Distractions pt21 - Snoop My Wardrobe

My sewing corner is still not ready to give you a tour. I'm not really sewing seriously yet but I definitely have the itch.

I can tell you that we finally have some wardrobes! This took longer than expected after losing a gamble with Oak Furniture Land. The original units were lovely but didn't fit out our tiny victorian staircase. So they had to go back.

In the meantime B was living out of a suitcase with 7 days of clothes inside and I employed the "shove it all in one bag" approach. This meant that B seemed to have a limited supply of complete outfits whereas I seemed to be constantly fishing for t-shirts in an infinite sea of leggings. 

Once the new wardrobes were in place I got to work on Step 2: fitting all my stuff inside. Not everything needs hanging space so I wanted some shelving to stack things too. I got excited about felt baskets too so I wanted to have one for each nook in my shelving unit. 

Here's the nerdy bit....

So, I got all of my clothes out of the big bag, sorted them into their normal piles and then measured them. I plugged all of the measurements into my Excel spreadsheet and worked out the volume in cubic centimetres of all of my clothes.

I then realised that I wasn't prepared to make bespoke-sized baskets for each category of clothing so I tried to divide them into S, M and L boxes. You'll see that t-shirts got split into 2 lines. This made them a lot easier to sort. 

I then tried to work out the dimensions of each basket based on the volume requirements. Pro-tip: Goal Seek is your friend. I was struggling with finding consistent height/depth of boxes so I gave it to B to try out. He subsequently invented the Efficiency Ratio, which essentially says how full the storage space is based on the measured volume of stuff we have to fit in. 

We thought we'd found a solution where all the baskets would be the same height and depth at about 90% efficiency. The next question: would it fit into the wardrobe??

I do still need some hanging space, so there is a height limit. We needed to arrange the baskets so there was some long hanging space and some shorter hanging space. So, we worked out the maximum height of a stack of baskets

After a few iterations of basket layouts, we found a good one and I started designing the wooden shelving/nooks. I chose the easiest design possible and wanted to avoid any tricky (for me) carpenty. I'd like to try something tricky one day, but when there's a pandemic on and a house to finish, it really is flatpack or bust in my mind. Anyway, I got the pieces cut by Cutwrights because I got very excited about them as a business and their quote/cutting layout facility. I would love to use them again on a future project.

The two levels are completely separate box shelf units, for simplicity.

We sanded and varnished the 12mm ply, though I didn't clean the sawdust properly and it is rough in places. We worked together on drilling pilot holes, counter-sinking and screwing the panels together.  

I ordered some right-angle clamps from Screwfix specifically for this job and they were so useful. Definitely worth the extra £10. The units would have been a lot worse without these. I also would have had at least one meltdown during the assembly of the shelves without these clamps.

So, once the nooks were in place I could at least organise my clothes into their spaces and think about the felt baskets. 

I wanted a sturdy felt but was keen to avoid that ubiquitous mid-grey colour. The only website I found that offered felt in a good variety of thicknesses and colourways (and labelled them clearly) was myfabrics.co.uk so I ordered some samples from 1mm to 5mm thickness. In the end, the 5mm thickness won. 

My plan was to use my tapestry needles and thick embroidery thread to sew, so I test-punched some holes using my awl and it seemed fine. I had quite a lot of variegated embroidery thread, and not much that matched the felt, so there's a bit of a rustic look to the stitching.

Next came the question of how much felt and in which colours. Working out the pattern was tricky. I do like the fold-up no-sew styles but they seemed like a serious waste of fabric, so I designed a boxy pattern with the seam running front to back. I drew it up in Excel (note: I have NEVER used Excel like this before this project). This formed the basis of the fabric requirement and I shared out the colours amongst the baskets. The full order from myfabrics.co.uk was MASSIVE. I cheerily threw in a bit of impulse buying too. 

My cutting plan for these was to get each big rectangle cut and then remove the small squares in each corner. It really helped me sit down and get on with the stitching when the felt arrived. Speaking of stitching, I considered a few stitch styles (backstitch, chainstitch, running stitch) but ended up using a blanket stitch on the seams. The principle was to get a flat join in the same way as an overlocker faux flatlock. Basically, sew the seam right sides together and turn inside out once complete. It also meant the edges were butt joined and there was no need to deal with seam allowance. 

