Mustard Linen Jumpsuit and Windowpane Check Duster
















Spotted Shelby Romper











A Short Story

This blog post is coming to you from my personal queerantine! Times are pretty terrifying and stressful and unprecedented for many of us who have had the privilege of living lives absent of large-scale chaos such as what the Coronavirus has introduced, but I have witnessed and experienced such profound moments of beauty during this time that I thankfully have been able to stay more optimistic than panicked. This weekend Claire and I had a google hangout with some of our NYC friends over dinner, and it was so lovely to see their faces- it added a sense of normalcy to my life that was desperately needed. We chatted about how we are all coping, how our families are doing, what our new normals looked like. I shared that I had just bought a huge packet of vegetable seeds to plant, the best case scenario being that gardening would give me something productive to do during isolation, the worst being that it would provide sustenance in the (hopefully unlikely) event that we would need better access to fresh food in the coming months. My friend Geri shared that she had just purchased gas masks. It was in that moment that I realized how much of an advantage we had over so many people, how much our environment was affecting our ability to feel optimistic and hopeful. We have sun, warm, breezy weather, plenty of outdoor space, a walkable neighborhood, lots of rooms, plants, flowers, more activities than one person could get through in a month. I love our home so much, but I’ve always thought of it as modest. Right now, though? It feels like a paradise.

Anyways, it got me thinking about how this pandemic has allowed so many of us to be vulnerable to each other in ways we just don’t normally practice. Sharing our fears and our worries to feel less alone, being honest about where we came from and where we want to be once we find ourselves on the other side, creating and inspiring one another and being soft to strangers and friends during the bleakest moments of our days. It’s one of the bright spots I’ve found, feeling so connected to people even though I am more isolated from them than I have ever been. In that spirit, I want to share a short story I wrote a while back. I wrote it to workshop in my writer’s group, the first I have ever been a part of. As someone who is constantly creating, I am embarrassed to say that sharing my fiction writing is REALLY difficult. It feels personal in a way that none of my other artistic endeavors do. I have been writing essays for years, but fiction holds this really strange, sacred space deep inside me, and sharing my work is literally one of the most uncomfortable things I have ever done. Which is why it feels kind of important now. In my writer’s group (which has been a beautiful experience for me because I am lifted up by some of the smartest, most talented and compassionate women I have ever known), one of the members remarked that my story was emblematic of a heroine’s journey, which really resonated with me. Because it’s not a big story, it’s very small, very intimate. But maybe that’s what we need to be reminded of right now, that sometimes saving ourselves is just as powerful as saving the world. Sometimes we are the world. It’s okay to show up for ourselves.

Below is my short story, if you feel so inclined to read it (and a drawing kind of inspired by it). Thanks for being here. I am wishing you all peace, and hope! And wishing you as many moments of joy as you can find or create yourselves!


She called them “panicked attacks” when she was a little girl, when her mom used to have them. As a kid she didn’t really understand what panic was as a singular thing, where it came from, what it meant. But she knew exactly what it looked like, the rolling chaos it brought, a wave too big for the shore. A panicked attack wasn’t just any ordinary, run-of-the-mill bout of anxiety; a panicked attack arrived with problems of it’s own.

The girl sat in her parked car in this foreign neighborhood, staring out her smudged front window, not actually seeing anything on the other side of it. She counted silently, backwards at first, and when she lost track of where she was, she counted forwards, and when when she lost track again, she just made up numbers.

“Two thousand, three hundred seventy-eight.”

Always in her head as the words, never the shapes.

“Four hundred thirty-two. Twenty-seven thousand, sixteen. One million, sixty seven hundred, thirty-one thous-.” She paused. She wasn’t good at naming 9-digit numbers. She started over.

“One million, sixty seven thousand, three hundred forty three.”

As she named numbers she made sure not to grip the steering wheel too tightly because she had read in a magazine (or maybe it was on twitter?), that if you clenched your muscles when you were about to be attacked by something panicked, your body would hang on to that fear and never release it, and you would be destined to live with negative energy churning through the strands of your muscles forever, and so would your babies, and so would their babies. (Wait, maybe it had been her horoscope). She worked her fingers gently, rhythmically over the molded bumps on the back of the steering wheel. The little dips were notches for your fingers to rest inside, as if to make sure the driver knew exactly where their hands were supposed to fit when operating the vehicle. As if the driver’s hands could go anywhere else while operating the vehicle.

She traced each of the bumps around the wheel and went back to counting. There were thirty-two of them.

She traced them out again. Thirty-three?

She traced them out again. No, thirty-two.


She traced then out again. Coughed.

Okay, thirty-two.

But how many dips in between the bumps?

