expecting it to be pretty white, but the fact that there is not a single nonwhite person who isn't working a service job feels so gross. It's as though the place is somehow still segregated, like we have stepped back in time, but not to the fun, fake, rock-n-roll-and-soda-parlor-nostalgia version of the fifties, but to the real racism-and-repression fifties.
It is so fucking weird and sinister. I feel I have stumbled into another realm. All these people giving us sideeye, riding around on their golf carts in their pristine $45 seaside-branded tshirts, taking pictures of the perfect houses all lined up in perfect rows. A whole town of Meryls wearing lulu lemon.
We walk on. It's hot, and a swim is exactly what we need. Surely they can't ruin the ocean. I myself am extremely excited to swim, because now that we've spent a few hours among the pompous populace, I want to piss in their perfect ocean more than anything in the world.
We walk along behind the beachfront bar patios that line the beach toward the access point, and the ocean looks so blue and inviting. Although the hedge growing between us and the dunes is strangely tall. "Huh," I think. "It's weird that they'd grow it like this, it blocks the view for everyone sitting on the patios."
We arrive at the boardwalk, and there is a man standing there. He says "Hold on! Do you two have a beach access pass?" I look at him in disbelief. It's a public beach, but the sign behind the man says you have to rent a beach chair to use the beach, and it's $35 per person. We glance at each other, turn wordlessly, and head back to town.
I seriously consider trying to sneak onto the beach somehow, because at this point I am very invested in the idea of pissing in their ocean, but I realize that with the tall hedge it would be nigh-impossible.
We went home after that.
So many reviews for Seaside on travel websites mention how they love to visit Seaside because they feel transported, they feel it reflects a "simpler time" or a "peaceful life." It's been weeks and I can't stop thinking about my experience. It really drove home how...complicit people can be in their own ignorance. A lot of people want to live in that perfect bubble, and especially if they have the money, they can maintain that barrier. It reminds me that part of the reason I often have trouble persuading these types of people is because they simply do not want to be persuaded. They're so proud to be the place where The Truman Show was filmed, but I rather doubt they really think about what it means that they live on a movie set, in a surreal dream.
Honestly visiting Seaside was a 10/10 unique experience. I would highly recommend it as a place to go for a couple hours if you're gonna be nearby and want to feel like you've been kidnapped into The Truman Show and/or your brain has been put in an easy bake oven. It's like a zoo for superrich WASPS. We had a really good time loudly making fun of how insane it all was, invading their little paradise with our riffraff energy. Treat it like an excursion into the jungle; you're gonna have to park a half mile away minimum, and bring all your food and water with you so you don't have to buy anything. You don't want to give them any money. They have enough.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, next time I go to the panhandle, I will be going to the nearest free public beach access to Seaside, and I will walk to the Seaside area of the beach, and I will piss in their ocean.