Although I forgot the inside-out step for a couple of baskets.

In theory I should've tested the buttonhole stitch as an alternative, for its strength, because we covered it in millinery class last year. Secretly, I don't think it would be so easy to open out the seams because the stitch forms a bit of a knot. A blanket stitch is a bit more slidy. I used a few different stitches for the handles.

This stitch was an absolute thread hog and I ran out of embroidery floss after about 6 boxes, so I switched to some upholstery spools I had available. 

Here's a photo of them all sewn up:

I will confess I've been streaming a lot of Twitch in the background recently and watching other people play board games was one of the things that accompanied this make. So I want to share this very appropriate SUSD clip.

You might notice in the image above that the boxes are all quite round. I noticed that too. So did B. After I finished my first basket, B came to have a look and said "that'll be really nice once you've blocked it". Naturally this didn't go down well. Firstly, I didn't know how to block felt. Secondly, this sounded like extra work for something that I thought was already done. 

But, after a day or so I came around and realised he was right. I also realised that I technically do know how to block felt because we covered it in millinery class last year (curse you millinery class!). So there was no opting out. I spent a few days mulling over various techniques to hold the sharp corners while the boxes cooled and dried. We do have some scrap wood that would make a good seam clapper but I decided to try using clothes pegs instead.

The pegs worked really well, though I had to steam the boxes in about 5 or 6 batches because we only have 1 bag of pegs and they get used up very quickly on something like this. The boxes had their bases squared first, then I came back around to do the vertical corners. The pegs really needed to stay in place while the felt dried completely, otherwise the corners didn't stay crisp. I left them on for about 24hrs each time. 

Before starting on the steaming adventure I looked around the internet for some guidance on technique. Using steam to shape felt doesn't seem like a particularly niche technique to me (makers and crafters swap and steal techniques all the time) but the only resources I could find were millinery ones. I'm baffled that nothing showed up for any other discipline! (curse you millinery class!)

This meant that every resource recommended a wooden block as the only way forward (curse you millinery class!). I saw a few bulldog clips being used, but definitely no clothes pegs. I'm so glad I took a chance on this technique!

The other reason I was trying to find some resources online was to see how other people were generating the steam. You will remember from Distractions pt2 that we currently have the Family Steamer and I wanted some reassurance about using it for this. On my web travels I found people using: hat steamers, kettles, stockpots, warm showers, microwaves and irons...but not steam cleaners! Come to think of it, I didn't see anyone using garment steamers either and I would have thought they'd be ideal...

Ours has a pressure dial, so I turned it down to a minimum before using it on the boxes. This worked really well. My only problem is that the handle for the steam cleaner is enormous and quite cumbersome for small/medium projects. I would definitely consider using it for makery or millinery in the future.

Once my final batch of pegged boxes was complete I started putting them away in the wardrobe. They look so good. 

All in all, I'm pleased with how this turned out. But, I'm more pleased with how many different techniques and skills were involved in bringing these together. It's so satisfying to draw on such a wide range of techniques and to see this designed from scratch.

Stay tuned to find out what I did with the scraps...

K x

V1591 - I fell in love with a jumpsuit

Friends, I never thought I would fall for the jumpsuit craze. I saw nothing for me in the angular stylised boss-lady suits or the casual summer florals all-over. They seemed quite overpowering. I was always disappointed with the single-layer, unfitted, spaghetti strap sewing patterns with elastic casings and ludicrous cutouts. They were not for me.

And then V1591 came along. Oh my. I still don't know if I fell in love with the sewing pattern or the model. Look at her: that sleek, smooth hairstyle, uncomplicated no-nonsense pose, those angular square shoulders reflected perfectly by the square neckline. The lack of cleavage, those dominant legs. The camera work is so good here: slightly lower, looking up at her. She takes no sh*t. Yes, these are wide legs. Wow.

So then I looked at the line drawing. This is a bold design with a bold pattern. Actual pleating/seamline detail! Pockets! Backless! Then I looked at the fabric requirements. Lined! underlined! Hanging loops! It's made of lace! I have never seen a lace jumpsuit before, and this one looks amazing.