Her eyes were getting dry from staring through the window into the bright outside, so she shut them tight. Took a deep breath. Took five more deep breaths. Focused on keeping her fingers relaxed while ignoring her taught shoulders pulled up her to her ears and her toes clenched into little balls under the roof of her Keds and her stone stomach struggling to make room for all the breath she was forcing in and out of it. She told herself she felt better. She wasn’t really sure if she knew what “better” felt like but she figured that if it wasn’t this, she could be sitting in her car until it turned dark. Maybe until it turned dark and then light again. She was in a dip between two bumps and if she didn’t climb out of it now, she wouldn’t manage to do what she had come here to do.

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Out of her car and squinting in the bright sun, she watched a middle-aged man with too many balled up plastic bags stuffed under his arms cross the street towards the peach colored house on the corner, number Fifty-Seven Sixty-Seven Oakley. She had memorized the house number last night but she pulled out her phone anyways, unable to stop herself from double-checking the address that she had already double-checked seven times before she left her apartment. What is double checking called when you do it more than twice?

“Double…triple…quadruple…” she muttered to herself, following in the man’s footsteps down the tree-lined sidewalk. “…quintuple…” she mouthed. She pulled her canvas tote tight against her body, then loosened her grip just as quickly, paid attention to her exiting breath (no negative energy). The thing is, she had never been to an estate sale before. And when she was in a new place, real or imagined, and she didn’t know what she was supposed to do there, what it was going to look like, how she was supposed to operate, she just…felt wrong. Too many possibilities to sort through and make sense of. Too many variables to prepare for. Not good. No bueno. No thank you.

Wait, what came next? Was six times of something the one that started with ‘sex’? Or was it seven times of something? She knew that if she walked fast enough she could enter the house right behind the man with the bags and learn how to be at an estate sale by watching him (he looked like he knew what he was doing). But she couldn’t remember if ‘sextuple’ meant six of the same thing, or seven.

Two bags fell out from under the man’s arm. He bent to pick them up, but then another one fell out of his back pocket, and then four more fell from under his other arm. Maybe he didn’t know what he was doing. He snatched all the bags up, walking a bit more slowly towards the house to keep hold of them all, and at this point she could have easily caught up with him and followed at a respectful distance, but instead she slowed herself to pull out her phone from the very bottom of her bag, open the safari app, and type into the search bar “what next after quintuple”. She clicked the top result. Sextuple for six, google said. Septuple for seven. Octuple. She had learned all these a long time ago but had forgotten most of them, so she kept reading. Nonuple. Decuple. She rehearsed the words in her head, tried to commit them to memory. She glanced up just in time to see the man gently closing the front door of Fifty-Seven Sixty-Seven behind him, one of his dropped plastic bags doing a slow motion bounce across the overgrown lawn.

“Goddamnit” she groaned, marching across the walkway towards the three concrete steps leading up to the house’s tiny peach porch. At the front door she paused. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to ring the doorbell, knock, or just walk in. She cursed herself again. She hadn’t paid attention to what Plastic Bag Man had done because she just had to know what ten of something was called. She was right on the verge of starting what had the potential to be a very time consuming spiral of self-aggrandizement when she heard a car door slam behind her and turned to see a spritely older lady hop out of her Range Rover, open her trunk, and start pulling out cardboard boxes. If she waited any longer to go inside the house, the white-haired lady would be on the porch in no time, probably asking her questions, trying to make conversation. She felt her stomach roll. No bueno. The girl pressed her palm to the doorbell, then turned the knob with one hand while pounding on the door with the other.

Three’s a charm.

When she had first entered the house, the darkness, the coolness of the space, had stopped her in her tracks. She shut her eyes tight and waited for the wave of wooze to drip from her head and settle into her, yes, still clenched toes, where it usually resided, waiting to rise up again whenever she needed to be reminded that she was indeed a living thing. Her breathing steadied and she opened her eyes right as a clipboard swiped past her face, a mash of words trailing over the shoulder of the person holding it: “welcome-let-me-know-if-you-need-anything-sorry-the-velvet-couch-is-already-sold”. There were, in fact, many general things she needed at any given time. She would not be letting the person behind the clipboard know what they were.

