The Sewing Sphere
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A gripe about modern fashion

Does anyone under 30 wear anything but a sports bra these days?? I'm so tired of sewing for girls who don't wear anything but stretchy loungewear because their measurements never make sense!

Janet and I are going to be building 10 strapless gowns for a local debutant event, and I got all the measurements (& photos) a few days ago. I made the mistake of putting them all in a spreadsheet last night before bed so I could see how many sizes I might need to start with for a base pattern.

So of course, the wacky sports bra distortions were all my brain could focus on correcting for when I was trying to go to sleep. Four of the girls have overbust measurements that are bigger than their full bust measurements. Arg. Stupid annoying sports bras!

Luckily, seven girls are nearly the same size and very close to my measurements. So this morning, I think I have been able to extrapolate pretty accurate bra sizes for all of them after measuring myself in my normal bra, no bra, and in a built-in bra tank top. (In the tank, I get a one inch larger overbust compared to full bust too.) But good grief, it shouldn't be this hard!

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Studio video tour!

I spent the day priming things for paint and then I remembered to shoot a quick video. #SewingStudioBuild

00:03:06
Paint!

I started cutting all the edges while Janet was away yesterday morning. When she got back after lunch, she pulled out a roller and started filling in. I'll put a pic below in the comments. #SewingStudioBuild

00:02:15
Time-lapse floor install (part 2)

We broke for lunch and then came back with a portal ac unit plugged in to an extention cord from the house. Can't wait until they finished hooking up all the electrical and we have the mini split cooling the room for us - it was stupid humid today! #SewingStudioBuild

00:03:11
Pretty piles

Nice slow Saturday moving triangles from one pile to another after voting this morning. I have pumpkin pies to make later for tomorrow's church potluck (Octoberfest/Reformation day celebration).

#epp

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October 24, 2026

Bernadette has a "tips for buying fabric online" vid (and a previous vid on fabric weights from last week) up. The excel sheet she's put up looks useful.

IME - you get what you pay for. Every time I've bought a "bargain" fabric online I have regretted it.

I went drooling online yday and now I feel a need to go to BBlacks&Son in person but I will need a bodyguard. -sigh- They have (or, at least they used to have) a lot of fabrics that don't get on their website. Yummy, historic store... anyway, I digress.

October 23, 2026

I’m trying to figure out if I should do something to jazz up this very grandpa-looking cardigan I’m currently sewing. Maybe this was the wrong fabric to do a tie front/shawl collar with! But since this fabric came from my last year’s birthday mystery bundle, I want to try to see this through. The options I’ve played with so far are some kind of embellishment from my huge vintage button stash (I think the white ones are too ivory-yellow tone to work, but the darker ones could be interesting if I can figure out a better configuration), or trim (picture 3), or some kind of embroidery or scrap denim flowers or something? (no sample). Or I could take the collar off entirely? I need to figure out the edge finishing either way, because I forgot to cut the facing pieces (thanks Big 4) and I’m piecing together scraps to see what I can come up with. I also had to piece the collar and back it with a piece of jersey because I really did not have enough yardage to make anything useful to ...

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