Here is the tutorial, I don’t get paid doing this and I’m not an expert at this so please don’t think I can answer everything(ask others for help or look up "flying bird mobile" for other tutorials online).
I hope this explains everything enough.
The measurements for mine came out to 15 1/2 inches on the body from tail to beak tip ans the wings 13 inches long(you can make the wings longer if needed)
Please use the comment section below to ask and someone who has done this or understands the mechanics better can answer.
Aside from that I wish you luck and I hope you have fun.
I know somewhere in KCD2 it's mentioned Hans (and therefore Henry) is 20 years old. But, as I'm still playing the first game, the impression I always got was older teenagers. But there were actually contradicting statements in the game regarding their age.
Henry is referred to repeatedly as "lad" and "boy" by various NPCs. His mother also says this early in the game (this is what I got in my playthrough):
Though, she can also say this in the same scene (different dialog option I discovered when writing this post):
"Nearly a grown man" but simultaneously "not a boy anymore but a man". Still, definitely in that older teenager range, especially at the time.
And Hans, who should be Henry's age, is mentioned in Bands of Bastards DLC to not be "of age" yet:
So, I wanted to get to the bottom of this.
This started as me just wanting to know how old Hansry were meant to be in the first game (the intention when it was published, that is), but then I went down a whole rabbit hole about the real Jan Ptáček's age and life in general, tbh, and it got a little out of control (looking through old German law books and Czech charters and land court records from the 15th century) to the point it stopped being about the games at some point. So, under the cut I included some my research and conclusions:
Now, here I'll clarify I have no history degrees of any kind, I just love researching things in public domain information I can access online. So bear that in mind.
So, because Jan Ptáček was a real person I wondered about his age during the events of the games. Something, I expected would be easier than trying to wrangle contradictory game dialog into a number. After all, he's a real historical figure that existed. And Wikipedia dates his year of birth as 1388 — making him 15 in KCD, which is younger than my estimate. But wait —
That little "c." means we don't know his actual date of birth. So, I wondered if I could find how Wikipedia figured out he was born circa 1388. And I could. Easily:
They found a source that stated he came of age in 1406, then, calculated 18 years back and got 1388. Simple. Except I recalled something about how, in the late Medieval era, there was a different between the age a man stops being a "boy" and the age in which he would be considered "full age" for inheritance.
Most of my knowledge is of English law at the time, and I could indeed, track sources in English law that describe a man can be knighted since 15:
And none shall levy such aid to make his son a knight until his son is 15 years old
But imply the full inheritance can only be received at 21 (not for a king, kings are different):
However, if she maliciously refuses to be married by her lord, he may hold her land and inheritance until she is the age of a male heir, that is, 21 years old
(Source for both: OUR LEGAL HERITAGE King AEthelbert - King George III By S. A. Reilly, Attorney Chapter 8: 1272-1348. Free eBook exists on Project Gutenberg)
But that is England, and we're in the HRE. Now, finding sources in Czech or German was harder (since I speak neither, though, throughout this research I learned a little Medieval Czech and Medieval Latin), but I managed to find a law book from the HRE, written in German — Sachsenspiegel, or the Saxon Mirror in English.
More than 400 manuscripts of the Sachsenspiegel (Mirror of the Saxons) survive, attesting to the wide dissemination and influence on the whole of Europe of this first law book in German. The most beautiful copies are the four illuminated manuscripts, all produced between 1295 and 1371, and now held in Heidelberg, Oldenburg, Dresden, and Wolfenbüttel.
(Description from the Library of Congress)
And, I found an article (originally in German, I put it through google translate) that described a few quotes from this book, among which:
"At 21 years the man came to his days"
Meaning, the law was similar enough to England, around this time, and "full age" was at 21, not 18. Which would make 1385 a better estimate for the real Jan Ptáček's birth year (assuming the source about his coming of age in 1406 is reliable). Which, makes him (and Henry) ~18 in KCD, if we go by IRL ages. Meaning he could be 18-20 and not really be considered "of age" during KCD1.
But, I don't trust wikipedia and I was already pretty deep in research, so what would be another little rabbit hole. Now, the article they cite as the source for Jan Ptáček "coming of age" in 1406 doesn't mention a source for this specific claim. It has a bibliography, but it doesn't mention where it got the specific year from (or any other year, like Hans's son being born in 1404, which, I also dug into and couldn't find a reliable source. Many books cited Hynek's birth in the early 15th century without a clear year, as we don't have one). And I am not one to trust a website just like that. So, I dug deeper into Jan Ptáček in general.