The shadow of the space started to lift as her eyes adjusted and she realized she was in a living room, an older person’s living room by the look of the purple-ish shag rug and dusty brocade drapes towering in front of too-small windows. Clear plastic covered what was left of the furniture and she didn’t have to touch it to know it was sticky. She had once begged her mom to take her to the hospital, convinced she had ripped off the skin of her legs after spending three hours in the dead of summer on her grandma’s plastic covered couch watching a Soul Train marathon (her mom was going to take her but grandma said “uh uh we ain’t doin’ no such thing” and gave her ice cream instead). The space was awfully dated but the taste wasn’t exactly bad- everything looked well preserved, expensive. Not very crafty, though? She scanned the room, then peered down the hall looking for makes. A quilt, maybe? A framed cross stitch? A crocheted throw in too many shades of clashing acrylic orange? Nope, nada. The living room was littered with lots of things, but nothing seemed handmade: porcelain table lamp, albums, a mid-century stereo system and a collection of battery-operated radios from what looked like every decade of the past century. A vintage storage trunk in pristine condition that she could probably have fit her whole body inside of. Dozens of framed canvases were propped up against the walls, mostly still lifes, some portraits, all creepy, a perimeter of angles rising from the cushiony carpet. Did the person who used to own this house paint all these? Did a painting count as something ‘handmade’? Technically that seemed like a fair description, but it also seemed weird somehow. She had always hated the fact that painting was considered a practice of art while needlework was considered a practice of leisure. What was the difference if you used your hands for both?

She walked towards one of the smaller paintings that leaned against the couch, sliding between an armchair and a folding card table covered in ornate silverware. She knew it wasn’t physically possible to squeeze in her butt, but she tried to make it smaller anyways, inching slowly past the furniture so that no part of her body would have to touch it. Crouching down low to the carpet, she strained her eyes to see the painting better: a bowl of shiny fruit spilling onto a table, a glass of juice or wine, a spoon holding some pomegranate seeds. It wasn’t a particularly moving painting, but it was very detailed and she could tell what everything was supposed to be. ‘Robert H. Woods’ was the name carefully, legibly painted in white at the bottom of the canvas. ‘Robert’, she said quietly to herself. Maybe that was the difference between painting and needlecraft: men. She stood up and scooted again down the tight alleyway of card table and couch, immediately noticing that the antique spoons on the tea-colored tablecloth were identical to the one in the painting. She instinctively grabbed one and exited the room through the kitchen, floating past a bookcase of encyclopedias and old maps, eyes peeled for her prize.

It was waiting for her immediately when she opened the heavy wooden door next to the bathroom and climbed down the creaking stairs to the basement. One bulb with a long metal chain to click it on and off dangled from a wood beam in the middle of the room, and all around the tiny circle of light loomed the shadows of sweaters. There were dozens and dozens of them, hung up on wire hangers snagged onto the frames of doorways, hooked over knobs and curtain rods, clenched onto window sills, metal scrawls etched deep into the peeling paint of the concrete. She wondered if all these sweaters had been knit by hand. She shook her head. No way. There were more sweaters here than anyone could have knitted in two lifetimes. They dripped from the ceiling and the walls, the curved edges of the hangers pulling on the stitches at the shoulders, arms too long for the bodies reaching grotesquely towards the floor. Gravity thinned out the Fair Isle, distorted the tiny shapes and flowers and patterns stamped across the rows; the collars sagged so much they looked like U’s instead of O’s. She felt her breath catch. Who would do this? Anyone with a bit of sense knew not to hang up wool garments for any length of time if you wanted them to keep their shape. She knew that yarn, like skin, grew. You left them stretched out like this and the stitches got weaker, got pulled out of shape, were impossible to block back into their original dimensions, were destined for death. This basement was a goddamn sweater graveyard. She let her toes clench up.

It wasn’t until she stepped off the last step, walked further into the basement, past the bookcase that had been relieved of it’s titles and crammed instead with vintage Disney glassware, that she realized the entire room was carpeted in shadowy stacks of more sweaters. There were a few skeins of yarn hovering in the corners, some plastic tupperware of pipe cleaners and fabric remnants and rick rack, but mostly it was just sweaters. They were everywhere: piled up on the plaid couch, stacked on top of the wooden crate, leaning against the rusty wheels of a road bike, smooshed inside an empty fish tank. A few looked small enough for kids but they were mostly adult sizes- stripes, cables, tweed yarn, thick’n’thin yarn, lace weight. It was hard to breathe in this room, all the fuzzy fibers from the wool clinging to the air. Something rough suddenly grazed the girl’s cheek and she spun around, eyes wide. A sleeve cuff dangled in the air, peeking out of a cluster of wool torsos that hung suspended from a beam in the low ceiling. She grabbed the sleeve and leaned in closer, scrutinizing the stitches in the dim light. Fingers have a way of working yarn into knits and purls that can’t be duplicated by machine, the oil of skin plumping all of the fibers up, giving them life. She grabbed another sleeve hanging on her right, reached for a waistband that hovered on her left, eyed the thick two by two ribbing, found a single end of yarn woven into the backs of the stitches.

These were all hand knitted.

No. Way.

