Coming back to the tumblr social politics scene after a five year break. I’m a 25-year-old accessible technology professional, and in my free time I like to research science/languages/social politics, make music, and pet cats.
How to Make Your Own Binder that Fits Well and Looks Good
A while back I was in need of some new binders and thought hey, I bet I can make one way cheaper than buying it from somewhere (especially cus some of the ones I’ve bought in the past didn’t really fit right). Except when I started looking for a binder patterns online, I was very surprised that I really… couldn’t find many that looked very nice lol. Most of them had really wrinkled necklines, or didn't bind well, or just overall looked weird. A lot of the patterns also required a serger, which I don't have.
So I just said fuck it and made my own pattern! And it ended up being relatively easy! And the binders fit REALLY WELL and are comfortable to wear, even for long periods. The neckline doesn't show under shirts with loose collars, and the bottom hem doesn't gap or stick out. Here's me wearing one:
(plus I was able to make myself 5 of them for a total of like ~$50.)
So I figured I could throw together a guide to help out anyone else who wanted to make their own binder but was dissatisfied with the patterns available!
Disclaimer: This tutorial is going to assume a baseline level of sewing experience, and also will require access to a sewing machine. It is not a complicated pattern, but it will most likely require some tweaking and adjustments after you make the first one. Don’t be afraid to make alterations to make it fit better!
This tutorial is for a gc2b-style half-tank binder. It could be altered to be a full-tank binder, but all instructions will be for the half-tank design.
Materials needed:
Stretchy fabric, probably listed as 'athletic fabric' (I use this kind from Joann’s. Most athletic stretch fabrics should work, look for around 80% nylon/20% spandex blends)
Stiff fabric (I use this shirting cotton because I like how lightweight it is. If you want something a little stiffer with more structure, you can use a cotton or cotton/poly blend twill like this. gc2b binders use twill for theirs.)
Lightweight fusible interfacing (I use this kind) (get FUSIBLE not sew-in)
Fusible webbing like Pellon Wonder-Web (this is technically optional but it WILL make your life easier when you’re sewing - just make sure to get the kind with the paper backing!!!)
“But kiwisoap thats 4 whole kinds of materials, surely I don’t need that many!” Ok sure, you can probably get by without the fusible web and interfacing, but consider: they are both dirt cheap (im talking like $1-2/yard), they will make it much easier to sew the final product, and will give you an overall better-looking result. This tutorial is written with the assumption that you’ll use them.
"How much fabric will I need?" Measure the circumference of your chest below your armpits. Add 6 inches just to be safe. This is the yardage of stretch fabric you’ll need, and should give you enough material to make at least 3 binders without much excess left over. You will need around half as much stiff fabric.
Other supplies:
Big Paper (for drawing the pattern)
Flexible measuring tape
Sewing machine
Iron
Pins
Step 1: Measuring
You will need 4 main measurements for this pattern.
A) Measure the circumference of your chest just below your armpits, then divide the number in half. This will be the widest part of the pattern.
B) Measure from the top of your shoulder down to where you want the binder to end. For most folks, this will usually be around the natural waist (narrowest part of the torso), about 3-6 inches above the belly button. This will be the overall height of the pattern.
C) Measure the distance from below your armpit to where you want the binder to end. This will determine where the arm hole starts.
D) Measure the circumference of your waist where you want the binder to end, then divide the number in half.
So for example, after dividing A and D in half, my measurements are 17", 15", 7", and 14.5".
Next:
Subtract one inch from measurement A - This will help provide some compression. You might need to take it in even further depending on how it fits, but one inch is a safe starting point. I take mine in around 1.5 inches.
Subtract half an inch from measurement D. This will help prevent the bottom edge of the binder from gapping. Again, you may need to take it in more or less, depending on your own body.
Add 1.5 inches to measurement B and one inch to measurement C. This is to account for the hems and armhole placement.
This makes my final measurements
A = 16"
B = 16.5"
C = 8"
D = 13.5"
From here on out, we are only going to be working with the measurements that we have added/subtracted to, NOT the ones we initially took.
Step 2: Drawing the Pattern
You will need a piece of paper large enough to accommodate the entire pattern. This may involve taping multiple pieces together, or using a piece of newsprint, etc.
I recommend folding the paper in half to ensure that you get a symmetrical pattern. However, this means you will need to divide measurements A and D in half again, or else you’ll end up with a pattern that’s twice as wide as it should be!
