Because I Say Sew

I'm Zee and this blog is dedicated to everything Sewing! This includes: Embroidery, Dress Making, Patchwork, Toy Making, Quilting and anything that involves thread and needle! I have recently started knitting, so there is also the odd post of me failing to understand that witchcraft.

[tsunflowers]

reading a historical romance novel and reflecting on the way these stories often present woke nobility for the contemporary reader. a big thing is servants. you can’t not have servants in those times but many modern readers think “but I would never have servants. it would be so weird to have servants” and in order to make the protagonists of the story more relatable they are actually friends with the servants. but flip your perspective and think of it from the side of the servants. wouldn’t it be so awful if your boss was always trying to be friends with you. a really common thing you’ll see is the woke baronet having tea in the kitchen with the servants bc he’s not like other baronets. but what if your boss wanted to hang out and talk during your lunch break every day. not so charming when you think about it that way

[ariaste]

#okay but now what is the optimal way to be a good boss in this situation i genuinely wanna know#its easy to guess what makes a bad boss or a mid boss. but what is a good boss#specifically in such a highly structured hierarchal situation (via @rainbowroach)

HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")

In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.

A good boss (liege lord) is:

Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.

Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.

Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.

Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.

Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).

Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"

Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.

Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.

Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.

Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.

Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.

Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.

The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.

TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"

(for more discussions of the ethics of fealty and what it means to be a good boss when you are an exquisitely beautiful twink of a prince with a hot beefy bodyguard.... [fingerguns] read A Taste of Gold and Iron)

[ceruinus]

Great post. Chivalry also encompasses military obligations, however, which sometimes conflict with some of the above. This is where things get really, really interesting.

[stahsm]

Overlock Stitch by @clothes_reetzy

[thatisuseful]

Damn, that's useful

[fluidstatick]

Finally a hand sewing tutorial on a hemline that isn't just the ladder stitch! the ladder stitch disappears when you tighten it, but it's not meant for hemlines because it breaks really easily! The overlock stitch is more stable, so it holds much longer, and it won't pucker or warp the fabric!

[watsdaughter]

tags by @gallusrostromegalus

[teaboot]

OH HELL THE FUCK YES

[qwiddit]

[partlymadeofgold]

This map was designed by Kenyan artist Priya Shah.

You can read about it here: https://minds-africa.org/fabric-map-of-africa-the-art-of-storytelling/

and buy copies of the map here: https://www.miakora.com/fabric-map-of-africa

[awritersrejections]

saw your tags @did-sm1-say-catfish and yes, that link is broken! I looked into it, and it's because there are now multiple maps, including a map of India—

Here's a new link for purchasing purposes

[india-official]

WOW THIS IS SO COOL :O

[headspace-hotel]

it's definitely my predisposition to extreme frugality+redneck engineering, but i'm now obsessed with creating things literally without buying Anything. no supplies no tools no nothing, only the stuff you can just find outside, like Plants, Sticks, and Rocks.

I'm making textiles with nothing but foraged plant materials using no tools except sticks. Nature allows you to do this! There's no rules! I mean okay well maybe there might be some rules sometimes but they're just weak human rules! The plants themselves? They're like "Why sure! You can make yarn with nothing but fibers from the dead stem I don't need anymore, a couple sticks from that tree over there, and your own body and mind! Why not?"

Plants like to give us gifts! And nobody has the power to stop them!

[headspace-hotel]

Once you know the ways of the plants, the ways of our capitalist society become silly and hard to understand, sometimes even instilling you with a sense of dread.

I was looking at the textile books in the library to try to learn about plants you can make textiles from. I was shocked to discover how incurious most books are about the origin of the very matter from which textiles are made!

For one thing, there were whole shelves of books on how to weave, how to knit, and how to quilt, but barely a single complete volume on how to create yarn or thread to begin with.

Of the books that did cover how the yarn is created, many of them discussed only wool, and those books didn't concern themselves with how to get the wool off the sheep, or how to find such an organism and enter a mutualistic partnership with it in the first place...

