Why yes, I do buckle all my own swashes!

Er, swash all my own buckles? Either way, I'm just happy to have finally made the fantastic pirate coat I've always wanted! 

I bought these red and gold damask curtains at a thrift store years ago and knew that I wanted to make them into some kind of fabulous floor length coat. I also knew that my skills then weren't quite up to the task, so I put them in my stash and waited. After making a shapeless coat that basically only had three pattern pieces in the Beginning Tailoring class at Cañada College last winter, I was ready to move onto something more complicated. I figured that this would be the perfect chance to have the guidance of an expert while making my dream coat. Unfortunately, coronavirus had other plans for the world, and it turned out that instead of working alongside classmates with an instructor at the giant cutting tables at the college, I was going to be googling a lot of things and essentially learning to tailor on my own. Thank goodness for YouTube (cue the Schuyler sisters singing "How lucky we are to be alive right now!"). 

I really appreciated that this class made us document every step of our work; usually I just sort of make things up as I go along and then attempt to recall how long it took and what I did. It's ironic that even though I'm a science teacher and meticulous details are supposed to be my thing, I tend to be more loosey-goosey in my sewing. Anyway, our professor required us to write up a list of steps, then document all the time we spent on each step. We also had to do a sketch (beforehand, so that we could check how well our final garment matched up...as opposed to my usual method, which is to make the garment first and then sketch what it looks like), write up a list of all materials and costs, and even record the sewing machine settings and thread type/color. 

The first step our professor required was a paper fitting, just to make sure there weren't any glaring issues with our patterns. Since mine was a frankenpattern of three different Big 4 patterns, I begrudgingly did this step (even though I thought it was silly in the previous tailoring class), then moved on quickly to the muslin. I know I'm very fortunate to be almost exactly the measurements of a Big 4 size 10 in the torso, so there wasn't much I needed to change. I made my typical pattern corrections: wider shoulders, longer sleeves, SBA, swayback adjustment, narrow back...but I wish I'd narrowed the waist and back a little more, since it's not as fitted as I would like, even though it is meant to be outerwear. 

We are required to make one hand-padstitched collar for this class. Normally we would get to see our professor demo this in class, but instead I watched Bernadette Banner's video tutorial featuring Royal Black Couture to learn how to do this. It took a little bit of doing to get used to the rhythm of all the diagonal stitches, and my stitches still aren't the neatest, but after steaming it I'm really pleased with how well it holds its shape. 

It's really incredible how much goes into making a structured coat or jacket. I used fusible Armo-Weft interfacing on all my fashion fabric pieces to add some body to the floppy curtain fabric, and this also helped prevent some of the fraying that this weave is prone to. In order to help the garment hang better and strengthen the back during movement, I added a back stay. And since this is a pirate coat, what better fabric to use than this (100% cotton, tightly woven and washed multiple times) map-print bed sheet? Secret treasure maps hidden in one's clothing for the win! In the front, I cut out a piece of horsehair canvas and basted on a couple layers of batting to make a chest piece. This fills in the hollow that can occur between the shoulder, arm, lapel, and bust area and helps the whole garment lie more smoothly. To help stabilize the edge of the lapel, I also hand-stitched 1/4" wide cotton twill tape butting up against the stitching line. In hindsight, I'm not sure that this was necessary since my lapel isn't cut on the bias (the way a typical blazer lapel would be), and the whole thing was topstitched anyway. 

I used to only set in sleeves with the two-rows-of-gathering-stitches method, but that never worked really well for me and I always got weird puckers. This time, I tried the method of gathering the sleeve cap with a piece of stretched-out fleece, and it worked beautifully! The thickness of the fleece keeps the fashion fabric from making actual puckers, and then once it's set in, you can just push the fleece into the sleeve cap to act as a sleeve head instead of having to sew one in by hand. SO NEAT. I love all-in-one steps. Gertie's video demonstrates the whole process here, but instead of using mohair or lambswool, I just used a strip of scrap polar fleece, which is obviously cheaper and easier to find. After setting in the sleeve, I also put in a handmade shoulder pad (just three layers of thin cotton batting basted together). I remember the first time our professor talked about shoulder pads, I was so skeptical; I just kept thinking of the massive 1980s shoulder pads. The nice thing about handmade ones, though, is you can use as many layers of batting as you want to make it thinner or thicker, and it really does help the whole garment hang more nicely. Consider me a shoulder pad convert!

