Slowly, slowly ... a little bit of sewing

Today I took a break from my regular schedule to kick back and do nothing.  Which, in my corner of the universe, seems to involve prepping sewing projects.  Self, really?  On the other hand, as I've mentioned before, I don't craft much when I'm writing, and sometimes I really just itch for a lovely dive into the tactile, beautiful, satisfying world of garment making.

Pictured above, left to right: the makings of a refashioned Archer (with a peek of my all-time-favorite Liberty print), a quilt for a friend, a summery Alder.  Grainline Studio appears to be my pattern company of the moment!

It was nice.  Nice to putter - slowly, slowly, never hurry never rest.  Nice to sink into the intricacies of cutting and ironing and prepping projects for the machine.  Nice to think about my friendship with the woman for whom I'm making the quilt (we go back to 14, which is over half a lifetime ago, eep!).  Nice to think about the coming season and what I'd like to make - not too much, a couple garments, enough for my evolving style, things that will work well in a streamlined wardrobe.

I used to feel this great big rush to craft.  Get something up for the blog, work my way through my stash.  In the last year or two, my financial situation has fluctuated quite a bit and so I now think of my stash as a lovely place to shop for fabrics that I currently can't afford to purchase.  (I do splurge now and again, but for the most part, stash shopping it is!)  Fabric choice really is important to how much I like the final product.  And I think that's something that sewing my own wardrobe, and my current slow-clothing approach to garment making, has gradually cultivated, namely an understanding of what is most important to me in the making process and final product.

In two of the financial management/simple life books that I own, the author talks about the "fulfillment curve" and finding that sweet spot that defines "enough."  For me, this question applies not just to money but also to crafting and the size/composition of one's handmade wardrobe.  Just how much is enough?  What elements comprise enough?  What are the pieces that bring me the most joy and satisfaction, are the most important to me, and how do I try to focus on those in the moments when I do spend crafting?  Given that my time for crafting is now somewhat limited, I find it increasingly important to hone in on these "high impact" areas.  If this hobby is going to be an escape, a creative outlet, a way for me to kick back and relax, then I'd certainly like to maximize my chances of finding just that when I do finally clear off my table and haul out my sewing machine.

After a good number of years and experimentation, I think I've hit upon the formula that (currently) works for me.  Quality fabrics in colors and prints that I enjoy, and that also play well with the rest of my wardrobe (a great way to avoid wardrobe orphans!).  Silhouette, style, and degree of ease that work well with my lifestyle and personal preferences (I hate tucking in my tops, which not only rules out certain blouses but also certain types of skirts and pants).  At present, patterns that are neither too fiddly/fussy nor too complex.  And there are certain types of garments that I enjoy sewing more than others (pants = ugh, dresses = yeay!) so I am perfectly content to focus on the ones that I like and then hit up the thrift shop for the rest.

And most importantly?  Take it slow and take it easy.  Part of this means thinking hard about which project I really want to tackle next.  Could I see myself wearing it once/week for the upcoming season or two?  Am I in the mood for something simple or something more involved, for a new pattern or to dig out a TNT, for fiddly fabrics like silk or easy fabrics like cotton or wool?  Part of this means accepting that I'm just slow - I probably crank out a finished object every month or two, and I need to be OK with that.  Part of this means working with fabrics that I absolutely love, which are paired with patterns that I'm either reasonably sure will be a good match, or else willing to leap into that hideous/fabulous territory that I seem to love so much.

And part of this means accepting that the current pared-back state of my wardrobe (which I actually quite love, and which really is not "pared back" at all when one considers how 90% of the world lives!)  My parents were up recently to visit, and my mom seemed a bit surprised that all my clothing actually fit into one closet.  Ha, I'm not that bad, am I?  I guess I am.  Was.  Whatever.  I guess this is part of locating "enough," too.  Some days I feel quite bored with the clothing I have on hand, but the flip side of the equation is that it only takes one or two new garments to suddenly make me feel like I have so many more choices and a nicely refreshed wardrobe!  Which is a great feeling to have.

