Vanity sizing

    This week I've been working on a piece of clothing, a 1950s reissue from about 4 years ago, Simplicity 3673.

    It came together really well, and I had a perfect dress. Except I had one a size too small. Zip won't do up.

    Why? Vanity sizing. A 12, 14, or 16 in the 1950s now equates to a 10, 12, or 14 in 2014. You sell more clothes if people trying them on think they're a size smaller, so manufacturers have shifted the sizes upwards over the decades. And I didn't check the feet-and-inches(Dressmaking's not like engineering folks!) before cutting, so ended up with a 1950s sized garment. Modern Simplicity clothing fits me at the right size, this one didn't.

    We can all cock up our measurements whether we're making spacecraft or clothing. But at least a millimeter from the '50s is the still a thousandth of a metre in 2014.

    (This post was first made a couple of days ago to my local hackspace list. I'm not the only one hereabouts afflicted with the delusion that they can make clothing.)

The things you do in a good cause

    Last year my friend R and I went off to Sackville Gardens in Manchester for the Sparkle trans pride celebration, to promote the Dawn Skinner Fund. We had a gazebo, chairs and table, and a load of leaflets and banners.

    Though a lot of people stopped by and we gained a lot of support, we didn't get much publicity.

    Sparkle you see is a bit "out there". The whole spectrum of our community is out in the sun, and some of them wear costumes that put a couple of jeans-wearing charity trustees firmly in the shade. Nobody's going to take a picture of  us when there are more interesting sights aplenty.

    Clearly a publicity stunt was called for.

    The trouble is, what? Some kind of costume, but nothing too out there. No bum cheeks on display, nothing borderline-inappropriate. Historical perhaps, Dawn was a fan of historical recreation, she used to be in the Sealed Knot. As an end-of-life organisation we briefly considered old-fashioned nurses uniforms, but given that the NHS would be there that was probably inappropriate.

    So in the end I broke out the sewing machine and put together the barmiest outfit I've ever worn, an 1860s style crinoline day dress, pagoda sleeves and all.

    It's a surprisingly easy task, making a crinoline dress. I had a bit of help from Hathaways of Haworth, but didn't follow their design exactly. Once you've found a hooped underskirt of the type sold for brides, the skirt is a simple cylinder of fabric to the outer hoop circumference, then gathered at the top round a waist band. In my case I made an 18 foot long sash, and once the skirt was attached to its centre the two trailing ends made a large bow to fasten it. The bodice was adapted from my basic shell dress pattern with a neckline copied from a contemporary photograph, and with lacing replacing the zip I'd use on a modern garment.
    The sleeves were a little more challenging. Pagoda sleeves in the 1860s style are quite short, but very wide indeed. The pattern looks something like a crescent moon with a third removed from each end, and was something I produced by careful calculation of the two radiuses followed by plotting on tracing paper.
    To be authentic I should wear it with a fully laced corset underneath. Victorian corsets were very tight indeed, I'd have no chance at all of fitting into one without the lifetime of waist training they had. I considered a modern corset but in the end decided a Manchester park in July would be too hot. Since I didn't follow Hathaways suggestion of using a corset as the base for my bodice the only shaping would come from the bodice lacing. So authenticity was sacrificed in the name of comfort. Fortunately I'm not too lardy and it didn't look too wrong.

    The handy thing about a dress with such a barmy amount of fabric is you can change into it in a Manchester park as an event sets up around you. It makes its own tent. So off on a day perambulating with a Dawn Fund placard.

    Surprisingly it was very comfortable to wear. I guess it is made exactly to my measurements, so it should. And under such a voluminous skirt there is plenty of ventilation, so it wasn't hot either. Easy to walk in, and you always have a two foot gap around you in a crowd.

    Most importantly though it did the job it was made for. Very noticeable, plenty of exposure for the Dawn Fund brand. Which while I'm on the subject is the only way you'll get to see it. Go to our Twitter feed for a few pictures, and while you're there give us a follow if you're a Twitter user.

    So now I have a crinoline in my wardrobe. As Dawn would have said: You wouldn't wear it to Tesco. What on earth am I to do with it!

Give an engineer a machine tool

    I never expected to find myself in a difficult position post - transition at this particular employer. I'd better not name them, but I work for a large publishing company whose atmosphere and ethos as I experienced it over the three years before I transitioned gave me confidence that I could so it without worry. As I wrote a few months ago though it hasn't turned out like that.
    It's called constructive dismissal. Force a person to leave by undermining and marginalising them. And in my case it started a few weeks after transition and it's following the textbook. Even to the point that today I will have a new colleague who I find has been hired to do about half of the job I thought I had before I was marginalised out of it.
    It ain't going to work. With twenty years in tech startups behind me I've seen far worse and I've stopped running. Without going into too much detail, I will not go down without a fight. If the legal bill I can cost then weren't enough my job involves the mechanics of internet publicity, and I honestly can not tell the world that they are a good place for an LGBT employee to work.

    It's the stress and demotivation though that's the killer. Which brings me to the title of this piece. The machine tool in question isn't a lathe or a milling machine, it's my sewing machine. In engineering terms as a computer controlled device whose needle can move side to side as well as moving the fabric, it's a 2-axis CNC machine tool.
    So I've gone back to making stuff as a cathartic. In this case I'm doing it from first principles, making my own patterns to my own designs. In the past few months I've made several pieces and I have no shortage of future ideas. I'm still not good at doing zips though.
    Making things has always been my release. Software, electronics, furniture, you name it. And that I'm doing it so much now is a symptom of my work problems, until last autumn my needs were fulfilled by creating products. If you looked up my employer in the app store you'd find their most downloaded product is one they simply wouldn't have had I not come up with the idea, created a prototype, and bought it to market.
     I guess their loss is my wardrobe's gain.

A weekend of outrageous gender stereotypes

On Saturday I looked at cars with my bloke friends, while on Sunday after a leisurely breakfast in bed and half hour spent browsing the Orla Kiely website with my wife I spent the day at the sewing machine doing a bit of dressmaking. Not for me this time, I was trying to finish a project for her that was meant to be ready for the end of summer but looks likely to be ready only just in time for the start of the next.

It sometimes pains me slightly that as a transgendered girl one of the things that gives me release is dressmaking. I come from a family of powerful women, all four generations that I have known as adults have forged successful careers in their own times which was no mean feat for my grandmother and her daughters generation. So that I've enthusiastically taken up one of the domestic crafts they strove to escape feels almost like letting the side down, as though I might be seeking to play at being female by drawing an outdated caricature.

In truth though both my weekend days were different sides of the same coin. I enjoy making stuff. It's therefore only natural that when given the opportunity to make stuff with a sewing machine instead of with a welder, I'd also enjoy making that too. I consider it a privilege that I've had the opportunity to do both.

Perhaps the world would be a better place if more genetic males who make stuff for cars and bikes followed my example.