For the skirt of the coat, I waffled a bit about whether I really wanted to make it floor-length. A floor-length half-circle skirted coat would definitely allow for the most dramatic flouncing and swanning about, but it would also be impractical and take forever to hem by hand. But then I realized that I had enough fabric to make it floor length, so in the interest of not leaving a bunch of unnecessary extra fabric in the stash, I decided to just go for the floor length version. To visually break up the expanse of red and gold fabric, I put some welt pockets with flaps in. The last time I made a pirate coat, my pocket flaps were fake, and I regret not having functional pockets. Not making the same mistake this time! Since I had a waist seam, I decided to go for another trick I learned from Bernadette Banner: I added a twill tape stay from the top of the pocket bag to the waist seam. This will help support the pocket and keep it from sagging when I put things in. 

The rest of the construction was pretty straightforward, if tedious. Lots of topstitching to help hold the velveteen facing, upper collar, cuffs, and pocket flaps in place, since I didn't want to press it too much, then all the hand sewing: I catch-stitched the hem of the skirt and sleeves, then slipstitched the lining to create a jump hem. 

 

I had originally entertained ideas of having the front lapel be "reversible," so that it could flip closed to be a double breasted coat, or stay buttoned back to show the velveteen facing. I even took a hand-sewn buttonhole class with that in mind, but in the end my samples were still too messy and the idea of doing twelve of them was just...no. Besides, I like the contrast of the red velveteen; without that showing, the front of the coat is just too much damask and the collar and cuffs look a little out of place. So rather than make ugly buttonholes, I just permanently sewed on the buttons. To close the coat, I just used a giant hook and eye. Joann's only carried white ones, so I used a combination of red Sharpie and brown fabric marker to color it dark red to (somewhat) match the fabric. 

Summary:

Pattern: I used the collar from Simplicity 2333, the cuffed sleeve from Butterick 6602, and the skirt from McCalls 6819, then frankenpatterned the last two together to make a shoulder-princess-seam bodice, that I then extended past the center front so that it could flip back to make the lapel. The slant welt pocket with a flap was modeled after the one in this very helpful Waffle Patterns tutorial, but just rotated to be more horizontal than vertical. 

Fabric: The main fashion fabric was curtains that I thrifted at least four years ago, a surprisingly nice 60/40 poly-cotton red and gold damask. Once I picked apart the seams, I ended up with three 40"x88" panels. The red cotton velveteen (I used about 1/3 yard) was from the college's free shelf, a place where students can pick up other people's destashed fabrics. The lining was two different secondhand sheets; the torso was a microfiber with a faint swirl pattern, and the skirt was a cotton sateen. 

Notions: Armo-Weft fusible interfacing from The Sewing Place, then the cotton twill tape, horsehair canvas, and metal buttons were all already in my stash. 

Total cost: $20 for the curtains + $4 for the sheet + $18 for the interfacing (but with lots leftover) + $6 for the patterns + $5 for the bulk bag of buttons ages ago + $3 for thread = $53 total. Of course, once you factor in the 57 hours, even if I paid myself a measly only-slightly-more-than-CA-minimum-wage $15/hr, this coat is worth almost $1000. And this is why bespoke clothing made at a living wage is so expensive. Good thing sewing is my superpower?

Would you make this again? No, because I don't need two pirate coats. TBH, I'm not sure I needed *one* pirate coat, but hey, it's 2020, treat yo'self. 

First worn: Just to take pictures, because we aren't going anywhere, since, you know, global pandemic. 