The original sweater that had attacked her was a deep, royal blue all over, save for the mint green bow that was woven onto the front, it’s ties tucking under the arms to the back. Stockinette with intarsia, she noted, one of the simpler ways to create an image in a knitted garment, and, guessing from the over-sized fit and slouchy raglan seams, made in the 80’s. The sweater should have been ugly- blue and green was a weird color combination by most people’s standards, and the bow was a bit much, but…there was something about it that she liked. It looked like winter. She got on her tip toes, gently lifted the hanger from it’s hook in the ceiling, and examined it more closely, tsk-tsking at the peaked spots of stitching bubbled up at the top of each shoulder. ‘Who would do this??’ she thought again. She saw a couple of moth holes on one sleeve, a bit of unraveling at the collar, but they were only tiny bits of bad; the yarn was a great quality, a super soft merino, or maybe even a cashmere blend? As she carefully unhooked the cold hanger from the sweater, she glimpsed it’s insides and felt a thrill at the sight of all those purls stacked next to each other, row by row by row, a parade of tiny, even nooses at the necks of each stitch.

She stood silent, alone in the quiet chaos of wool, holding the sweater. She had come to the estate sale to rifle through some vintage skeins of yarn, maybe pick up a couple pairs of needles that were in good condition. But she felt she had just stumbled across exactly what she was looking for, though she wasn’t sure why.

She held the sweater up against her body and swayed back and forth in the sweater graveyard. The girl had never actually knitted a sweater before; she told the knitting friends she had made online that sweaters were beyond her expertise, but that obviously wasn’t true. In the three years since she had taught herself, she had knit dozens upon dozens of scarves, hats, dolls, each project built with a more intricate stitch pattern than the last as her fingers became more adept at maneuvering hard metal with soft skein. She got very good very quickly, graduating to gloves (both fingerless and closed) on double-pointed needles with fingering weight yarn, thick square pot holders with the outlines of tiny cows grazing across the edges, lacy shawls, more complicated hats with poofy pom-poms than she cared to keep track of (but of course she did: she had made twelve). She gave most of her makes away to family, sometimes donated them to the thrift shop downtown, but the truth was that she had been ready for a while to make a sweater for herself, she just hadn’t been ready to be bad at it. She didn’t like learning curves, hated the long transition between starting something and owning it. She probably would have never even tried knitting if an important person hadn’t told her that it might help curb anxiety. Her mom had hated the idea, had said “who could sit still long enough for all that?!” so of course she took it up. The suggestion had come at a time in her life when she didn’t have a lot of space to say to no to things that might make living easier. So she reluctantly put

  • Learn To Knit

on one of her many to-do lists, which was followed in quick succession by

  • Learn To Bind Off
  • Learn To Use Circular Needles
  • Learn to Knit In The Round
  • Learn To Read a Knitting Pattern
  • Learn To Knit German Short Rows
  • Learn To Knit With A Double Strand of Yarn
  • Learn to Knit On DPNs

and so on and so on.

She had been waiting to put a thin, even line of ink through

  • Knit A Sweater

for about five months now, theoretically spending all that time counting backwards from about two million. And here she was now, in the middle of a home filled with subpar artwork by a Mr. Robert H. Woods, at one.

“Jesus Christ Look At All These Sweaters!” screeched a high pitched voice, and the girl instinctively threw her hand to her mouth to clamp it shut, fearing she had actually vocalized what had been running through her mind since she had first descended the stairs. No, not her own voice- the voice of the woman from outside. White Hair Lady smashed one of her cardboard boxes down on top of a clear patch of polyester couch cushion and started fingering the folds of a knot of sweaters at her feet. The woman caught the girl’s eye and brightened. “D’ya see this?!” she yelled, brandishing a delicate sleeve in her direction. “Look At All These Sweaters!”  White Hair Lady kept staring at her as if waiting for an explanation, but the girl couldn’t, wouldn’t give her one.

Hours later, she is sitting in her bedroom, twinkle lights plugged in, cross legged on the floor at the foot of her bed. The music trickling from her phone is turned down too low to really tell what’s playing, but it’s loud enough for her to feel like she isn’t by herself. She takes a tiny pair of silver plated scissors, holds her breath, and snips into one of the bottom-most stitches of the ribbed waistband. This part she knew would be tricky, pulling the yarn apart from the row where the sweater had been bound off. It catches every six stitches or so, knotting up on itself, keeping the length of growth to a slow crawl, making her stop to squint at the tiny fibers rolled all together in a tiny cushiony glob. But once the bottommost row is unraveled, her fingers speed through the body, stitches zipping away from the grip of it’s mass, miles and miles of zig zagged stretches of yarn piling up at her knees.