If you know the ways of the plants, you will be almost offended when a book about how to make a thing, starting from the beginning of that thing, tells you immediately to buy something. You don't mean "one or two steps further back in the process of a thing being assembled"—you mean the BEGINNING beginning. You seek to learn how the thing is born from the living Earth, not where to buy a Product in a less assembled form.

Where do Products come from...?...According to the capitalist, consumerist way, they come from other, simpler Products of course, which ultimately are born from Industries. I found a book or two which made some attempt to give a more exhaustive list of possible textile materials, with sub-section for plants, which included: Flax, Cotton, Hemp, Jute, Ramie, and some allusion to other possibilities such as Nettle. This of course is a list of plant fibers for which a Huge Industry exists. Regarding plant fibers for which there is no huge industry, the books either said nothing or said something like "...but sadly, there is no huge industry based upon these plants (so they are not worth talking about any more)"

I found a few cryptic statements saying that the range of plants that could be used for textile purposes is theoretically limitless...but none of the books were interested at all in those theoretically limitless plants.

It's not that only those few plants are really good for textiles and the other ones are inferior, either. I have learned from my delves into the Internet, that many plants now considered totally useless to humans and not investigated for their potential applications at all...have actually been used by some human culture on Earth for thousands of years as a fundamental part of everyday life.

Native Americans for thousands of years utilized plants native to this region for textiles. These ones are among the plants I have been gathering; they are plants that naturally grow here and can be harvested sustainably, in fact in many cases they benefit from being harvested.

Apocyonum cannabinum, also known as Dogbane, is essentially a North American analog to hemp or flax; you extract the bast fiber from the stem by beating it until the woody part breaks into pieces and falls out and the outer bark flakes off. This plant is native to all U.S. states except Alaska and Hawaii and I reckon that's because of its importance as a textile plant.

I've collected big bundles of the stuff by picking over fields that have been mowed already by a brush cutter; it's so easy, because the fibers are so strong that they are not broken by the brush cutter. Instead, I find mats and bundles of fiber 1-2 feet long stretched out over the ground or trailing from the stubs of stems, often with the woody parts and outer bark already beaten out by the mowing. Simply mowing a field where dogbane grows essentially pre-processes the fiber so your work is half done for you.

It is amazing to me that a person can see how the fibers do that if you mow the plants in the fall, and not immediately think, "We should be making string or rope out of that." Early colonial texts call this plant "Indian hemp" and say it is superior to actual hemp. Likewise what few resources I can find on Native American textile plants, list dogbane as one of the main ones.

So I gather the dogbane. It is astonishingly strong, fragrant when you handle it, and beating the fibers is loads of fun, just a great way to blow off steam. The fibers range in color from almost pearly white to cream to peach to beautiful shades of orange and copper, and have a lovely sheen to them.

After I've beaten the fibers and gotten them to mostly separate I tease them out with my fingers and scrape out all the remaining little bits of bark, and pull them through a plastic comb until the soft and lustrous fibers are separated and all that's left is some nubby bits of lint.

The last picture is what it looks like after combing and cleaning. The color looks more washed-out than it is for real because of my white lamp.

These fibers weren't quite as well-processed so the end result was kind of rough and scraggly, but I experimented by making some string:

All I used to spin it was a stick with a notch in the top so I could twist with my fingers, holding the other end of the stick steady and pulling the strand back towards myself. Whenever I finished a little more I would just loop it over the bend in the top of the stick and keep going.

The other fiber I've been experimenting with is milkweed seed fluff. This one is an interesting one because it was the first material I became interested in spinning, and the first I experimented with to the point of making a yarn. It took a long time to figure it out, I have quite a bit of single-strand seed fluff yarn now, and intend to spin this into a three-ply yarn to make it strong.

I was so happy! My first yarn! Spun with nothing but a stick. It's delicate but it holds together and handles being unwound and rewound just fine, and I think making a 2 or 3 ply yarn would make it pretty workable.