Final thoughts: When I think back to when I first started sewing, I was pretty much allergic to anything involving hand-sewing and would avoid it at all costs. Thankfully, I got over that, and now I actually enjoy the process of slowly and methodically catching mere threads at a time as I invisibly stitch hems. That, and the whole fussy tailoring process, was actually really fun and you can't argue with the results. I can see how people get addicted to tailoring and/or jacket-making. Unfortunately, I don't see myself indulging in this process too often, as I have too many demands on my time and projects on my bucket list to allow for such slow sewing. Still, I'm really glad to have finally checked off one of those projects on the list, as well as moved some fabrics out of the stash!

When I had Mr. Cation take pictures for me, I of course had to wear my over-the-top tricorn with the coat, since it's all trimmed in red and gold. Then, to my chagrin, he said that the hat+coat combo made me look just like Captain Morgan. I had no idea that he was even a thing, but once I got over the fact that I accidentally cosplayed a cheap rum mascot, I of course had to do a pose with my foot up on one of our barrel planters. 

Ease-in to Motherhood

Thanks for inviting me to be part of the conversation on sewing and motherhood, Erin!

Before SHB, I used to get slightly annoyed whenever one of the sewing bloggers on my feed reader would announce her pregnancy, because I knew that she would either 1) post much less frequently, or even disappear entirely, and/or 2) start sewing irrelevant-to-me items, either baby things or maternity/nursing garments. Oh pre-motherhood Cation, what a selfish, clueless sewing blogger you were! The minute you had SHB, you basically became all those things, even going so far as co-hosting a sewalong centered around sewing for small human beings! I can't remember the last time I sewed a non-costume garment for myself (although to be perfectly honest, I was such a prolific sewer before pregnancy that I really didn't need to keep sewing to keep myself clothed), and the last thirty things I've sewn have all been plushies for SHB. So yeah. But let's talk in more detail about how motherhood has changed my sewing.

As I'm sure is the case for many of you, sewing is a vital creative activity that keeps my brain active and my heart happy. In my early sewing years, I relished finding ways to use the crazy fabrics I was finding at thrift stores in the form of bedsheets, and making fit-and-flare dresses out of them became part of my identity: I was a quirky green Ms. Frizzle wannabe who wore her fandoms on her sleeve (literally), I knew what looked good on my body and had the time and means to dress it how I wanted. After the fashion-related insecurity and teasing of my pre-teen years, it was such a relief and release to be me and, as I got older, the more I realized I only needed and cared to please myself. Sewing was the vehicle to self-love for me, not only with my body but with my mind and talents.

And then I found out I was having SHB. Suddenly I wasn't a selfish seamstress anymore, and while I did still sew for myself, I had so much fun making cute things for my coming baby, too! Having a baby meant rediscovering my love for sewing non-garment items, as well as discovering new forms of sewing expression, such as quilting. I was excited and felt like new worlds were being opened to me.

Then I actually had SHB, and it was miserable. He was bad at sleeping (I wore him in the Ergo and bounced on a trampoline to get him to nap for the first six months of his life), I was tired beyond belief (hello, 9 PM bedtime in anticipation of waking up five times every night!), and when I had a moment to myself (rare, as we didn't have any regular babysitters and I nursed SHB until he was two), I was so brain-dead I couldn't make my mind work enough to go through the mental exercise of sewing. I started just sleeping or wasting time on Pinterest when I had free time, but was still confused about my ongoing grumpiness until I realized that I wasn't creating, and I missed and needed it. Talking to other creative moms (mostly sewing bloggers I met through here!) helped me realize that what I needed more than sleep was to Make Things Again. I don't remember who said it, but basically what I needed to do was at least one irreversible thing every day. So many of my life tasks were reversible (baby needs to eat again! dishes need to be washed again! toys need to be picked up again! papers need to be graded again!) that I felt like I was in the Red Queen's race, running and running just to stay in the same place (or actually fall behind, TBH).