The first primary source I came upon was a charter from November 1st, 1412 that forces Hanush to give Jan his castle and town of Rattay, and associated lands. The charter is written in both Czech and Latin:
Text:
1412 únor 1, Brno (Brunna)
Heralt z Kunštátu, nejvyšší komorník brněnský, Vilém z Pernštejna, Jan z Lomnice a Albrecht z Cimburka a z Tovačova, rozhodují spor mezi Hanušem z Lipé a z Templštejna a Janem, řečeným Ptáček, z Pirkenštejna a z Polné. Hanuš má postoupit Ptáčkovi hrad Rataje, s městem a vším příslušenstvím (s výjimkou vyjmenovaných movitostí), který držel již jeho otec. Ptáček má Hanušovi dát za náklady a škody při obraně jeho panství svou vesnici Senorady („Senohrady“). Heralt de Kunštát, supremus cammerarius Brunnensis, Wilhelmus de Pernštejn, Johannes de Lomnice ac Albertus de Cimurk et de Tovačov litem inter Hanussium de Lipá et de Templštejn parte ex una et Johannem dictum Ptáček de Pirkenštejn ac de Polná ex altera parte vertentem diiudicat. Hanussius Ptáčkoni castrum Rataje cum civitate et omnibus pertinentiis (exceptis mobilibus nominatis), quae iam pater eius tenebat, concedere debet. Pro impensis et noxis tempore defensionis dominii passis Ptáček Hanussio villam Senorady („Senohrady“) donare debet.
Translation:
From Czech:
Heralt of Kunštát, the supreme chamberlain of Brno, William of Pernštejn, John of Lomnice and Albrecht of Cimburk and of Tovačov, decide the dispute between Hanuš of Lipá and of Templštejn and John, called Ptáček, of Pirkenštejn and of Polná. Hanuš is to cede to Ptáček the castle of Rataje, with the town and all its accessories (with the exception of the listed movables), which his father already held. Ptáček is to give Hanuš his village of Senorady ("Senohrady") for the costs and damages incurred in defending his estate.
From Latin:
Heralt of Kunštát, the chief chamberlain of Brunn, Wilhelm of Pernštejn, John of Lomnice and Albert of Cimurk and of Tovačov decide the dispute between the Hanus of Lipá and Templštejn on the one hand and the said John Ptáček of Pirkenštejn and Polná on the other. The Hanus must grant Ptáček the castle of Rataje with the town and all its appurtenances (except for the mentioned movables), which his father already held. In return for the expenses and damages suffered during the defense of the domain, Ptáček must give the Hanus the village of Senorady (“Senohrady”).
So, yay, word of how the inheritance dispute ended, but, this wasn't what I was looking for.
So, I kept searching. I eventfully stumbled on a bunch of manuscripts detailing medieval chronicles and legal records that were put together in the 19th century and accessible for free online, so, yay for me. All of them were originally in Czech and/or Latin (Yes, many court records were in both since most legal terms used were in Latin) and I run the relevant sections of them through OCR to get the plain text and then translators. I will include links to the specific books I found the information in for anyone interested.
So, I did find something from 1406 — A record describing an assembly of lords in Moravia. From this book (originally in medieval Latin):
In the year of our Lord 1406, on Friday, the feast day of Saint Vincent, a session (colloquium) of the lords was held in Brno.
In the presence of the most illustrious prince, Lord Jodocus (Jobst), Margrave of Moravia, with the noble lords Erhard of Kunštát, chamberlain, Erhard of Kunštát, otherwise of Skály, cup-bearer, and Andrew, canon of Brno, presiding as the highest officials of the Land Tables (tabulae terrae Moraviae), there were also present these noble lords:
Lacko of Kravaře, Ulrich of Nový Dům, Peter of Plumlov, William of Pernštejn, John of Lomnice, Albert of Cimburk, otherwise of Tovačov, and his brother Przyedbor, Peter of Strážnice, Beneš of Kvasice, Albert of Šternberk, otherwise of Lukov, Vok of Jičín, otherwise of Kravaře, William of Luček, Hanuš (Hanush) of Lipa, his brothers Berthold and Čeněk, John Plaček (“Jan Ptáček”) of Pirknštejn, Hynek of Letovice, Vok the elder and younger of Holštejn, Albert of Šternberk, otherwise of Lukov, son of Ješek of Šternberk, Čeněk of Lomnice, otherwise of Deblín, Henry of Jevíšovice, and his brothers Hynek and Peter of Jevíšovice, Proček and Aleš of Lysice, John and Erhard called Puška of Kunštát, Leutold of Věteřov, and the brothers Ješek, Peter, and Paul of Sovinec, and many others.
