Reverse Engineering

Somewhere along the line I realized that I have the skill and ability to reverse engineer a garment, create a pattern, in short: copy it. Designers beware, I am your nightmare.

My confidence, however, gets stretched a bit thin at times, and as I'm working, I often wonder if indeed I have this ability, or if I'm just teasing myself.

Today, I proved that I do indeed: The cassok I copied fits Fr. D perfectly, and after today's fitting all I have to do is add the buttons and a hem at the bottom, and slits in the pockets to allow access to his pants pockets while still retaining the ability to put stuff in his cassok pocket, too. Very doable.

And now he has a pattern for future cassoks to boot. (Or rather, I do...)

The process involves pencils, graph paper, a ruler, a tape measure and lots of brain power and patience...checking and double checking my math. Garment construction is, afterall, merely 3-D puzzle solving, spacial relationships, etc. I like it because fabric is so fluid, and has body and character of it's own. How soft a fabric is, how it drapes and whether it wrinkles is known as its "hand".

Since a cassok looks like a black lump hanging on a hanger, I won't bother taking a picture of it, or posting it here.

I'll be glad when these two projects are done, and I can get on with other things I have planned this summer. Tomorrow I'll finish the cassok, and the wedding dress will only take a few days of work once I get all the materials for it.

I promise: wedding dress pictures when all is said and done. Everyone loves to see a wedding dress, even on a hanger, except maybe my eight year old son.....

Comments

Meg said…
What a wonderful blessing for you, to have identified one of the talents God has given you. I'll look forward to seeing any photos you care to post!
Anonymous said…
I have made cassocks so I'll forgo the pics happily with or without Father in residence.

I wanted to say that I love that you blog about parking queues at school, cat pee, sewing and dealing with Wallyworld. I check in with you to see what's happening in "reality" which is weird because I read you often enough to know that you feel positively nutty some days :-)