Once I realized things needed to change, I made a plan to Get My Life Back. For me, this meant sleep-training SHB. I realize that that's a controversial decision in a lot of parenting circles (and I had my fair share of nights crying while he cried because I was afraid that I was damaging him forever by not going to him), but it was the best thing I could have done for us. It took several months (like I said, terrible sleeper), but once SHB was out of our bed and out of our room, I finally had the space (physically and mentally) to create again. Even if all I was making was simple items for him, it was enough to see concrete evidence that I had Done Something With My Day. Around the same time, I was hosting the SHB Sewalong with Mikhaela and Clio and just having other sewing moms to commiserate with helped me see the importance of community. As my social psych prof used to say in college, misery loves miserable company, and while we weren't necessarily miserable, I felt so much better knowing that I wasn't the only one trying to figure out how to manage a needy, demanding being while still being one's own person with hobbies and a changing body that needed to be clothed.

SHB finally started sleeping through the night at around a year, and since his 7:30-8 PM bedtime is fairly early, I get the whole rest of the evening to be an adult. Sometimes that's sewing, sometimes that's just catching up on adulting tasks, but it's glorious to know that my nights are my own again (especially since I'm a night owl...midnight bedtime means I get a few hours to myself). I'd say that around the 18 month mark was when I felt like I really had a handle on this whole motherhood-while-not-just-only-being-a-mother-I'm-my-own-person-too business, and it's only gotten better as SHB becomes more independent and verbal. Now, at almost three, SHB has enough of an attention span and his own interests that I can even sew during the day sometimes; of course, that's only if the items are for him...

If you let a toddler find out that Mommy can make unicorns, he's going to ask for a pink unicorn. If you tell him that you need to put all these fabric pieces together to make the unicorn, he'll try to help, and he'll surprisingly do a pretty good job. He will, however, ask every minute whether it's done yet. #surprisedbyhowpatientlyhewaitedthough #justhoveredovermyshoulderwatchingittakeshape #lookmommyitcanstandup #butmommywherestheeyes #notejetblackinthebackgroundeatingsomecarrotswhilewaitingforhismommytobesewn #slowtoymovement #likeslowfood #buthesnothangrysothisisgoingbetter #slowfoodistheworstfortoddlers #imsewingathing #raisingamaker #zactothefuture

A post shared by Cation Designs (@cationdesigns) on Jun 2, 2017 at 10:41am PDT

While I've mostly reclaimed my creative time, I'm still working on how to reclaim my style. All those fun sheet dresses I made (mostly) still fit before I got pregnant again, but they're really not practical as a parent of a toddler. I'm satisfied with living out my geekiness in cosplay instead of everyday life; I don't think quirky clothing is as central to my identity as creating is. I believe strongly enough in slow fashion to not sew when I don't technically need to, so I think this is one of the areas where I'm content to wait and see. I'll wait until I'm done nursing for good to see where my body settles, and then decide what kind of style suits me then.

***

Now that those I'm-so-tired-I-hate-my-life-why-did-I-decide-to-have-a-kid moments are a (somewhat) distant memory, I sometimes wonder why I'm subjecting myself to the horror of having another small human being; I think knowing that the newborn months are short will help me make it through to the toddler years, which I find much more enjoyable. I have more mom friends now, both online and IRL, which will hopefully make a difference when I'm in the worst of the sleep deprivation and demands of two small human beings. I'm hoping that since I'm more experienced now, both as a mom and as a person, I'll recognize sooner the importance of having my own time to create, and make an effort to make room for it. My self-care mantra in this past year has consisted of trying to remind myself of the truth of the airplane oxygen mask -- take care of yourself first so that you can take care of your child -- instead of succumbing to the lie that I'm being selfish by not giving of myself constantly. We'll see how it goes in a few weeks when SHB#2 arrives!

THIS.