This was the only record I found of Jan Ptáček from 1406. Him being in court as part of this assembly (from what I could gather) means he is likely already considered a landed noble, and involved in Moravian politics (very possibly through Jitka and her family). Which indeed implies Wikipedia and the article were correct in Jan being "of age" in 1406. Keeping us in the ~18 age mark during the events of KCD.
But, I was in the zone and wanted to see what else I could find for the timeline of his life from, preferably, primary records.
The official website of Polná and a history book they have archived by Jan Prchal (The full eBook can be found here), both state this:
"se Jan Ptáček stal po uzavření míru v roce 1405 přísedícím brněnského zemského soudu a také českého zemského soudu."
translation:
"After the conclusion of peace in 1405, Jan Ptáček became an assessor of the Brno provincial court and also of the Czech provincial court."
(source)
Which I couldn't find primary source for. Neither the site nor the book cite which source was used for this specific fact.
(I'd also add it's interesting to think of Hans as a assessor — essential a noble who acted as a semi-judge in court cases. Some other websites outright refer to him as a judge at the provincial court)
I found other court records mentioning Jan Ptáček who became more involved in courts and legal matters since 1406 (supporting that "coming of age" detail). I will not bring up all the records I found, but there is an interesting one from 1408. In which Jan Ptáček is shown to have authority over the appointment of a new parish priest (Source, the "day and year above-written" means June 18, 1408, from looking above and a few pages back):
K, XVI. Nyezkow. In the year and on the day above-written, a canonical institution (or presentation) was granted to Master Prziechon, formerly parish priest in Pulchra Mons [=Schönberg, ‘Beautiful Mountain’], to the church in Nyezkow, vacant by the resignation of Master Laurentius, with the consent of the noble John called Ptáček of Pirkstein, resident in Polná. Executed by the parish priest of Přibyslav.
So, it seems Jan already took hold of some of his lands and responsibilities by 1408, at least in Polná. It seems Jan left Rattay when Hanush wouldn't give it up and took the parts of his inheritance available to him and had to peruse the control of Rattay via the land courts of the nobles. What's interesting about the above record is that it shows he is acting as Lord of Polná by 1408.
In 1408, I also found an account of Jan buying a house under the name of his wife, Jitka, again, implying in 1408 he did take control of some of his assets and inheritance. Just, not Rattay, specifically, which Hanush wasn't willing to turn over.
I also found more legal documents from Jan Ptáček regarding his inheritance dispute with Hanush. I'll detail these records of Jan's lawsuits here because I found them interesting. (Source for those interested):
All are dated as:
Feria VI. post octauam Corporis Christi anno etc. X.
Meaning:
Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi, in the year 1410.
The lawsuits:
812.
Jan Ptáček z Pirknstajna poh. p. Hanuše z Lipé odjinud z Tempelstajna, že mi drží hrad mój Rataje i s jeho se vším příslušenstvím od mnoho let mé vlastné dědictví nemaje k tomu žádného práva a pohoním jej z pěti tisíce kop gr. Zná-li etc. ale chci to naň listem ukázati. Škody etc. por. č. p. Erharta z Kunstáta, p. Viléma z Pernstajna a p. Erharta z Skal.
Translation:
Jan Ptáček of Pirknštejn [brings complaint] against the late Lord Hanuš of Lipá, also of Tempelštejn, that he has held my castle of Rataje, together with all its appurtenances, for many years—although it is my own hereditary property—and that he has no right to it; therefore I will pursue him for five thousand kopas of groschen. He knows, etc., but I intend to prove it to him by letter (i.e. by written document). Damages, etc. Guardians (or assessors): Lord Erhart of Kunštát, Lord Vilém of Pernštejn, and Lord Erhart of Skály.
813.
Já Jan Ptáček z Pirknstajna poh. p. Hynči z Lipé, že mi drží hrad mój Rataje i s jeho se vším příslušenstvím od mnoho let mé vlastní dědictví, nemaje k tomu žádného práva a pohoním jej z pěti tisíce kop gr. Zná-li etc. ale chci to naň listem ukázati.