So imagine my surprise when I begin reading about textile arts and the possible uses of the plants i'm working with, and learn that spinning milkweed seed fluff is impossible?

Milkweed bast fiber has been used, like the dogbane bast fiber, but according to the internet, spinning the seed fluffs into yarn is something that cannot be done, because they are too short, smooth, and fragile. Many have tried! It doesn't work!

That was news to me.

As I read more about spinning the more conventional plant fibers, though, I consider what a deep knowledge humankind has cultivated of the ways of wool and flax and cotton, and think...is my total lack of knowledge about spinning yarn, the reason I was able to spin the milkweed fluffs?

Normal people would have armed themselves with the proper tools for undertaking a new activity, but I didn't even bother to look up what I was doing, because MacGyvering cool stuff out of materials from nature you can find anywhere outside is basically half my personality at this point, and makes me feel unreasonably powerful. As a result, I made a technological approach to spinning yarn that was designed specially for the challenges of spinning milkweed seed fluffs, and only later realized that 1) this is not a normal way to spin yarn and 2) i'm not supposed to be able to spin this stuff at all.

And it's because I came at it backwards. Instead of trying to use existing technology to spin milkweed fluffs, I became determined to spin milkweed fluffs and developed my technique based on what would work to do that, without any knowledge of what I was "supposed" to be doing.

If I had been normal about it and thought "Hmm, I should buy the right tools to do this" or even thought "Hmm, I should start with fibers that are usually used to make clothes" this would not have happened.

I'm coming at everything backwards: instead of "Where can I purchase Thing I Want To Work With?" it's "What does Nature provide, and what cool stuff can I do with it?"

I didn't even set out to work with textile materials. It's just that the plants kept giving me textile materials. This hobby absolutely snuck up on me out of nowhere this was not my idea

People have had success blending milkweed fluffs with other stuff, so I'm going to try to blend it with the dogbane next! I am fully going to go all the way and make like clothes or bags or blankets out of this stuff. There is no turning back for me, the euphoria of creation and the profound wisdom of the plants have inflicted a fascination with my task.

[dr-dendritic-trees]

What's the staple length of that milkweed please? I am fascinated by it.

[headspace-hotel]

You mean like the length of the individual fibers? They're like an inch on average, the biggest seed pods have fluffs a little longer.

Basically the reason it works, I think, is that I'm twisting the strand with my fingers, pulling back toward my body and using the other end of the stick as an anchor point/leverage. There is something about the warmth and moisture of touching the fibers so much that makes them want to bind together more.

There is a lot of twist to the yarn, but it's not a problem, in fact if you twist until it kinks up, you can just...mash the kinked part between your fingers really hard and it'll flatten out and you can keep going. The fiber is springy and pliable in a way that lets you do things like that with it.

Where a lot of people messed up was they tried to card it. All you need to do is spend some time gently pulling the fibers between your fingers to separate the individual fibers in each "tuft" that attaches to a single seed. If you're too rough with it, the fibers will just break and that's not good. But you do kinda have to play with it in your hands? I don't know if it's the oils in your hands or what, but touching it a lot makes them want to mold together to each other more.

I can really see how this material is totally different than anything else you could spin in many ways.

[headspace-hotel]

Top: Dogbane bast fiber

Bottom: Dogbane bast/Milkweed floss blend

On a different note I went thru mom and dads closet to find really old clothes to practice sewing and embroidery on, and I am so mad!!!!! at how much more sturdy and robust clothes from the 1990's are compared to today.

I am just staring in fascination at these clothes from a few decades ago like "Wow they are so strong and sturdy...the fabric is such high quality...." What HAPPENED?

[headspace-hotel]

Inner bark fibers of first-year grapevine twigs. They can be processed into incredibly fine strong soft strands with soaking, stripping off outer bark and gentle crushing by rolling a round rock over them

[motsimages]

Thank you for this.