Here's wishing all of you a beautiful spring, happy moments spent in your leisure activity of choice, and the permission to occasionally chuck responsibility and instead opt for that very thing that your heart, or soul, most craves ...

Recently

Hello hello!  Spring is officially here, Portland flirts with sunny days betwixt sprinkles and showers, and life marches happily forward in this little corner of the universe.  Returned from an East Coast work/pleasure trip last night, and was struck by the remarkable change my life has undergone in the past year.  The changes I've sought out in the past year.

Meanwhile, I tiptoe towards the holy grail of sewing - for me, that's pants - by completing the runner up in that category of intimidating makes (at least for me).  Coats.  This one took me 3 months; I took it slow, it was my first foray back into sewing since moving, and I was feeling no rush.  A learning project for sure!  But I adore wearing it.  There really IS something to be said for making the cakiest of sewing cake, those utilitarian garments one wears constantly.

And how basic is a navy wool peacoat?  Swoon.  I had a brain fart and cut it with the nap going sideways, and the camel hair in my blend is thus already starting to pill, but honestly, I'm still pretty darn happy with this make.  I'd love to use the pattern again (V2873, OOP) perhaps in corduroy with contrast plaid lapels?  Because I am obnoxious like that :).  Hideous or fabulous, baby!  I've also got my eye on the Minoru.

But first, pants, because I've only got 2 pairs of jeans - one that's half a size too small and requires some minutes of wriggling dancing, post-wash, before I can comfortably sit in them, and one that's been darned in several places and needs several more patches.  Thurlows, I'm looking to you!

As you can see, I've also been knitting, rather unexpectedly, to a theme.

At a Baltimore museum with one of my best friends.  This place has the awesomest sense of color!  The exhibits were so much fun.  There was one that kept John and me laughing for a good 5 minutes, starting with the reindeer coming out of toilets, and right on through the nutcrackers with aliens emerging out of one side of the body.  The Nightmare Before Christmas on LSD.  Really, Baltimore gets such a bad rap, kind of like Oakland.  I personally have always loved my visits there.  A quirky, laidback city with down to earth folks.

Saying goodbye to another of my best friends from grad school.  Kristy's headed back to Taiwan, and Wei Jie is probably returning to Singapore ("Sing" as she calls it) next year.  Asia trip 2015 is all I can say!  Once I dry my tears, that is.

Oh, and I finally unearthed this quilt top that I started when I was 16, and finished piecing it, then sandwiched it and have begun hand quilting.  Wool batting, mmm, perfect for PDX winters.  So squishy and lofty and soft and warm.  Had been slightly tempted to leave it until I turned 32, as I could then call it the quilt that took half my life, but at the rate I've been going, it might not get done until then all the same!  Haha.  Besides which, I've really been digging the blue side of the spectrum for the past year or so, which, as you can see, were perennial favorites in early life, as well.  A return to my roots.  Which is really how I feel.  So much more like myself.  So it seemed fitting.

And how's writing?  Well, good!  Thank you for asking!  Right before my trip, I whisked myself away to a cottage situated on a 230 acre nature preserve, to read through my book draft in 1 go.  Between you and me, internets, I got about 60% in and then my brain rebelled, so I hope there was nothing important in those last 40K words!  LOL.

But it's good.  It gave me the chance to evaluate What are you, book, and what do you want to be?  And I think that I am finally, maybe, starting to see the contours of this story.

It usually takes me about 3 drafts to know what my story is about, another 2 to get all the pieces roughly in place, and then another 2 to refine and polish and fix things up.  Assuming no drastic changes, of course.  Most people raise their eyebrows when they hear this, and you can just see them thinking, though they are too polite to say it, Why, woman, would you put yourself through that???  Because it's a bit like what I imagine motherhood to be like - watching characters (or ideas) begin to define themselves, emerge, and blossom, in ways you both anticipate and cannot imagine.  But then you also have a hand in the process, in the artistry of the form of the story, even if the substance is not entirely in your hands.