Translation:
I, Jan Ptáček of Pirknštejn, [bring complaint] against the late Lord Hynek of Lipá, that he has held my castle of Rataje with all its appurtenances for many years—though it is my own hereditary estate—having no right to it; and I shall pursue him for five thousand kopas of groschen. He knows, etc., but I intend to prove it to him by letter.
814.
Týž Jan Ptáček z Pirknstajna, týmž právě póhonem a o túž věc a o též peníze poh. Cenka z Lipé odjinud z Nového Města.
Translation:
The same Jan Ptáček of Pirkštejn, by the same action and concerning the same matter and the same money, brought an action against Čeněk of Lipá, from elsewhere, from Nové Město.
Basically, Ptáček sued Hanush over his inheritance three times.
So, while this is all really fun, and I found more court records Jan was involved with from 14016 and 1418, and I know I'd be reading more in these archives it unfortunately didn't answer the question I started with.
All this still doesn't tell us when he was born. Not really. All I know now is that Jan Ptáček was most likely at least 21 years old in 1405/1406 since he seems to be then "of full age" as discussed earlier. Giving the latest likely year of birth of 1384-1385 and making him 18-19, at youngest, during the events of the games
But I also know something about his father. We know, Jan Ptáček's predecessor died in 1398 and Jan Ptáček was still considered a minor at the time (I found a few sources that state this, here and here), so most likely younger than 15. So: 1398 - 14 = 1894. Bam! Same year!
This means Wikipedia is wrong and the real Jan Ptáček was most likely born around 1384, not 1388. Making him (and Henry for that matter) ~19 during the events of the game going by IRL history to the best of my knowledge and the resources at my disposal.
Who knew Warhorse were right about his age and Wikipedia wrong?
“X bodily fluid is just filtered blood!” buddy I hate to break it to you but ALL of the fluids in your body are filtered blood. Your circulatory system is how water gets around your body. It all comes out of the blood (or lymph, which is just filtered blood).
“Okay but why is it always so chemically roundabout and unnecessarily complicated” well buddy, that’s because your blood is imitation seawater. See? It’s very simple.
#are you telling me#humans are just sentient aquariums?
Buddy if anything is living in your blood (except for more parts of you) in detectable amounts then you have a serious microbial infection and need to go to the hospital.
Humans are seawater wastelands kept sterile of all but human cells, with microbial mats coating their surfaces.
#/blood is imitation seawater/ is the part that’s confusing
Picture this: you are a Thing That Lives In The Ocean. Some kind of small multicellular animal a long time ago, before proper circulatory systems existed. “Wow,” you think, metaphorically, “it sure is difficult to diffuse chemicals across my whole body. Kinda puts a hard limit on the size and distance of what specialised organs I can have. Good thing I have all this water around me that’s the same salinity as my cells (they have to be that way so I don’t explode or shrivel up) so I can diffuse and filter chemicals with that.”
“Wait a minute,” you say a couple of generations later, because you’re not actually a small animal but an evolutionary process personified and simplified to the point of dangerous inaccuracy for the purposes of a Tumblr post, “instead of losing all these important chemicals to the water around me, how about I put it in tubes? I can keep MY water separate from the rest of the world’s water! Anything I want to keep goes in my water! Anything I don’t, I dump back into the outside water! I’m a genius! An unthinking natural trial-and-error process that’s a GENIUS!”
“Wow,” you think a great many generations later, “being able to have such control over such high concentrations of important chemicals is so great. Look how big I’m getting. I even have a special pump to move my seawater around, and these cool filter systems to keep the chemicals in it right, and that control and chemical concentration has let me grow so many energy-intensive, highly specialised organs! Being big is so hard. I need special cells just to carry my oxygen around now, to make sure my enormous, constantly-operating body has enough of it.”
At this point you are embodying a fish, and eventually, fish start straying into water with different pressures and salinity levels. (I mean, they do that since befor ehty’er fish, but… look, I’m trying to keep things simple here.) “What the FUCK,” you think. “My inside water is at a different salinity and pressure to the outside water?? How am I supposed to deal with that? I can’t have freshwater inside my seawater tubes! My cells have a set salinity and they would explode! I need to start beefing up my regulatory and filter systems so that my inside seawater STAYS SEAWATER OF THE CORRECT SALINITY even if the outside water is different! Fortunately, adding salt to my seawater is a lot easier than removing it, and I want to be saltier than this weird outside water.” At this point you beef up your liver and urinary systems to compensate for different salinities. (Note: the majority of fish, freshwater and saltwater, have a fairly narrow band of salinities they can live in. Every fish doesn’t get to deal with every level of salinity; they are evolved to regulate within specific bands.)