Also note: the pattern is drawn with the seam allowance built in! You don’t need to add any seam allowance.
To draw the pattern:
Begin with your folded paper. Measure and mark B and C on the paper, and draw a line extending across the paper. These will be your guidelines.
Measure and mark A and D along the middle and bottom guidelines, respectively. Remember, the paper is folded, so you only use half of the measurement for A and D.
Draw a loose curve connecting the endpoints of A and D. If needed, you can also just draw a straight line between the two.
Mark the opening for the neck hole. Depending on your size, it will measure around 6-8 inches across at the top (remember to divide this in half for the folded paper) and about 5-6.5 inches deep. (mine is 6.5" across and 5.5" deep) Draw a curve to connect the two points. This part will take some tweaking and adjusting to get it to look right lol.
Measure the width of the strap - this should be somewhere between 2.5 - 4 inches wide. They will end up about 1/2” to 3/4” narrower once you sew them. Draw the line at a slight angle, as shown.
Connect the endpoint of the strap to the endpoint of line A with a curve like in the diagram.
This will be the pattern for the front piece.
To make the back piece, trace the front pattern, but make a very shallow curve for the neckline instead of a steep one, as shown:
The last piece is the stiff front panel. This is what provides the flattening effect of the binder. To make the pattern, trace the front pattern again. Trim 3/8” in on the sleeves and neckline, and 3/4” to 1” along the bottom. This gives a flatter hem. Then trim the straps shorter by a few inches. This helps the binder lay flatter along the shoulders.
When you're done, you should have 3 pattern pieces that look approximately like this (stiff panel shown overlaid on the stretch fabric to show how it fits together).
NOTE: If you want more compression or just want to make it a bit sturdier, you can add a second panel of stretch fabric to the back piece. Just use the bottom half of the back pattern (from the widest part down to the bottom hem) to cut out another piece of stretch fabric. Attach it to the back piece with a strip of fusible webbing and a zig-zag stitch along the top.
Step 3: Putting It All Together
Once you’ve made the patterns and cut out the pieces of fabric, you should have something that looks like this:
The next step is adding interfacing and fusible webbing. Use your pattern to cut out 3/8" strips to fit on the top of the straps for both pieces, and to the neckline, sleeves, and bottom hem of the back piece, as shown:
If you want to add it to the bottom hem of the front piece, it will help keep that hem flat when sewing it down later, but it's not essential.
If you choose to also use fusible webbing (WHICH I RECOMMEND), you will apply it to the stiff front panel similarly to how the interfacing was applied, ~3/8” strips along the neckline, sleeves, and top of the straps. Cut out two strips for the neckline and sleeves, because we'll use those later too.
Iron the strips onto the front panel as shown:
Once it's on, just peel off the paper, position it webbing-side down on the stretch fabric, and iron it to fuse the two pieces together so everything stays in place while you sew. THIS MAKES IT WAY EASIER TO SEW.
After the stiff front panel is fused to the stretch fabric, you’ll sew the straps of the front and back pieces together, then join the pieces along the sides. Pin the hell out of it to keep everything in place -this type of material is VERY prone to puckering.
When sewing, USE A ZIGZAG STITCH. A straight stitch will NOT WORK for stretch fabric. I adjust mine to 1.3mm long and 3.5mm wide which has worked well. If your machine doesn’t let you adjust stitch length or width, well. That sucks, I don’t really have any advice.
After you sew the front and back pieces together, you can add more fusible webbing to the front panel to help hold the hem down flat and prevent it from puckering while you sew it. Just add the strip, peel the paper off, then fold the hem over and iron it down. This part isn’t really necessary, but it does make the hems look nicer. If nothing else, I would recommend adding it to the neckline.
After that, you just fold & pin all the hems and sew them up with a zigzag stitch, then go over the raw edge at the top of the stiff panel (where we cut the straps shorter).
And that’s it! You’re done! And now you can make your own binders whenever you want!
And hey! If you used this tutorial and wanna throw me a dollar or two on ko-fi, I wouldn't complain.
Hey so it's come to my attention that the Creators of Disco Elysium want you to share the game and not give the company who took over and fired them (illegally)?) any profits off of their ideas and work, and I originally joined tumblr 2 weeks ago when that post was going around about the Steam sale and how you should [Skull and Crossbones flag] it instead.
So.
in light of that.