I have been on a personal quest (that is now in stand by due to life events) about flax. I live in a village that was famous for its flax, hemp and wool fabrics. Its name is literally related to the hemp-farming. And currently, nobody ever grows any of these plants and what I find surprising, with my very limited knowledge of botanics, is that... there are no rest of them either? Even in the first half of the 20th century some people still worked the flax in the traditional way, and now there aren't any carried-by the wind rests anywhere? no abandoned farms where it poorly grows anymore? no decorative reasoning to have them in your garden?

People don't remember, they don't even know. Linen was an estimated fabric and this village had enough to dress its inhabitants and sell the left-overs around. Same with the wool. Only the old people remember because they still worked it. Other villages, with larger textile industries, also have lost this memory.

The moment you look at things the way op mentioned, with the "how do you get this done?" mind, things change. Its value change. I only wish I had more time and more health to really make myself a linen tshirt, from scratch. To make myself a woolen blanket, from scratch. Particularly, I have the wool because my parents have sheep. I could do so many things if I dedicated every bit of time off and energy to it, but alas I can't. I do it when I can, little by little. I envy you, op. Please, keep us posted of your progress.

[sunrisenebula]

I'm thinking of this one time time I was bored while catsitting... I went out on my friend's property, found some sticks and rocks, improvised a spindle, brushed the cats, and spun up some yarn. One cat has slightly darker fur, and they are both long-haired and very soft, so I was interested to see what the yarn would feel like.

My original spindle fell apart, and they must have just cleaned the yard because I couldn't find sturdy enough sticks for replacement, so I did admittedly use borrowed bic pens instead of purely natural supplies...

I ended up with a few strands of 2 ply cat hair yarn! It was kind of scratchy and felt like twine. It wasn't the easiest to spin compared to the wool I've worked with, but boredom is a powerful motivator!

I left the yarn with my friend as a memento, but I'm considering making more the next time I catsit so I can try actually knitting something with it.

[dr-dendritic-trees]

@headspace-hotel

I have another dopey question about your milkweed experiment if you aren't out of patience yet.

Did the books that claim milkweed is unspinneable mention what tool they were using (drop spindle, wheel etc)? Because I just reread the post and it sounds like you had the spindle in your hand the whole time, rather than letting it hang freely in the air?

That's a specific style of spinning I'm currently failing to learn: supported spinning, and its specifically often used to spin short, delicate fibres, and/or very fine delicate thread, but its not done very often in anglo-european traditions, so I'm wondering if there was some Distinct Cultural Biases in the books you were referencing.

[makerandbean]

I also wanted to ask how your cat yarn and milkweed yarn have held up? I’ve spun with cat hair “fresh off the cat” before - I just groomed my resident beast and then pulled the hair out the comb and spun with a drop spindle - but I’ve found it’s not held up very well. I knitted a teeny tiny swatch with it and it’s fuzzing and sort of slowly edging towards either felting or just sort of falling apart :(

might have worked better if i plied it, or I might have underspun it bc I was very new to spinning when I did it, but… I do wonder also when people say “you can’t spin with that” whether they sometimes mean “the yarn falls apart very quickly so don’t bother”

[headspace-hotel]

Two very good questions from @dr-dendritic-trees and @makerandbean !

First: Yes! I haven't posted photos of my spinning in a while, but yeah, I essentially use a stick with a side branch at the top that I use as a spool. I hold the stick in my left hand and twist the strand together, letting my left hand slide down the stick as I spin, then when the strand is as long as the stick I wrap it around the top and continue.

I'm actually really happy you brought that up, because I had no idea what the technique was called, and had never heard of it before despite it being a fairly intuitive, ridiculously low-tech way to spin that gives you a lot of control over the strand you're putting together.

You basically pinch a big thick tuft of your fiber between your index finger and thumb of your right hand and splice it into the strand you're working on, and as you work you pull the tuft downwards so it slowly distributes all the fibers into a long strand.

This is especially effective when you're working with dogbane bast fiber, which inevitably has a great number of fibers of just 3-5 centimeters, and a smaller but still significant amount of fibers 10-20 centimeters long. The long fibers give the strand a backbone and the short fibers give it more weight and fuzziness.