You also, at some point, go out on land. This is new and weird because you have to carry all of your water inside. “It’s a good thing I turned myself into a giant bag of seawater,” you think. “If I wasn’t carrying my seawater inside, how would I transport all these important chemicals between my organs and the environment?” As you specialise to live entirely outside of the water, you realise (once again) that it’s a lot easier to add salt to water than to remove it in great quantities. Drinking seawater in large amounts becomes toxic; your body isn’t specialised for removing that amount of salt. Instead, you drink freshwater, and add salts to that. The majority of your organs are, at this point, specialised for moving your seawater around, protecting it, adding stuff to it, or taking stuff out. You have turned yourself into an intelligent bag for carrying and regulating a small amount of imitation seawater, and its salinity (and your commitment to maintaining that salinity) is based entirely on the seawater that some early animals started to build tubes around a long time ago.
Because at some point, operating along lines of logic that worked out perfectly so far, you did decide to be a mammal.
A mammal is a machine for adapting to Circumstances. A mammal is a tremendously resilient all-terrain life-support system, with built-in heating, cooling, respiration, and incubators for reproduction. Mammals internalise everything (grudges, eggs) and furthermore are excessively, flamboyantly wet internally. Sure, everyone’s a bag of chemicals; but mammals slosh. Mammals took the concept of an internal ocean and took it in an unnecessarily splashy direction, added aftermarket mods and a climate-control system,
and just to show off, you leaned across the metaphorical gambling table and said: “my internal ocean is so good-“
“Bullshit,” said the shark, keeping it salty (ha)
“My internal ocean is so brilliantly resilient, more so than any of YOURS,” you said, holding their attention with a digit held aloft, “that for my next trick, I shall artistically recreate the ballad of evolution as a performance. I shall craft a complex chemical ballet depicting the origin of multicellular life - using some of my own material, of course-”
“Oh, ANYONE can lay an egg,” yodel the fish, and the ray adds: “ontogeny does NOT recapitulate phylogeny!!”
And you’re like, “yeah no, it’s an artistic rendition, not a literal thing. Basically I’m going to take some cells and brew them up-“
“Like an egg.”
“Like an egg. An egg but internally.”
“Yeah,” said the viviparous reptile, “yeah, like, that can work really well. I’ve always said it’s the highest test of one’s chemical know-how. It’s a lot of work. And forget about support from your family - forget about support from your PHYLUM - all you get is criticism.”
“I’m gonna do it on purpose forever,” you said. “The highest chemical, thermoregulatory, immunological, everything-logical challenge. It’s gonna be my thing.”
“I’m with you,” said a viviparous fish, stoutly. “Representation.”
You kindly don’t point out, once again, that you’re planning to do this outside the ocean, in a range of temperatures; carrying the dividing cells in a perfect 37.5• solution of saline broth in all terrains, breathing oxygen in a complicated matter, you know, bit more difficult; but you need your allies.
“It’s solid,” says the coelacanth.
“But is it metal?” says the deep-vent organism.
“Oh, it’s metal. I will feed the young,” you say, magnificently, “on an echo of the mother ocean. The first rich feast of cellular matter, the first hunt for sustenance, the first bite they sip of our liquid planet-”
Everyone waits.
“Will be a blood byproduct. My own blood byproduct.”
Everyone looks uncomfortable.
“But,” a hagfish says carefully, “don’t you outdoorsy guys still need your blood?”
You cough and explain that if you stay wet enough internally and hydrate frequently, you should be able to produce enough blood byproduct to sustain your hellish new invention until they can eat your peers.
The outrage that follows includes questions like “is this some furry shit?” And: “milk has WATER in it?”
And you won the bet. “My inner ocean is such a perfect homage to the primordial soup that I can personally cook up an entire live hairy mammal in it. And then generate excess blood byproduct from my body and give it to the small mammal until it gets big.”