The Secret Lives of Teachers

Now that I spend so many hours a day (and night) sitting around feeding SHB, I've had lots of time to read random articles on my phone (I would rather read actual books, but my local library has an abundance of giant hardbacks, and reading in the dark in the middle of the night doesn't work so well anyway), and I've been loving NPR's series on the secret lives of teachers. When I first got into sewing and costume-making, we had just moved to TCOCC and I was taking a year off of teaching, so those two parts of my life didn't intersect. When I started teaching again, at first I tried keeping those two parts of my life separate. Then I became friends with some of them on Facebook, got an Instagram account, students started following me, which led them to my blog here, and suddenly it became known that I made not only my own clothes (which they already knew about), but crazy costumes as well. Finally, I decided to just out with it and showed up to school last Halloween dressed as a firebender for our fiery hand demo. It was a little weird, because some of my costumes, while not NSFW, still show more skin than I would show at work, of course, but generally I don't mind my students knowing about this part of my life because I think it makes me seem cooler...um, I mean it helps them realize that teachers have a life outside of teaching.

A couple of weeks ago, the highlight of my short costuming career (can it be called a career if I don't make any money from it and only do it part time?) occurred. Lee Pace, the actor who plays Thranduil, tweeted my wacky cosplay from last year:

When a cosplay friend alerted me to this, I was in shock for a good while (Is that the real Lee Pace, and not just a fan account? Hmmm, Richard Armitage/Thorin replied, I guess it's real), then I was excited (The. Real. Thranduil. Saw my cosplay of him. And liked it enough to tweet it. I am, however briefly, Internet famous!!!), and then to my surprise, I got slightly depressed.

The last two months with SHB have been a learning experience, and there have been moments of joy, but there have also been a lot (dare I say more) of moments of frustration: why won't he stop crying, why won't he sleep for more than thirty minutes, why does he have to be held all day? I was expecting to be able to do my own thing during those legendary 1.5-2 hour naps that babies supposedly take, but it seems like they're just that -- legendary. And not in a Barney Stinson way, unless you count the part where I'm waiting for it to happen. It's been hard not to compare last year, when I put together a full-blown costume what felt like every two weeks, and got to inspire and teach students (who are capable of expressing their wants with real words!), to this year, when I didn't even get to dress up for Halloween, arguably a costumer's favorite holiday, and have only sewn some Christmas stockings and a couple of tops and bibs for SHB. Like I lamented to Mr. Cation, I feel like my days of doing cool things are over, and I'm just this boring zombie-type person who doesn't get dressed or out of the house most days, whose only function is to produce milk, only to have it all just spit up back over me. Sometimes I look back at my old blog posts, just to remind myself that I used to do things.

Now that SHB is a spit up monster, not unlike the Jurassic Park version of Dilophosaurus, he is going through bibs faster than our laundry schedule can handle. Solution? Make new ones when he needs them, from Mr. Cation's old t-shirts.
Man, it's a good thing he's so cute and charming when he needs to be. 

When that mournful feeling seizes me particularly hard, I have to remind myself that this is a passing phase, and one day I'll do cool things again. SHB will get bigger and more independent (and sleep better) and I'll have time to sew for myself again, and one day he'll see my costuming pictures and realize that Mommy has a secret life outside of mothering.

In the meantime, I've been slowly, ever so slowly, pulling together a costume for the last Hobbit movie, Battle of the Five Armies. I don't even know if I'll get to see it at the midnight showing, much less dress up for it in as grand of a costume as I'm envisioning, but I think I need to at least make the costume, just for my own pleasure.

The Geekiest Baby: Underwater Themed Art

I originally meant to have this post done in the beginning of August, but then we ended up moving into our new house. So I told myself I would finish it when we were done unpacking and decorating, because then I could show off the art in its proper place, but then the school year started. So then I decided to wait until I went on maternity leave, but wouldn't you know it, my last day of school was a Thursday and SHB arrived the following Monday...

Anyway, once we had decided on a nautical/marine theme for SHB, I decided I should acquire some appropriate wall decor. We went to Babies-R-Us and came across this gem:

$19.98?!?