It gets tricky again when she gets to the bottom edge of the bow because now she has another color of yarn to contend with, to carefully separate from it’s braid, but she gets through it, manages to not break the continuous flow of yarn any more than she has to. Bits of fuzz and debris and the ache of whatever was happening in the 80’s flies around the room, settling in her hair, on her eyelashes, making her sneeze. Part of her had wanted to go very, very slowly, keeping count of every single stitch she unraveled from the old sweater, to know exactly how many stitches she has to work with for the new sweater that she will make out of this untangled yarn. But she knows that this is too, too many steps backwards. Uh-uh, nope. It wasn’t too long ago that she had made a promise to herself (in front of someone else, for accountability, even though it was hard, and even though she hated it), that she would no longer let her brain soothe itself in a way that might put her body in trouble. The kind of trouble that not drinking or eating or sleeping or peeing can cause when the person wearing the body is occupied with performing a task that might take hours to complete. Or days. Weeks. No bueno.

So she is going fast, she speeds through the rows, she rips them out with steady resolve, only pausing to undo a knot, or to start folding a new skein of yarn. She doesn’t even have time to count all the individual stitches.


She’s still sort of like, loosely keeping track. Just of the number of rows she has unraveled. She could probably do the math and figure out a very approximate figure for how many stitches comprised this beast of a sweater. But she doesn’t have to know, or need to know. She just likes to know. She likes to know as many things as possible.

As the sweater shrinks down, invisibles itself to nothing more than a chunky necklace of stitches, her excitement rises and collects in her fingertips like butterflies, itching to get started, even though it’s not time yet. Having touched every single stitch on the sweater, she has a good feel for the yarn, can tell that it will glide off her metal needles with ease, won’t clump too much, will slip into a wall of tiny, even loops while her fingers dance above them, coaxing them together, pushing them apart, through the back loop (TBL) to rib, through the front loop (TFL) for stockinette, gently scooting each one down and off the needle so she can get to all the stitches behind it, the ones her fingers haven’t choreographed yet.

In the bathroom, a sea of deep blue with spots of green is pooled inside the tub, tiny filaments like cactus needles poking through the surface of the water. She has painstakingly wrapped the miles of yarn into many large, thick loops, then tied little pieces of string around them to keep the strands from getting tangled on itself when she puts it in the bath. The cool water soaks through the strands, irons out the kinks that someone’s hands and needles folded into them so many years ago, loosens all the leftover dirt and grief that have been mashed into the grooves of what was once a piece of art.

After exactly forty minutes in the bath, she pulls out the stopper in the tub and watches, listens as all the water glugs out. The yarn, almost black with water, smells heavy of wet dog, so she cracks open the window above the sink. Tip toeing to the hall closet, her feet leaving faint prints on the wood floor, she finds six empty hangers and floats back to the bathroom, the breeze from the outside already thinning out the air. She lays the soaked loops across the hangers, places them all around the inside of the tub, on the shower head, the towel hook, the soap dispenser. For a moment it sounds like it’s raining in the bathroom, the yarn dripping too many rhythms at once, a tiny but determined applause. She remembers when she first started knitting, remembers learning the difference between knits and purls; a knit has a loop that wraps around it like a necktie, and a purl has a loop that wraps around it like a noose. That’s how you tell them apart. But really, the back side of a purl is just a knit, and the backside of a knit is just a purl. There’s no difference between the two stitches, it just matters which side you are on when you make it.

She turns out the light, closes the door, and lets her yarn dry.



Where In The World Is Sika San Diego?

I actually hate the nickname Sika and I only let a tiny few people in my family use it, but it does have kind of a nice ring to it in this context, lol!

This Vogue 1650 trench coat was a BEAST, but I expected it to be. Occasionally I’ll come across a design that is deceivingly fancy, the kind that looks like you put way more work into it than you actually did, the kind where you feel a little guilty accepting compliments on it because it wasn’t a particularly difficult project even though it looks super amazing. This is not one of those patterns. Every bell and whistle you see on this coat took all my strength to ring and all my breath to blow, but I do think it was worth it in the end!

The green fabric is from The Fabric Store, and I am so tickled that I chose this color even though I hadn’t gone on my color palette journey yet to discover that green is smack dab in the middle of my seasonal palette. One of the reasons I landed on this fabric (aside from the fact that it’s so similar to the version on the envelope, haha) is because it specifically seemed perfect for this project, but green is the only colorway it came in, so the color is just a happy accident! It’s a sturdy nylon and canvas blend, which makes it great for outerwear since it repels water very easily (it’s not treated with anything, that’s just the qualities of the fabric) but it was incredibly difficult to sew because…well, again, it repels water very easily!