The staple length you could get from dogbane fiber if you processed it carefully is, I feel certain, longer than any other natural fiber that exists.

Using dogbane, I have figured out how to get an incredibly smooth even thread by twisting the strand, then scraping my fingers up and down the strand to make stray fibers stick up, and untwisting and retwisting it in short sections at a time so the stray fibers get twisted into the strand.

I think it helps the final result to alternate between holding the strand in the hardest twist you can manage and then letting it relax to whatever extent it wants to, and twisting again.

It's slow but I'm getting steadily faster and faster at it, and it feels plausible that a person using this method could produce enough string for weaving into a garment on a Neolithic type amount of free time.

On the second question: I havent actually tried turning the milkweed yarn into anything since I can't knit or crochet, however, I think it would be so clearly better to blend the milkweed fluff 50:50 with another fiber (possibly milkweed bast fiber!) that I haven't really tried experimenting with pure milkweed fluff much more. I will hopefully show y'all how the bast/fluff blend goes!

My experiment shows it's possible to spin milkweed fluff, however I think it wouldn't be sturdy enough for an item for daily wear unless blended. However blending the milkweed and dogbane has excellent results.

I actually did some research online into milkweed fluff, and the main purpose for milkweed fluff in textile-adjacent things is actually stuffing. It apparently makes amazing stuffing for pillows, blankets, and jackets—it is incredibly warm, hypoallergenic, and so buoyant that it can be used to stuff life jackets.

[creations-by-chaosfay]

I really enjoy making Pride-related things

Rainbows are in a separate post.

The above are all a single commission.

Please, share your Pride-related textile projects.

You can see more of my work and visit my shop here:

Support Chaosfay ❤️

If you would like to have something handmade and one-of-a-kind, check out my quilts. As small as 1.5x1.5 inches and as large as queen size.

Use BIGMONTH for 50% off your purchase!

[frankiesbullshit]

working on embroidering my purse 🌈

[mathysphere]

An Incomplete List of Fonts I Would Like to Digitize Someday

All from the Antique Pattern Library

This twisty one

This pleasantly-flourished simple one. it's quirky.

I have no clue how one would include backstitching in a font, but it would look so good

This Art Deco set, from a pamphlet where it shares space with both the most stunning animal illustrations you've ever seen and also the world's most baffling, hideous borders

This one has a lowercase set, too. In a modern context this reads more as a retro game font than a cross-stitch one.

these would look INSANE stitched. more of a monogram font than one for sentences, but who cares. I could figure out some lowercases and this would absolutely COOK

Love the weight of this one. Gothic, fun, but not large enough to be unwieldy.

The first twisty font is better, I think. but if I had infinite time I'd do this one too

A very respectable twist on a classic sampler font. could get a lot of mileage out of this one

hot take but I think with a good lowercase set this one would also be good for a lot of things-- party in the capitals, but keep the lowercase legible.

a very respectable font. you could file your taxes with this one.

their bulbous forms entrance me. I REALLY like that 'H'

Another set that really should only be for monograms... but some part of me wants to believe I could make a proper font around these

LOVE the 'A', like the others. really dig that the original artist included a lowercase set, too

Bonus Monograms I like:

Blue Floral | Thick Line Red Floral | Right Angles

[littlealienproducts]

PDF FILES - Luna the Crow Sewing Case - Raven keepsake Pattern by TheWishingShed

[stitchposts]

what is your LEAST favorite stitch?

I don't like counted work at fucking all. So: the cross stitch.

[rabbitindisguise]

reading this as someone who does cross stitch but is scared of the other kinds of embroidery is like overhearing an incredibly tall and buff person say they have beef with Mr. Tom, the kitten that chills at the bookstore

[stitchposts]

FUCK Mr. Tom and his stupid little fluffy tail ok. And his little charted designs.