Check the replies/notes of this post :)
I was informed that posts containing links in them aren't findable in the search so i'll just.... drop a link in a seperate reboot :)
people say this a lot which is baffling because it's totally untrue? if you do the actual math on ai water usage it's almost literally a drop in the bucket - it's a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the US's (much less the world's) total water usage. golf courses alone in the USA use 700x (that is seven hundred times) the amount of water that openai's model training does every year.
and the cost of running these programs once they are trained is negligible, easily comparable to running any other gpu-intensive program like "a video game" or "watching youtube".
and the water doesn't just vanish mysteriously - it's used to cool down the computers. they just... cool the hot water down again and re-use it.
nfts and cryptocurrency are bad because the waste is baked in to generate the value of the token - hypothetically, the economic value of your byproduct is the value of the energy you wasted, and people were mass buying gpus to use them for cryptocurrency and nothing else. ai energy and water expenditure is used on creating an actual thing - the model - which then has a totally infinitesimal use cost when actually deployed on consumer hardware.
i'm beginning to think you guys just didn't like nfts and cryptocurrency for ideological reasons rather than because they were bad and useless, and never actually thought about the reasons why they were bad and useless.
anyway. some pictures from the twitter thread for those who dont want to click.
human brains are easily tricked and not supposed to think about numbers higher than like 15. i strongly encourage you all to actually research these things instead of just accepting what someone tells you because it agrees with you.
this is good! but also: the fact that it's a feature at all means that it is a point of vulnerability that can be exploited by the first person who figures out how to hack it, even if you can turn it off
ABOUT TIME!!! for those out of the loop homeowners’ associations in the US 1. suck horrendously in every way 2. were the beginning of the end of urban biodiversity
It is the phenomenon sometimes called “alienation from self.” In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question.
Riot by Gwendolyn Brooks - poetry - free PDF
Against Police Violence by Seven Stories Press - free ebook
The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale - free ebook
Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?: Police Violence and Resistance in the United States eds. Joe Macaré, Maya Schenwar, and Alana Yu-lan Price - free ebook
The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence by Laurence Ralph - free until June 6th
Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall - free ebook
Them Goon Rules: Fugitive Essays on Radical Black Feminism - free ebook until June 10th
Twitter thread of links to PDFs/ebooks of fundamental texts
free library of Black history and activism texts
free library of critical race theory texts
free library of Black revolutionary texts
blk thots. - pdf library - for Black and Indigenous folks without institutional academic access
free download of the essay, “To Protect and Serve Whom,” from Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? Publisher is promising a free ebook version to come
Consider donating to some of the many local organizations and bail funds. If books will decide you in favor here’s a few publishers donating 100% of their proceeds.
Comprehensive list of where to donate & a list of bail funds for protestors
pizza pi press - 100% of book proceeds go to “different local org & bail funds”
Inside the Castle - $15 access to all ebooks, 100% of money raised goes to support BLM. So if you picked up a free ebook or two previously consider making a donation.
Blush Lit - 100% of chapbook sales will be donated to “Black Visions Collective, Minnesota Freedom Fund, or any other bail fund (just specify at checkout!)“ this week
Broken Sleep Books - fundraiser for Black Lives Matter - multiple prizes from poetry, etc. presses
The Atlas Review - donate to a Black organization based in Minneapolis such as Reclaim the Block or Black Visions Collective and get free books, details are in the linked tweet
Through Clenched Teeth anthology - “all proceeds will be donated to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, Black Visions Collective, or Reclaim the Block.“
Hey everyone, please consider buying the 2024 itch.io Palestinian Relief Bundle- it's 373 games, game-making assets, tabletop roleplaying games, zines, and comics for a minimum of just 8 USD! They have a goal of 100,000 USD, and as of the time I'm writing this post, they have 8 more days to reach it.
Amazing news!! They reached their goal of 100,000 USD! There is now a second goal of 250,000 USD! Remember, this is 373 games, assets, and comics for a minimum of 8 USD- a bundle of items which would normally be ~1,667 USD! Let's reach that second goal as quickly as we reached the first goal!
Fantastic news!!! The 250,000 USD goal has been met, and there is now a third goal of 500,000 USD! The deadline has also been extended, and as of the time I'm writing this update, there is 13 more days to reach their newest goal!
The money raised so far has already been incredible. Let's maintain this energy and continue to provide support for the PCRF!