Ironing interfacing to these pieces was a journey into madness- it wouldn’t take steam well at all and adding more heat just burned the nylon fibers of the fabric, but I had to press on because, what good is a trench coat without interfacing?? I was afraid that regular sew-in interfacing would alter the fabric’s properties (it is crisp, unwrinkling, and…unfortunately I can’t think of a better word than erect, lol- it just stands straight up at attention!) I worried that sew-in would either make it floppy or make it lose it’s crispness, and I also was lazy and didn’t want to go all the way downtown to buy some sew-in. Eventually I learned that spraying the interfacing lightly with water, then pressing down very hard with a medium-set iron and a press cloth worked 80% of the time. When it didn’t work, I would see little bubbles peeking up from the otherwise smooth canvas, and then I would have to use the strength of ten Serena Williamses to press even harder and push those bubbles out to the edges, which would also work about 80% of the time. In short, I couldn’t get all the interfaced pieces perfectly flat and adhered, but so far I haven’t noticed any bubbles when I am wearing the coat, so let’s just call it even: Trench:1 Jasika:1.


Aside from the bizarre properties of the fabric, this sewing pattern has 4,672 pieces. Y’all. Y’ALL. I feel like I might have spent one lifetime tracing and cutting out all the fabric, lining, and interfacing pieces of this damn coat. Then I died and was reborn again in time to actually sew everything together. Half of this coat was made by a ghost. This many pieces of a sewing project isn’t all that unheard of, nor is it that difficult for me to get a hold of under normal circumstances, but I started and finished this entire project in my apartment in Vancouver, which means I didn’t have my trusty cutting table or rotary cutters or the space I’m used to for laying pattern pieces in separate piles around the room for easy organization. And also. I had to cut. my. pieces. out. on. the. floor. I’m fast approaching the age where this kind of activity is a OH NO THE HELL YOU WONT! I was doing cat/cows, back stretches and downward dogs every 10 minutes because my body was SO not okay with being treated so poorly, lol. I think it took me a full two days to cut all these pieces out but I finally got her done. Then I went through the hell of trying to interface everything, which took another half a day. When I was finally ready to sew, I celebrated and hooped and hollered and flew through construction of all the big parts, but I got slowed down again once I finally put the sleeves on the jacket and realized that something was very wrong.

This next part of my sewing project became a dramatic saga detailed in my stories on instagram over the span of a few days, so if you missed seeing them, I’ll get you up to speed. Essentially the sleeves were drafted really weird on me. I made a size that my measurements fit squarely into and I didn’t anticipate there being any issues with fit, but once I tried the jacket on with the sleeeves, it was obvious that something was amiss. Mainly, the armhole felt way too tight at the underarm, and way to shallow around the bicep, so it pulled on the bust area of the coat even when the coat was open. I am not a busty person (32B here!) and I also have a small back, so whenever I have too-tight issues at the bust on a garment that I know for sure I made the correct size in, I know it’s something to do with the drafting and not with me. There were drag lines at the bust as the sleeves tugged around my arms, and that was just with me standing still with my arms at my sides- as soon as I moved my arms away from my body, the whole entire coat lifted up- instead of  being able to move my arms freely, the jacket was moving with them.

Thankfully Grace (wzrdreams for those of you who are unfamiliar, my friend and professional tech designer for RTW who is a virtual wealth of information for so many of us in the sewing community) had some ideas for me on how to fix the sleeves. She also shared lots of helpful information about the drafting of Big 4 patterns and explained why I always seem to have the same issues with their patterns but not any others. With my newfound knowledge from Grace, I unpicked the sleeves, made the armholes deeper by scooping out maybe 3/4″ at the bottom of the armhole grading to nothing about halfway up, and re-drafted my sleeve pieces (back on the floor, I went!). I added length to the top of the sleeve cap to accommodate what I scooped out of the armhole, widened the entire sleeve so I had more ease for wear, and re-cut the little band on the one side so that it would fit around the wider sleeve piece. I was nervous this wouldn’t work at all because I didn’t have any of the TOOLS that you are supposed to do this with, like curved rulers and math, lol. I was pretty much just eyeballing things and guesstimating, but it’s all I had to work with and guess what…it totally worked! I know it is imperfect in some ways, perhaps there is a version of this fix that is much more precise than what I was able to do, but by god, it worked! I could move my arms and wiggle around comfortably, wear a sweater underneath without it feeling like I was suffocating my arms, the bodice has no more weird drag lines, and there was no visual misalignment with any of my seams. So, take THAT, coat! Trench: 1  Jasika: 2, for those of you still keeping score.

The rest of the coat was put together without too much drama. The lining of this coat didn’t require me to birth her, sadly, so I did lots of hand sewing to attach everything at the hems, and a bit more hand sewing when I realized the  coat wasn’t hanging properly and the lining was tugging at the outer shell. That’s pretty much the last hurdle I had to tackle, right at the very end, and again, I attribute it to the wonderfully strange qualities of this nylon canvas- I’ve never sewn with anything quite like it, and it bewildered me as much as it made my heart sing. I think there is still a little tugging and pulling on the hem because of how the fabric wants to lay, but it’s something I can am living with. I’m not a sewfectionist and probably never will be!

