T-shirt

I finally finished a sewing project, and it didn't turn out completely lopsided or otherwise messed up! As my first few sewing projects have been humbling experiences, I've scaled back my immediate sewing goals quite a bit. The result is pictured below. It is a t-shirt for my boyfriend. I had (and still have most of) an old bed set made of a jersey 50/50 cotton/polyester blend. I used a pillowcase from the set for the front and back pieces of the shirt. The pattern was just eyeballed and loosely marked with tape based on a t-shirt from his wardrobe. I did a simple kind of hem style, and made it 'inside-out' to add some visual flair (after I sewed it, I carefully clipped the edge of the fabric to give it a clean, even look). Tomorrow I'm taking the machine apart again to do the reverse-engineering project I described in the previous post. We'll see how that goes...I'm feeling a little hopeful.

Sewing and Sewing Machines

While cleaning the apartment I was reminded of my collection of fabrics and scraps that were just sitting in the closet gathering dust. So I decided to revisit sewing.

I find sewing to be a uniquely frustrating hobby. This time around, I spent hours on a hand-drafted, perfectly functional t-shirt. From a technical perspective I should have been pleased--the garment was the right size, it was symmetric, and the stitching was neat enough. But unfortunately the aesthetic was...very ugly. The fabric was a heavyweight stretchy khaki colored cotton blend from an old xxl men's polo shirt, which sported a small bleach stain. The goal was to reuse it to make a large sized men's t-shirt. Somehow I managed to make it into a large sized women's t-shirt though, with a tapered waist and boat neck...a very large, weighty, khaki colored, women's t-shirt with a bleach stained, sized for my boyfriend. I threw it away and then threw a small tantrum. Sewing just...it has that effect on me. I hate it.

But hating even more the idea of being bested by this infernal craft, or perhaps just a glutton for punishment, I decided to revisit the men's t-shirt idea again this morning, this time using a more traditional fabric choice (gray thin jersey knit cotton blend from an old full-sized bedsheet set). Everything looked right, since I wasn't cutting any corners, well except maybe one corner was cut...The use of cheap thread.

Sometime in the past I acquired a lot of cheap thread that pills up and snags easily. But it was the closest color to the project fabric and I wanted to use it and get rid of it (not being one to waste). Unsurprisingly the thing snagged in the mechanism, causing the machine to stall and then default into error mode (nice feature on digital machines by the way, to prevent them from ripping themselves apart). The end result of this was to break the automatic needle threader though.

This was as good an excuse as any, I figured, to open the machine up and clean it and learn about it and revisit my project idea to try and interface with it so that I can upload custom stitches to it via USB...the good news is that the motherboard seems to sport a 4 pin serial pinout! So now the t-shirt sits forgotten, pins in place along the seams, while the machine sits in two parts on the table so that I can poke at it with a multimeter and try to get a USB-to-serial interface between it and my computer.

Katniss the cat of course had to inspect the work in progress.

Where are our historical dressmaking archives and archivists?

Let me start off my saying that I'm not a lawyer. I feel that this should be obvious, and that only a statement of the opposite would constitute a reason to believe otherwise. But I've been at the butt-end of our overly litigious American society's caprice before, and now I'm wont to take this and any potential legal threat somewhat more seriously. So to reiterate, I am not lawyer, and don't take what I say as legal advice.
Continuing...

Where are the internet's historical dressmaking archives and archivists? Surely, many dressmaking patterns and instructionals have entered public domain by now, and ought to be digitized and vectorized.

My verdict? While there are some freely distributed scans out there, available in low or medium resolution bitmap format files, the offerings are few. There is no centralization or organized volunteer effort to make them into vector graphics. Before I started my search, I think I half expected we'd be at the point of open source software, freely distributed, that used a form of pattern file with the addition of use measurements to generate printable, routable pattern graphics. I didn't find any such resources.

But what I did find was a closed-source community, slow to take advantage of technology, confused about copyright law and prone to spreading misinformation, that ultimately preferred hoarding designs to sharing designs. Most notably, I found a prevalent belief that a published and copyrighted pattern cannot be used to make garments for sale without explicit permissions or licensing agreements.

That's just not true. Copyright of a pattern extends to the pattern representation itself, not the concept of the pattern. This handout from copyright.gov explains it very clearly. "Copyright protection is therefore not available for ideas or procedures for doing, making, or building things; scientific or technical methods or discoveries; business operations or procedures; mathematical principles; formulas or algorithms; or any other concept, process, or method of operation." Also,  "Copyright protection extends to a description, explanation, or illustration of an idea or system, assuming that the requirements of copyright law are met. Copyright in such a case protects the particular literary or pictorial expression chosen by the author. But it gives the copyright owner no exclusive rights in the idea, method, or system involved."

To understand how copyright relates specifically to fashion and garment making, the concepts of useful articles and separability are key. It turns out that those in high fashion, following in the steps of boat hull designers, would like to further protect their designs, but have not successfully done so yet. Even if the legislation they seek does pass eventually, that copyright would only cover a term of three years.

In summary, the whole idea that a dressmaking pattern is by default restricted to "personal home use" is standing on some very tenuous legal legs. Of course, if you have the time and money you can stretch the limits on what can you can register and legally defend as a design patent or trademark.

As part of the more general discussion about copyright law in the United States, I'd like to point your attention towards the Copyright Term Extension Act and 'the concept of 'forever less one day.' So mark your calendars for January 1, 2019 and expect a full show of force.

Laser-cut Shirt (aka first sewing machine project)

I have started making shirts. The process involves laser cutting pieces and assembling them with my new sewing machine.

Step 1: Choosing a machine

• I learned on an Emerald 116 Husqvarna Viking, an 'analog machine'
• The foot pedal sits inline with the power cord, controlling motor power directly
• Knobs control the stitch type, width, length
• The most widely/highly reviewed machine on Amazon is the Brother CS600i, a 'digital machine'
• (1,770 reviews averaging 4.4 stars at time of writing)
• LCD display is very convenient for choosing stitches, lots of stitches to choose from
• Will not allow 'mistakes' like trying to stitch with the presser foot up
• Foot pedal connects optionally via standard 3mm audio-type connector and port
• Competitively priced. I paid $155 for it, but I see it has dropped to $140 at time of writing

My one suggestion for improvement of the machine is the addition of a USB port and the option for users to upload new custom designed stitches onto the machine. That would be so cool.

Step 2: Fabrics
JoAnn's had some knit stuff appropriate for clothing, but not much. I have to find a better supplier for the next round.

Step 3: Designs
I used my point and shoot to take pictures of the front and backs of some of my favorite shirts. Then I went in with Corel Draw and created designs (cloning the left hand side from the right for symmetry). Finally I added outer contours for seam allowance and scaled the whole thing appropriately. I did an okay job but should have left a larger seam allowance.

Step 4: Cutting pieces on the laser cutter
On very low power, I cut all the parts out for the shirt using the files I created in Step 3. Because of the laser cutter bed size, I had to separate the shirt into 32" by 18" pieces. Therefore my favorite theme for this type of design is 'colorblock shirts,' though this shirt was not one of those.

Step 5: Sewing
This was by far the most difficult and time consuming step, of course. My first trial ended up wearable but definitely could use improvement. Here's a photo of the shirt and the design (the white thing is just an undershirt that I already had). Again, once I get a license for my Corel Draw I will clean up the files and export PDF versions for sharing.