[the-dragongirl]

Okay, but this neglects the true villain of embroidery stitches: the French knot

[stitchposts]

Don't you dare malign my girl again

[im-a-dream-wizard]

Ok the french knot is very useful but it is a BITCH to do it consistently

[stitchposts]

[ao3-anonymous]

We talk about how this website’s hate mail game is insane, but this might just be a new level

[talbatross]

"skill issue" made entirely from French knots is a next level roast. no coming back from that one. damn

[subversivecynic]

French knot is easy. Counting each fiddly thread is some absolutely nightmare bullshit.

[andmaybegayer]

measure once cut also once, no prablem

[andmaybegayer]

#i know i already reblogged this but i need to like. cross stitch it or carve it into wood or quilt it or something

concept for a vcarving project

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

no i get you this was perfectly centered when i wrote it

[shaydh]

I have done the cross stitch

[jazzcathaven]

Quilt is Corona II by Caryl Bryer Fallert 

[catdragonartist]

@gallusrostromegalus gorgeous quilt, thought you might like to see!

[gallusrostromegalus]

Very nice! thank you for tagging me!

[anxiousangerball]

I don't know who needs to hear this, but

YOU DO NOT NEED TO START A NEW HOBBY!

STEP AWAY FROM THE TEXTILES!

YOU DON'T NEED MORE YARN!

THAT FABRIC IS NOT CALLING TO YOU! LEAVE IT ALONE!

[boyrot]

boy it's me the textiles speaking to you inside your head. you need the yarn. you need thread. your soul hungers to participate in the act of creation. you must feed it. you must buy so many beads.

[screenshotsofdespair]

[wearepaladin]

[windsroad]

Just finished a cross stitch of this!

[beauetjoile]

Well my loves, it appears as though the answer to "Can the Big Pattern Company (Simplicity/Burda/McCalls/ect.) survive the death of JoAnn?" has come.

The answer is no. No it cannot. It has been sold to a liquidator just like JoAnns was.

So if there is ANYTHING you want I suggest you get it now. simplicity.com is currently having a pattern sale and I snatched up some that might be useful for cosplay purposes.

I am very glad these last couple of years I have built up my collection.

[not-available-for-comment]

Links to some of the adaptive clothing patterns on the Simplicity website:

Shirts that unsnap at the collar and arm for port access

Walker bags

Wheelchair bags

Imitation button-downs that actually fasten up the back with hook and eye closure, for people with limited mobility who still want to look nice

Fidget page. I know quilters often enjoy making these!

If you search the website for “Adaptive” there’s about 12 of these altogether. I don’t sew much but I might pick up a few just so I have them on hand if I or someone I know needs something like this. And as OP says, they’re on sale!

[creations-by-chaosfay]

Unfortunately, I'm too poor to afford purchasing anything beyond necessities. However, I know many of you will be able to take advantage of the info in the post.

[asexual-amanita]

Ok, I’m not the best person to be saying this, but the reason half of y’all* hate the new autistic Barbie doll is just aspie supremacy and racism.

Like, “oh no! For once a higher support needs, AAC using, autistic woman of colour is in the spotlight! God help us all!” (Sarcasm)

Seriously, the whole argument about how the doll sucks because autism “doesn’t have a look” is foolish. Autism does have a look, but it’s not one single look. Many high support needs individuals are visibly autistic, stop erasing their existence.

I’m not going into the racism part, because I’m still in the process of educating myself about the topic, but needless to say, I’ve seen some pretty outright racist comments and takes on this new doll.

*not all of you, but many of you.

(Capitalism and the whole deal with Mattel is a valid reason to not like the doll, however this post is not about that.)

[michaelmoonsbookshop]

just some of the the changes in design for the Penguin Symbol on old Penguin Paperbacks 

[dinkywinks]

he did a little dance and for this crime he was imprisoned in a bubble

[luxflora]

They liked his little dance so much they gave him a spotlight

[anasandorpygoscelis-deactivated]

family album

[delgrosso]

[sensationaltrainreading]

[cfstuff]

Blackwork i finished while at Tabbie's