I was excited to wear this coat even before it was actually finished- I wrapped the belt super tight around me and wore it without buttons when I went shopping for… buttons! Ha! Which, by the way, I found at Dress Sew, my favorite physical fabric store in Vancouver. The selection of buttons in the basement of Dress Sew is tremendously good but also overwhelming. Thankfully everything is arranged by color which at least gives you a place to start if you are trying to color match.

I am so proud of this jacket, not so much because of how well it turned out, but because of how much I persevered to see it through to the end. It’s so easy sometimes to run into one too many obstacles on a project and decide that your time is better spent starting over from scratch, with something different, something familiar, something easy-ish. That’s what my Butthole Bin has been for. But as I get further along in my sewing career, I have learned to trust my skillset and my ability to think outside the box when it comes to making something work that decidedly does NOT want to work. This doesn’t mean that the same answer applies to every project I work on- sometimes my mental health is way more important than figuring out how to fix that wonky zip fly. But trusting myself enough to at least try to fix things instead of immediately discarding them feels like major growth for me, and I’m very thankful.

Thanks to my babygirl, Claire, for the photos!

My Journey To A Curated Closet, The Finale!










A pair of yellow cotton pleated #alphonsetrousers…



A pair of olive green corduroy Lander Pants…







Confetti Dress










DKNY Dress in Leopard Tencel Twill


Image result for vogue 1287


Image result for vogue 1287







Thanks as always to my sweet Claire for these pics!




A Rigel Bomber for Claire


Rigel Bomber
















The White Kiki Party

All my posts are being shared out of order because I made several things over the summer months but was too lazy to photograph any of them until recently, so now I am trying to balance them out with things I am currently making and I am getting all turned around. But it’s okay! Please bear with me as I trudge through these clothing makes in the most (un)timely fashion!

To catch you up, Claire and I went to the wedding of our good friend Lawrence in Hawaii this summer, and it was our first time on the island of Oahu, which we were very much looking forward to exploring, but Claire started getting sick days before our departure and by the time we landed she had what turned out to be a full blown ear infection that was slowly making its way to her sinuses and throat. It was ROUGH for Claire, she was in a LOT of pain and discomfort, but thankfully we didn’t have much planned outside of the wedding events so she could be miserable in peace. Luckily, our airbnb was a 3 minute walk to a practically private beach, so I still had a lovely time hanging out with the sand and sun while I took breaks from looking after Claire.

The day before the wedding there was a “White Party” on Waikiki that all the wedding guests were invited to, but the name of the party was changed to the “White-kiki Party” at Claire’s urging, LOL. We were of course all invited to show up in white attire, and I had one dress in my closet that would have worked for the event but decided to make something new for it because…WHY NOT? Claire also needed something white to wear for the party and she settled on a Kalle shirtdress with popover placket in a terrific white linen fabric from Joanns. Claire is mostly a jeans and t-shirt kind of gal but my goodness she LOVES her housedresses, and she wanted something that felt comfortable and looked clean and classic to wear to this event. I opted for something a little more dolled up (surprise!) but still comfortable and breezy for the warm island weather.

When The Fabric Store closed in LA over the summer I got my hands on as much fabric as I could, which is why my stash is bigger than it has ever been before (a big stash is not my happy place, but I also can’t turn down good fabric that’s free or deeply discounted, so I have committed myself to not buying any more for the rest of the year so I can work through what I have…although I might need to amend that to next year after going through Mimi’s fabric giveaway pile yesterday lol). One of the cuts I ended up taking home with me was a white poly with animal stripes embossed across it. Because the whole print is white, it doesn’t really read as animal print (which I am not really into) but it gives the fabric a bit of depth and a texture, and I decided to pair it up with McCalls 7778, a jumpsuit/dress with options for different straps and closures. It’s a very simple garment to make with princess seams at the bodice, and I only needed to make some minor adjustments to it (surprise! it was too big right out the envelope!) to get the fit just right.

I actually had a bit more trouble with the legs of the jumpsuit than anything else because the crotch was just too high which gave me dreaded camel toe! It was a simple fix though- I sewed about 1/2″ past my seam allowance at the bottom of the crotch curve, grading to the regular seam allowance at the front and back waist, and now they are much better than they were, although if I made this pattern again (which I doubt I will), I would absolutely adjust the crotch areas on both front and back pattern pieces to give myself more room for my seat. As it stands, the crotch is still a bit too high for my preference, and you can see the fabric hugging my shape in the butt area more than you should for a flowy, gathered waist, culotte-style garment.