That is an absolutely bonkers pitch, by the way, and everyone thought you were a showoff, even before the opposable thumbs. When the winter came, and the winter of winters, and the rain was acid and the air was poison on the tender shells of their eggs and choked the children in the shells; when the plants turned to poison, and the ocean turned against you all; when the climate changed, and the world’s children fell to shadow; your internal ocean was it that held true. A bet laid against the changing fates, a bet laid by a small beast against climate and geography and the forces of outer space, that you won. The dinosaurs fell and the pterosaurs fell and the marine reptiles dwindled, and you, furthest-child, least-looked-for, long-range-spaceship, held hope internally at 37.5 degrees. Which is another thing that humans do, sometimes.
It has been MONTHS, @elodieunderglass, and I am still mumbling “furthest-child, least-looked-for, long-range-spaceship” under my breath as a comfort phrase, and the FUCKING INDIGNITY that it came from this godforsaken post about THE HORRIBLE WETNESS OF MAMMALS!
#‘if anything is living in your blood you have a serious microbial infection’ didn’t sound right#because I know the human body contains mostly nonhuman cells#but I’m glad I checked because it seems the circulatory system is one of the few tubes that doesn’t have its own microbiota#which is too bad because being an aquarium sounds like fun#biology#poetry
I should point out that technically there are all sorts of little guys living in your blood! The issue is that they’re all you. You have so many blood cells swimming about in there.
Watch this funky lil dude chase down an Unauthorised Fucking Thing (neutrophil eliminating golden staph bacterium)
When my mom or her sisters did crochet growing up, their dickhead older brothers thought it was hilarious to snip the yarn somewhere in the middle of the bundle. I suspect mom would've found a trick like this really handy.
I have used this method and I can confirm it is Great. Makes a very, very strong join that won't break, and then you don't have to weave in the ends when you're done!!
You probably get asked this a lot, but how do you draw hands? Even when I'm tracing, they look so weird 🙃
I could probably go on and on and on about hands, but here are some key points I compiled! I LOVE drawing hands, and I never hesitate to use my own as a reference
any advice for picking fun and vibrant colour palettes that still feel true/recognizable to an object/setting/character's base colours? something about intense lighting?
I've been asked about how I choose my colors by a lot of people and I finally sat down and made a whole ass youtube video about it!
I cannot stress enough that all those things in sewing pattern instructions that seem pointless are actually very important
Yes, how you fold your fabric before putting down the pattern pieces and cutting matters, because it influences how the fabric drapes, and ignoring that can cause fit issues in ways you wouldn't expect
Yes, cutting an entire separate piece to sew to the edge to finish it is going to be better than turning the edge and stitching it on its own, because there are geometry issues in play that make it actually harder to just fold a curve to the inside.
Yes, cutting clips or notches into the seam allowance around curves should always be done, because those geometry issues will work on the seam allowances and keep the curve from laying flat (remember, clip when the curve goes in, notch when the curve goes out)
Yes, interfacing may seem completely superfluous and frustrating and an extra step to work with, but it adds rigidity and stability to areas that need it (especially under buttons)
Yes, using a fun quilting cotton print for lining looks nice, but the point of lining isn't to make the inside pretty as much as it is to make the inside slip smoothly over the layer under it, and quilting cotton is going to instead be prone to grabbing everything under it, so you really should use those annoyingly slippery lining fabrics
Yes, in general, you should use the kind of fabric the pattern tells you to use, because there have been centuries, if not millennia, of people throughout the entire world figuring out what fabric best suits what kind of garment, for reasons beyond aesthetics
I know that a lot of people new to sewing see these things and feel like they're things that just aren't necessary, because they skip them when they sew and the item ends up just fine. And if you don't mind the idea of your clothes looking homemade, then it is fine. But...if you're consistently skipping these things and end up unhappy with how homemade your items look, please consider that that result is at least partly because you're not following the entire directions
"Sewing" involves so much more than just the stitches
All this is true, but I will say: people will tell you not to make shirts out of quilting cotton, even though quilting cotton has BY FAR the best and most fun patterns.
Is it as good as fabrics designed for shirts? No. (My personal favs for winter are a cotton sateen with some stretch, and for summer a nice linen, if you must know, but I often use cotton double gauze for summer, too.)
Can you make a perfectly good button-down shirt out of it that will last you 5+ years of regular use? YES. I've made several. It's fine. Wash the fabric with super hot water and dry on hot first to make sure it's not going to shrink on you. The shirts last longer if you hang them to dry but that's true of most things.
If what you are looking for out of making your own shirts is The Most Fun Shirts Possible, use the quilting cotton.