This absolute goddess is wearing some sort of formal lace dungaree/jumpsuit with her full back on show and just looks like she's got places to be and people to stomp on. And the sewing pattern shows she knows what she's talking about.

I realised I needed that pattern.

I wanted to make sure it wasn't just me who thought this looked great so I waited a full damn year for reviews to pop up before buying it. There were a few instagram posts, but not much else. I also waited for a long time to find the right fabric. In the end I was fed up with dithering and impulse-bought the pattern and the fabric ready for an Easter-weekend (2019) making session. This took about 2 days to make with minimal fitting or design alterations. I will admit I'm incrediibly late to the party.

Incidentally, this floral viscose was £4/m from John Lewis. Nothing in John Lewis is £4/m! The lining is part of the gift haul that a friend brought back from India.

V1591 bodice facing, lining and hanging loops

v1591 catch-stitched hems and small thread chain for trouser lining

v1591 CB lining and facing

I actually followed the pattern instructions for this make and the finish is excellent. The only trouble I had was matching all of the notches at the waist seam between the bodice and the trouser. I think this is mostly because I like to mark the centre front and seamlines, whereas Big 4 patterns don't. They add notches in different places, so it can get quite confusing if both systems are potentially in play.

I also remember the pocket facings being a bit confusing at the cutting out stage as the pattern refers to them as a "patch". If you make this in lace as advised, they may tell you to cut the pocket facing from the lining/underlining fabric instead of the lace. If you're using regular fabric, you don't need to do this - it's a design choice. If you've made this type of pocket before (like on jeans, for example), you'll know what you need to do, so it's good to trust yourself. I still don't know if there's an error or not - but just watch out.

In terms of cut and fitting, I'm so impressed at the coverage and modesty of this garment considering it's really designed to be seductively braless. I cut an 8 on top, grading to 12 at the waist. The legs are very long - though my fabric also tends to shrink and droop, so it can vary on me. People with different proportions may benefit from shortening the legs. I could have done an SBA, but for this design it didn't seem worth it.

The cut is quite modest on CF, and around the sides/under the arms. 

My finished jumpsuit is more casual than the envelope. I'd love to make a more formal version but honestly, the current one has been worn so much that a casual version was the right choice. It wears best with no bra/shirt underneath (good for sweaty ceildhs) but I do also wear it with lacy M&S bralets or full t-shirts too. It has survived the office, late night ceildhs, duvet days, housework, house parties and camping. It is oddly well-suited to the british climate, handling our annual heatwaves (for which the Brits are famously ill-prepared) and more moderate temperatures too (the lining and underlining really work together).

On the next version, I'll pay more attention to the straps. I sewed tubes for this version and didn't top stitch at all. They will never lie flat again. I am hoping to find a solution that doesn't use ribbon like the pattern calls for, because the colour-matching challenge would be a big headache. In future, I  may also swap out the tie for a button or hooks and eyes - as I'm not a big fan of the knot and always tie it in front. We'll see what the future holds.

That's it for now,
K x

How I use Airtable to organise my sewing projects (and you can use it too!)

One morning, early in 2018, I was clearing out my junk folder when an email from Angelist caught my eye. "Excel is dead" the subject declared - you don't say something like that without getting someone like me fired up*. I took the bait and opened the email. This is how Airtable entered my life.

I love a good spreadsheet, but I really hate trying to use a spreadsheet where a database would be better suited to the job. Airtable plugs this gap, it looks like a spreadsheet but has the functionality of a database (and it looks all pretty and contemporary).

There were some examples of applications out there already, though the community is much more active by now. At the time, I enjoyed Simon Hørup Eskildsen's posts on how he uses it (Minimum Viable Airtable, How I Use Airtable) and leafing through the Airtable Universe pages to see hundreds of applications I couldn't begin to imagine. I've built some test bases with enterprise applications but we're an Office365 organisation and I have enough problems with people staggering around abusing Teams.

FYI. This system below would probably work for any situation where you need to pull together several inventories and create projects. But I've done it for sewing as that's my thing. Feel free to take these ideas and run with them.

The Organisation Problem

On a basic level, I have a pile of fabric and a pile of patterns - they should all be linked together so I know what I'm using for which project. I want to know what I already own so I don't buy duplicates and I want to know what my stock looks like so I can colour match it.