I also had to adjust the bodice pieces (which was to be expected) to make them smaller- it gaped out at the top of the bodice and was too loose under the arms, so I brought the seams in in these areas on both outing and lining of the bodice and it fit better. I pulled a real rookie move when I absentmindedly used my pink chalk pen to mark all my notches and circles on this white fabric, which of course showed through to the other side and wouldn’t rub off when I tried to remove them. I have other marking tools like Frission pens and invisible markers, I just use the chalk so often that I didn’t even consider how it would work on this white transparent fabric! Thankfully when I completed the garment, I threw it in the wash immediately and it wiped out every trace of the pink chalk.

Again, this was a super easy make- no pockets included, which I would have loved to add myself but I didn’t have quite enough fabric leftover after my pieces were cut out, and on top of that, the white poly is a little bit sheer and having pockets underneath it would have made them show through in a way that I am sure I would have been unhappy with. As a whole I feel pretty meh about this project. It came out fine and I was happy to wear it to the White-Kiki party, but there just isn’t anything all that special about it. The fit is nothing spectacular and the silhouette is definitely cute, but maybe paired with this fabric, which isn’t all that dynamic, it just landed a little flat for me. It’s not even the solid color that makes it feel boring, because I think this would have looked even nicer in a plain white linen. But I also think it would look cool in a statement fabric where the print takes centerstage. I’ve worn this garment several times and I always get lots of lovely compliments on it which are appreciated, but it’s just not my favorite make.

Now before I move on, I want to say just a little bit about my shoes! I didn’t wear these to the White Kiki party because I hadn’t made them yet, and I have a ‘no heels in Hawaii’ rule anyways, but I think they look really good with this jumpsuit so I figured I would do a 2-for-1 since I always neglect to do full blog posts for my shoe makes here (gotta get better at that)! These are the first pair of shoes I made from a pointy toe high heeled last I found at Saderma several months ago. Finding lasts is always tricky because once you find a pair in your size, you wont know if they actually fit your foot well until you make them, so there is always a little risk involved, and unlike clothing, you can try them on for fit throughout the making process to ensure you are on the right track. I have had a few pairs of lasts that seemed like they would work great for me but ended up being too big or too small, so I really lucked out with this pair!

I got the “snakeskin” leather (it’s just embossed) from The Fabric Store quite a while ago and was excited to make this style shoe with them once I got my hands on these lasts. High heeled slingbacks have been a little tougher to find in RTW than I anticipated so I figured I might as well give them a try, and I think these came out great. One thing I want to do on my next pair of heeled slingbacks is to use elastic at the buckle. If you have a pair of slingbacks, take a look at where the buckle is attached to the leather- there is likely to be a small strip of elastic connected to the buckle and leather which allows your foot to move around in the shoe without feeling too constricted and allows the strap to move with your foot. These heels are totally fine without the elastic because I am able to put holes for the buckle wherever I want them, but ideally the strap just adds a touch of comfort to wearing a shoe with a strap and it helps keep that strap in place.

I am still working on getting my heel completely attached and flush to the bottom of the shoe and this is my most successful pair yet, although I do have room for improvement. I seem to always choose a slightly-too-thick leather to cover my heels with which makes getting the top of the heel flat very difficult, but these came out pretty okay, and I like the contrast of the purple lining leather peeking out of the inside and bottom of the shoe. And they are comfortable! Well, about as comfortable as wearing 3 inch heels gets, hahah. But you know how when you buy new heels (if you wear them), they tend to take a little time to break in and form to your foot? Well my memade heels so far are not like that- they are softer than RTW shoes and feel pretty much the same the first time you wear them as the 2nd and the 10th, which is pretty cool. Still have a lot of distance to cover with shoemaking but I can definitely see that I am on a steady incline UP!

Okay, so back to the wedding…

you can’t take me anywhere.

Claire ended up being too sick to come to the Whitekiki party so me and my friend Kelly went together, and we BOTH happened to be wearing white jumpsuits, and we got to rock them while I drove the WHITE Jeep we rented for the trip! We were SOOOOO STYLISH! And the party was a blast! After some food and mingling with all the other guests, our little corner of the park was set up into different stations where we each got to learn from a local a little about Hawaiian culture and how to participate in a traditional luau. Me and Kelly’s favorite station was of course the hula, and we learned the song “Pearly Shells” while dancing to the music Lawrence’s friends played on their ukuleles. The night was beyond magical as the sun set over the ocean and our voices floated above us- the only thing missing was Claire! But I sent her lots of videos and pictures and she was at least able to make it to the actual wedding the next day.

Thanks for being my date, Kelly, and thanks Lawrence and Q for such a fun party!