Yeah, no. One look at this questionably overpriced mass-produced piece (that was nautical colors but not actually all nautical objects) and I realized it would be more economical (financially, but not time-investment-wise) and meaningful to make my own. I started with making little pen and color pencil drawings to fill up these IKEA frames that I'd had sitting around for six years:

I was honestly really afraid my baby wouldn't be cute, but thankfully this has proven to be true. 

This is a statement that I need to remind myself of (and attempt to live out) everyday around 6 pm when I still have one more hour to go before Mr. Cation gets home from work and SHB is being exceptionally fussy).

It felt so good to finally find a use for those frames, I got on a roll and pulled out three canvases that I'd been carting around from apartment to apartment for *gasp* thirteen years (and as many moves!). I had originally bought them at the UCSD bookstore my freshmen year of college, for the purpose of making dorm-room decor, and now that I've finally used them, I feel justified in hoarding craft supplies because they might get used one day no longer feel guilty about them hanging out in various closets, taking up space. Even better, I used acrylic paints that I've had for ten years to paint them.

I love a good whale pun. 

Let's count the marine animals!

A classic alphabet painting, from anemone to zooplankton.

Some close-ups of the alphabet and number pieces:

Everyone's who's come by has tried to guess what each of the letters stand for. While some, like J is for jellyfish, are pretty obvious, others, like B, C, and I have been stumpers. 

Q is also commonly missed. My favorite animal is the narwhal. 

I am especially proud of how my five nudibranchs turned out!

I must confess, I borrowed heavily from these art pieces in making mine, which is why I don't feel comfortable selling prints, although people have asked. But I feel totally comfortable using stolen ideas to decorate SHB's room! I had so much fun painting these, even though they took dozens of hours. Thankfully, I painted them in the summer, when I had plenty of time. It was admittedly a bit of a challenge, though, working around my belly at the time (it made it difficult to bend over the canvas, and I don't have an easel). But worth the trouble, because look how nice they look hanging over the diaper changing station!

The garland is made by stitching together paint chips. Also props to IKEA for making a non-pink cat changing pad cover!

Two days before SHB arrived, during the one weekend of baby-free maternity leave I had, I was seized with another fit of craft supply purging, and made some faux taxidermy pieces to go with a couple of wood plaques that I'd been saving for eleven years (goodness, these numbers are just embarrassing). I started with a narwhal:

It was so ridiculously cute that I had to go for the other end of the spectrum and make everyone's favorite hideous creature, the much-maligned blobfish:

Both were made from fleece scraps and stuffed with polyfil, then hot-glued onto painted wooden plaques. They made a nice addition to the drawings and a painting that my sister made for SHB:

The last craft-bust was this door hanger:

So there you have it -- the geekiest baby series, marine edition, is now (finally) complete! However, the nice thing about waiting this long to blog these pieces is that I can actually report on how SHB feels about it. At first, the paintings above his changing table were more entertainment for me as I waited for SHB to do his business (he's a fan of waiting until I change him before pooping into the fresh diaper, so I've taken to standing around the changing table fanning his butt with the old diaper in hopes of not "wasting" another diaper...oh, the ridiculous things parents are quickly reduced to doing!). Lately, though, his vision and attention span have been getting better and he is absolutely enamored with (I imagine) the bright colors and interesting shapes above him, and he stares at the paintings for long (for a baby) periods of time.

Look at that face of intense concentration! Also, note that somebody at the bib factory got bored and never finished embroidering the second N in dinner on his bib. 

Some of you have asked how Walnut has been doing with SHB. Generally he pretends that SHB doesn't exist, but occasionally he will surprise us by being interested, usually during the most inopportune moments, like in the middle of dealing with a diaper change or spit up of epic proportions. He also likes sitting on me when I feed SHB in the middle of the night, which is simultaneously sweet and slightly annoying.  

The paintings, then, are an unequivocal success. As for the taxidermy, they're currently located behind his swing, so he can't see them. Perhaps that's for the best, though, since Mr. Cation contends that the blobfish would give anybody nightmares.

IT'S WATCHING YOU.