I want to be able to plan projects when I'm not in my sewing space. I want to browse my stock or find something specific without having to leaf through everything.

The Problem With Sewing Apps

For a long time I was fruitlessly looking for a digital inventory system to help with sewing. There are a lot of sewing organisers out there, but I always felt that they weren't quite right. Some were expensive and had too many features, some were free and looked pretty rubbish. Some were designed for quilters, or embroiderers or general crafters, definitely not garment sewers. Some were social. Very few of them were designed to work on more than one device (and I don't mean they lacked the ability to sync (though that is true)), meaning that they were only ever developed for iPad or android or WindowsPhone. And none of them ever contained my holy trinity of requirements for an information store: backup, restore and exportable data. Because nothing gets me down like losing my entire inventory each time I replace a device.

OH AND THE MANUAL DATA ENTRY. EURGH.
Doing it for one app is a chore. Doing it for several is just eurgh...

And I understand that a lot of these apps will have been developed by tiny teams with a passion to help out other people like them. I get that. I'm sure that so many sewing apps are imperfect home-brewed solutions, but I desperately wanted to believe there was a better way. Something customisable by the user (we do know how to do alterations after all) but where the nitty-gritty infrastructure stuff was already taken care of.

In the past I've used:

• OneNote (and Evernote): For pattern storage. OneNote is like a freeform filofax or notebook. It's good for images and annotations, but not very good for cataloging. For a long time you couldn't filter or search easily (it has improved), but it is a good ground for recording ideas and making digital collages. I really appreciate that this will work (fairly) seamlessley between computers and mobile devices, and I only need to sign in to a cloud account to access the information. You don't even necessarily need OneNote installed because you can access it in the browser.
• Fabric Locker: This was on iPad several years ago, it might still be there. Allows you to store fabric and patterns, then you can link entries as projects and add free text notes. Used frustratingly tiny pictures, and only 1 per entry. I gave up on this app when I lost my data a couple of times after it crashed.
• Clothio: Bless Clothio. I love this little Android app. Sure, I can't extract the data or access it on anything other than my phone. Sure, it clogs up my image library by saving image duplicates and breaks a bit if I accidenally delete a fabric image stored elswhere on my phone. Sure, it won't let me edit a fabric image once it has been added. Sure, it's only a fabric library so patterns are left in the wild - but I liked it. I can search by pattern, colour, type, shop, designer...loads of different attributes which are mostly added via tickboxes. Plus, it's offline so I can look at it anytime (but mostly between tube stops when then the wifi drops).

Enter Airtable

Again, I love a good spreadsheet, but I really hate trying to use a spreadsheet where a database would be better suited to the job. Except that I only know how to use databases, not build them. I suck at building/making relationships and I certanly don't know how to get one to support images, or integrate with third parties. And I have limited time, energy and brainspace to learn how.

I don't code - but I know how to build a smashing spreadsheet.

Before I take you on a tour of my setup, I wanted to give you a bit of context on why I've arrived at this way of working. When I first started using Airtable, I had a grand idea for something that I could deploy to the community for free and that could be copied by other users. I have a very long-standing annoyance about cataloguing patterns via technology to have quick reference available - ideally with some sort of link to a database that will auto-fill all the blank spaces about sizing, style, garment type, recommended fabric, size range, rabric required etc and the images. This is normally tied to a website's functionality as a shop, mostly as a by-product of this commercial activity. I know some people have accounts on PatternReview.com that allow them to do this, that The Foldline is probably one of the best repositories of information by now (but doesn't do the community stuff in the same way), and that Kollabora has also attempted this. I guess these are the most well-known multi-brand platforms.

The stick in the mud for me has always been magazine patterns. When I was buying Burda semi-regularly, this meant ~50 new patterns I needed to catalogue and refer to. I think there is a solution floating around the Russian Burdastyle community, and some people have just stored photos of each centre-page spread of line drawings into their phones. I used OneNote to store a big reference page of all of the line drawings. I guess it's good enough, but I longed for a system where you could tell Burda you owned a particular magazine edition and it would give you access to the PDF instructions, or pieces or just save a list in your user profile. It seemed like a very small ask.