Oh, yeah, quilting cotton makes fun shirts! People just need to be aware that it does not always make a soft and drapy shirt XD
A "menswear style" button-up shirt will probably work out fine in even the sturdiest quilting cottons. If the shirt's goal is to be soft and flowing, then the weight of the fabric becomes more important.
"Button up shirt made from quilting cotton = fabulous" versus "Button up shirt that, If I had made it in quilting cotton, probably would have looked--and felt--like a tent"
Of course, if "shirt that is a tent" is your goal, that's fine! It's all about being aware of all the things beyond print/color that the fabric contributes to the finished item.
Sometimes with a press cloth, depending on the situation. You can cut a piece of silk organza to use and it works nicely because you can still see through it.
And staystitching the curved edges is absolutely necessary if you're working with a soft drapey fabric and you don't want the neckhole to stretch out horribly.
It's worth learning to use a thimble, I promise it makes hand sewing so much easier.
And ffs, clean your sewing machine regularly, and oil it! AND clean your iron now and then when it gets gunky! You can buy these melty sticks of iron cleaner to do it with.
Some people may say that mockups and basting are for the weak, but it's the other way around. Skipping them is for reckless fools.
A recent commenter on my 18th century shirt tutorial said:
"It came out fantastic, other than all the places where I did not follow your advice."
being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re fuckin twenty-five
when i was in undergrad, it was kind of mentioned in and offhand way that we should do warmups, but we were never shown what that meant. And, y’know, we were young so it didn’t matter so much.
Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential.
So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’
1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust!
2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:
a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it!
In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support.
I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose
b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me!
c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface
d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)
e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them
f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics.
g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper.
h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more.
And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc.
This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah.
Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks.
so, yeah! that’s a lot of words, but! Warmups are important! Save your joints, take less advil, do better drawings!
These are smocking patterns. If you stitch these patterns into flat fabric and then pull the threads to gather the fabric, it will produce these patterns on the finished fabric. Smocking manipulates flat fabric into three dimensions.
The beautiful fabric that looked like dragon scales on costumes in the tv show Game of Thrones were produced by smocking, by sewing a particular pattern into the fabric and then pulling those threads just the right amount to gather the fabric into that pattern.
Really says something about the dire state of offerings for men interested in sewing their own clothes that even searching things like “interesting men’s clothing patterns” brings up articles with links to four or five whole websites that primarily offer admittedly nice but practically identical patterns for making button-ups and work pants and maybe a varsity/bomber jacket if you’re lucky.
(Branching out into historical costuming for everyday wear is like your one shot at variation, and even then, the ratio of men’s to women’s patterns on every website is frustrating to say the least.)
Patternmakers as a trans man I am begging you. Give me a little more to work with here.
Like it’s also hard if you’re buying your own clothes, don’t get me wrong, but there are at least more retailers that offer fun and quirky clothes for guys if you do a little digging.
And some of that comes down to print choice, where you obviously have significant leeway if you’re making your own clothes, too, but the erasure of men who sew by society writ large has wreaked absolute havoc on the selection of sewing tutorials and patterns aimed at men and people interested in wearing menswear. It is uniquely frustrating to be a man who wants to sew interesting things, not just wear them.
I wasn’t expecting this to take off, but since so many of you seem to have resonated (or at least sympathized) with this, I thought I’d offer some links to some of the fun patterns I have been eyeing lately
Twig and Tale on Etsy have a modest selection of slightly more unique men’s and unisex patterns, I’d really love to make their Pathfinder vest and Ridgeway shirt, among others
Merchant and Mills have a small selection as well, including their Billy gillet and unisex Landgate raincoat
Wardrobe by Me has mostly basics, but I do like their Ozark vest and utility jacket – and as a very small trans guy, I appreciate that their men’s patterns go down to a 2XS
Thread Theory is one of the places I absolutely have my eyes on for modern menswear – I’d particularly like to make their Gosling short-sleeved button-up, Jutland pants, and Belvedere waistcoat
Folkwear are absolutely inching into the desperately-needed much more unique zone – I have plans to make both their varsity jacket and vintage vests, and also have my eyes on their frontier shirts, sailor pants, shirts of Russia and Ukraine, and poet’s shirt
Black Snail Patterns does historical clothing patterns ranging from 1700 to 1910; I just nabbed their Victorian/Edwardian walking trousers and lounge jacket patterns the other day
Laughing Moon Mercantile also do historical patterns, likewise I am planning on making their Victorian shirts and neckwear (which has 15 different historical neckwear suggestions included) and Victorian notched collar vest
The Tudor Tailor do 16th century clothing, which might be a bit bold even even for historybounding for most people, but they do great work, and I highly recommend their bias-cut footed hose as well as their excellent books
(Last but not least, I would be remiss not to mention Norah Waugh’s The Cut of Men’s Clothes, which is a book and not a pattern retailer might be best for slightly more advanced sewers, but I did make a really excellent 1600s cassock using a pattern from it that has gotten a lot of compliments as everyday wear!)