In the summer of 2020, federal law enforcement launched a broad, and until now, secret strategy to infiltrate racial justice groups and entr
really cool article about the FBI ignoring a neo nazi mass shooter who would eventually commit a mass shooting at a gay nightclub so they could focus on planting a pink haired cop in a protest movement and get her to introduce these protestors to some hilariously obvious undercover cops posing as arms dealers. the SOMEX parts of this are serious tho they are using social media to gather info on protestors and target them and fabricate charges and make their lives hell and it is causing the death of movements like this.
Friends yesterday I just casually met the first lesbian who ever attempted to marry another woman in Californa in 1974 by suing the government for not allowing it and she was so badass and down to Earth, she told me that as soon as marriage equality was passed in 2014 she immediately resumed going after her money lol still didn't get it but it's the act itself that counts. I'm going to check out her poetry and books on her site and I'd love it if you could as well.
Hi speaking of medical literacy for trans people, transfems pls check out the website Transfeminine Science, especially their introductory article on feminizing HRT
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (book)
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (book)
Nakba Day: What happened in Palestine in 1948? (Article)
The Nakba did not start or end in 1948 (Article)
Donations and charities:
Al-Shabaka
Electronic Intifada
Adalah Justice Project
IMEU Fundraiser
Medical Aid for Palestinians
Palestine Children’s Relief Fund
Addameer
Muslim Aid
Palestine Red Crescent
Gaza Mutual Aid Patreon
Books:
A New Critical Approach to the History of Palestine
The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge
Hidden Histories: Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean
The Balfour Declaration: Empire, the Mandate and Resistance in Palestine
Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique
From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem until 1948
Captive Revolution - Palestinian Women’s Anti-Colonial Struggle within the Israeli Prison System
Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History
Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics
Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of The Palestinians 1876-1948
The Battle for Justice in Palestine Paperback
Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom
Palestine Rising: How I survived the 1948 Deir Yasin Massacre
The Transformation of Palestine: Essays on the Origin and Development of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
A Land Without a People: Israel, Transfer, and the Palestinians 1949-1996
The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood
A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples
Where Now for Palestine?: The Demise of the Two-State Solution
Terrorist Assemblages - Homonationalism in Queer Times
Militarization and Violence against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East
The one-state solution: A breakthrough for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock
The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians
Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians
The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine
Ten myths about Israel
Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question
Israel and its Palestinian Citizens - Ethnic Privileges in the Jewish State
Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy
Greater than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Inter/Nationalism, and Palestine
Palestine Hijacked
Palestinian Culture:
Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture
Palestinian Costume
Traditional Palestinian Costume: Origins and Evolution
Tatreez & Tea: Embroidery and Storytelling in the Palestinian Diaspora
Embroidering Identities: A Century of Palestinian Clothing (Oriental Institute Museum Publications)
The Palestinian Table (Authentic Palestinian Recipes)
Falastin: A Cookbook
Palestine on a Plate: Memories from My Mother’s Kitchen
Palestinian Social Customs and Traditions
Palestinian Culture before the Nakba
Tatreez & Tea (Website)
The Traditional Clothing of Palestine
The Palestinian thobe: A creative expression of national identity
Embroidering Identities:A Century of Palestinian Clothing
Palestine Traditional Costumes
Palestine Family
Palestinian Costume
Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, v5: Volume 5: Central and Southwest Asia
Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure
Documentaries, Films, and Video Essays:
Jenin, Jenin
Born in Gaza
GAZA
Wedding in Galilee
Omar
5 Broken Cameras
OBAIDA
Indigeneity, Indigenous Liberation, and Settler Colonialism (not entirely about Palestine, but an important watch for indigenous struggles worldwide - including Palestine)
Edward Said - Reflections on Exile and Other Essays
Palestine Remix:
AL NAKBA
Gaza Lives On
Gaza we are coming
Lost cities of Palestine
Stories from the Intifada
Last Shepherds of the Valley
Voices from Gaza
Muhammad Smiry
Najla Shawa
Nour Naim
Wael Al dahdouh
Motaz Azaiza
Ghassan Abu Sitta
Refaat Alareer (murdered by Israel - 12/7/2023. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un)
Plestia Alaqad
Bisan Owda
Ebrahem Ateef
Mohammed Zaanoun
Doaa Mohammad
Hind Khoudary
Palestinian Voices, Organizations, and News
Boycott Divest and Sanction (BDS)
Defense for Children in Palestine
Palestine Legal
Palestine Action
Palestine Action US
United Nations relief and works for Palestinian refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA)