And then they launched burdastyle.co.uk

With no pattern images and missing the back catalogue

And then they revamped the UK site and the US site

Completely obliterating the back catalogue, purchase history, project history of each user.

They forced most existing users to choose between inflated pattern prices in their domestic currency or bear foreign transaction fees and exchange rates to keep using the US platform that had a record of their projects and purchases.

Because of course your logins were completely separate accounts.

And then they failed to fill in the information on the product page so you didn't know what size you were buying or if you'd ever be able to procure the materials for the make.

And they kept the legacy issues where documents were attributed to the wrong patterns, or the wrong patterns to the wrong magazines. So you could buy something, open up the PDF and discover that it was for a different garment.

Oh, and then the magazine got very lame very quickly.

So now that Burda is never getting my money again, I think my OneNote solution is fine - I just need to break all of the web links. I tried to input a couple of issues of Burda into Airtable, but it's impossible without webscraping, API or a similar tool. So now I will only add a Burda Pattern if I have taced it out already - indicating a serious intention to make it. I've just cleared out the weblinks on these records:

For other pattern brands, Airtable works okay. I still can't call on an automated way of populating the pattern information, but I can link to the webpage and I don't actually buy that many so I don't need a scalable answer. This is semi-sustainable for now. One major advantage of Airtable is that I can upload my PDF patterns and instructions. That means that (give or take) if I am planning a project away from my main pattern stash, I can print a new version of the pattern! I can carry half my pattern stash around in my pocket.

The Tour

In essence I have 3 tables within my Project Planner (Sewing) base:

• Fabric - in which I log an image, characteristics, composition, measurement, brand, colours and shop of the fabric
• Pattern - in which I log the name, web link, image, garment type and category of a pattern
• Project - Where I select items from Fabric and Pattern to go together.

The Fabric one gets updated immediately after a purchase and it helps me remember how much I bought of a particular fabric.

I have filters for various criteria and have just sorted out a Colour field. One of the things I struggled with was entering colour information into these records. For about 18 months, I just used a free text field but it wasn't great. I was hoping for a colour picker, but it never materialised. When I started using Airtable, the multi-select option had very limited colour choices and I didn't want to be stuck with a label colour coded "Green" when the text said "Blue" - I think this has been expanded, and it currently looks like this:

 

The Patterns and Projects tables have some notes sections, which can be useful if I need to put reminders to myself.

I have a small "Done?" Tick box on the Project records and can use this as a rule to filter between 'To Do' list/Available fabrics and completed projects. This has been really useful over time to check back on things. When adding fabric to a project, the table uses the All Fabrics list, so I can also add a scrap to the Project without clogging up my fabric list with tiny cuts.

Desktop vs Mobile

I love being able to view and edit this on mobile and computer. Most of the fabric entries and Projects are created on my mobile - but there are some edits that are only possible on computer (removing a fabric from a project). The desktop version has different views, while mobile only really has a standard one:

On desktop, you can have a Gallery View:

And a Grid View:

The Grid View is most helpful for editing things.

It is disappointing that there's no mobile Gallery View yet, but I just discovered a "hack" via this Community thread (and when my phone prompts me how I want to open the link, I choose Airtable not browser). This is what it looks like:

That's it. Happy organising!

K

*I am am Excel queen btw

distractions pt20 - Home stretch

Way back in pt14 I said it was important to treat the household paint jobs like a marathon, not a sprint session. I showed a screenshot of my paint tracker and felt daunted by the amount of work ahead. Well, friends, this week we finally finished all of the indoor painting. Look at all of those Y's! 

For those of you following this saga,  we chose a bright butter yellow for the skirting/door frames upstairs and a deep blue for most of the skirting/door frames downstairs. The trim in the kitchen and bathroom is white gloss. There is also some tactical white gloss in the exterior doorways to make them seem bigger. These paints were so gloopy compared to the wall and ceiling paints, it was a bit of a shock when I started working with them! Also, the gloss paints look best with two coats - it was definitely worth the extra effort.

I am so relieved we have all "finished" rooms now. It feels like a big milestone!

There's still a bit of external masonry to paint, but I need to wait for a dry spell.

Stay safe 

K