Making Your Own Clothing Is So Fulfilling For Exactly This Reason! And You Can Make It Actually Fit In

Making your own clothing is so fulfilling for exactly this reason! And you can make it actually fit in a way that mass produced clothes never do. Used sewing machines are cheap or free (and come with thread!), and all you need is an old iron, a seam ripper, measuring tape or string, and good scissors (or a cutting roller and pad).

Fabric can be very cheap in store and online. Or start with an old bed sheet and don’t worry about wasting good fabric.

Our grandparents’ clothes looked so good because they were hand made to fit.

One side effect of my research for this novel being steeped heavily in textile history is my swelling disgust with modern fabrics.

Firstly they're so thin? Like most things you see in Old Navy or even department stores might as well be tissue paper?? Even some branded sports t-shirts I've bought in recent years (that are supposed to be 'official apparel' and allegedly decent quality) are definitely not going to hold up more than a year or two without getting little holes from wear.

This side of even two hundred years ago fabrics were made to be used for YEARS, and that's with wearing them way more often because you only owned like three sets of clothes. They were thick and well made and most importantly made to LAST. And they were gorgeous?? Some of the weaves were so fine and the drape so buttery we still don't entirely know how these people managed to make them BY HAND. Not to mention intricate patterning and details that turned even some simple garments into freaking ART.

I know this is not news, the fast fashion phenomenon is well documented. Reading so much about the amazing fabrics we used to create and how we cherished and valued them, though, is making it hard not to mourn what we lost to mass production and capitalism. Not just the quality of the clothing and fabrics themselves, but the generations of knowledge and techniques that are just gone. It makes me what to cry.

I need to get a sewing machine.

A hummingbird thought a man’s orange hat was a flower [x]

Such a cool flashlight! Everything should be designed like this!

I try to do this kind of design at work but it's easier when we aren't trying to sell stuff at a profit.

I wish we had a social/financial system where it made sense for all of our things to work this well.

It’s probably confirmation bias thinking that Boeing’s aircraft are falling out the sky all the time, but it sure feels like they are.

One of my toxic old man traits is that I do not like that "App" has replaced "Program." To me they are different creatures. App's natural habitat is phone, they are cuter and more streamlined but less customisable and more likely to show you ads. Program has bigger menus and lives on the computer. Are they friends? Certainly. Lovers? Perhaps! But to me they are not the same species.