Frustrating as the men’s sewing landscape is, there are still some fun things out there, and it’s worth the digging! I vote we all make weird clothes and start a fashion revolution.
Cosplay and LARP patterns are worth a look, though the ratio is still very skewed. You need a good eye for what patterns are plausible though, and how to adapt them for different fabrics. That’s another part of this problem - you have to be good with patterns to be able to make the stuff but how do you learn the 101 stuff if you have to jump right into pattern drafting?
#theres a guy called Mark Francis who was on the Great British Sewing Bee a few years bacl#and he does some really cool men’s patterns! (via @shutupeiffel)
I had a look at his shop and it’s honestly pretty delightful. Particular fan of the seventh doctor inspired trousers.
An explainer of the WGA proposals, as I understand them
One very important thing I want everyone to keep in mind as I go through what this all means is that this doesn’t really impact “famous” writers. The showrunners, the creators, the auteurs, the people you’ve heard of – the majority of this contract is about the MINIMUM concessions for writers, and most of the celebrity writers receive comfortably over minimum. It means a lot to me that they are fighting for us and raising awareness, but this fight is NOT about helping the multi-millionaires you associate with the film and television industry.
This fight is about making sure that writers – regular old writers, 9-to-5 writers, the people whose names you don’t really know but who form the backbone of the writer’s room – are paid enough to make a living. You should want this! If you care about diversity of all kinds in writer’s rooms, you should care about this because if lower-level writers are not paid enough to live, then only people with immense financial privilege are going to be able to take those jobs, and it will have a knock-on effect as people retire and/or move out of higher-level jobs and the only people who have the experience to replace them are those privileged people and so on and so on up the ladder until up and down everyone has been squeezed out.
I’ve seen posts going around with the proposals saved as an image, but I think those can be hard to read and don’t work with screen readers. Instead, I am going to link you to the official list of proposals on the WGA’s strike hub HERE. Click over to it and skim, or follow along in a different tab.
I’m not going to go over every point. Some of it is contract numbers stuff that is just the basic “every cycle we ask for a raise, they counter with a lower number, then we settle somewhere in the middle” that, while useful, is not what we’re really fired up about. Not to say that it’s not important! But I don’t think it’s particularly necessary for the general public to understand the granular details. So I have picked five categories of proposals (the mini-room proposals, streaming residuals, pension & health for teams, artificial intelligence, and the feature proposals) to explain more fully.
As always, my inbox is open for questions. Please note that while I am a member of the WGA, I am NOT on the Board of Directors or Negotiating Committee and do not speak for the WGA. These are just my impressions and opinions. Also if you want to support the strike, the most concrete thing you can do is donate to the Entertainment Community Fund, which helps anyone in the entertainment industry affected by the strike.
So... did anybody already talk about the symbolism behind Stede actually getting the freedom - the ’retirement’ - from faking his own death, by leaving a ‘corpse disfigured beyond recognition’ in ofmd 1x10, that Blackbeard described to Izzy for himself in 1x04?
A reminder to myself for all the drawing ideas/projects I really want to work on... after the bigbang? (I should propably edit this when a project is finished)
1) TOG family: fitting Horses (1 ensemble piece, leisure scene with Booker almost falling off his horse) - Current Stage: research and first rough sketches
2) Andy & Quynh: Horses, battle riding scene (foot soldiers perspective) - Current Stage: idea and really rough draft only
3) AndyxQuynh: Kissing the stones of your antique face ( 2 pieces, yearning, yearning and angst, sunlight and water, greece, I really want to add animation to one piece... but should I?) - Current Stage: first lineart done
4) Booker: Looking out at sea (small piece, watercolor?) - Current Stage: Pose Sketch
5) JoexNicky: morning dawn in the caribbean (Light Study and comic, ...6 pieces, reduced palette, trying to draw softness..., don’t panic) - Current Stage: really rough pose and layout draft