And the beauty of writing memoir is that it asks you to revisit and reunderstand seminal moments in your past.  Which, given the deep bout of reflection and soul searching I've done in the past year, has really grounded me in myself.  The timing has been perfect.  Or perhaps this book has been a catalyst of sorts?  Likely these have been intertwined, cause and effect muddied.  Regardless, the result has been so, so worthwhile.

May you experience a beautiful spring!

Book writing: the process

Over the summer, when I first began thinking about writing a book from start to finish, I found the prospect equal parts mystifying and daunting.  (Before, to cheat my way around that, I'd decided to write a series of essays for a book collection - ah!  I only have to think in 5K word chunks, I don't have to hold 80K words in my head!  And then I realized that wouldn't work, and that I'd have to Start Over.)   Before I could really dive into it, I decided I needed some handholding from the experts.  So I read a number of books about writing books to find a template process that I could build out and embellish with the quirks of nuances of how I like to write, dream, create, and polish.

So if you've ever wondered what it takes to write a book ... here's what I've discovered so far.  (And bear in mind that I'm not in the clear yet!  But I thought it would be fun to get these thoughts down on paper.  At the very least, I can revisit in a year or two and think, "Silly bear!  That's only the tip of the iceberg!"  Track the evolving process, because sometimes when you get to the end, you forget where you traveled along the way, you know?)

Definition of a draft.  Over the summer, when I asked my creative writing instructor for suggestions on the revision process, he replied (and imagine this said with repeated palm slaps to table, for emphasis): Every time I revise, I make myself work through a FULL draft.  A full draft means you've landed the plane.  You've got some sort of start, a muddy middle, and you've tried out an ending.  Now, you may not like your ending.  There may be stuff in the middle that you absolutely hate.  It's your best guess - at the time - of what the story should look like.  It might be crap.  But at least you can say, now THAT, that is NOT what I wanted.  Let me try this instead.

Or, to paraphrase Stephen Koch, 26 versions of 1 page is not 26 drafts, it's a really rough page.

Which was helpful.  I've wanted to write this type of story for 20 years now, and began seeing a good chunk of the specific topic 8 years ago, so every couple years I'd write 100 or 200 pages of notes - fragments and pretty sentences, essay pieces, longhanded stream-of-consciousness pages where I try to make sense of everything, character sketches, pieces of dialogue - and then I'd get stuck and put it away for a couple years.  But I didn't have much of a clue what the book was about, because I hadn't tried shaping it into an actual narrative.  I had a series of vignettes, but not a story.

I spent the fall chipping away at a complete draft now, and as tough and ugly as it was, I feel like I can finally feel the contours of the story.  100s and 100s of pages gave me some insights and a lot of fabulous details.  A complete draft is laying down an infrastructure on which to build a house.  Later, I might decide that I want 3 bedrooms instead of 2, and the kitchen and dining room need to be swapped, and that, oh hey, we no longer want a basement or the two skylights or the wraparound porch ... but I'll be inching closer to the house I want.  Before, I felt like I was working on one of those American pioneer-town shanties: I've got three walls here ... and a stack of logs there ... and I'm not quite sure where the hearth is going to go ... oh, but I know that I want a stack of patchwork quilts in this corner and ooh whee, lemme go cut up a bunch of fabrics to make one!  It'll be log cabin and blue and red and ... uh ... what's this house supposed to look like again?  I give up, I'm gonna let it sit for a couple years while my subconscious figures it out!  Haha.

Types of drafts.  There's two phases to writing.  There's creating and there's editing.  Some people love writing --- I love revising.  Which means it's tempting for me to write 100 new words and then go back and polish the last 300 ... which means I mix the two phases together.  Many authors alternate two types of drafts; each type focuses specifically on one phase.  Start with a really fast, really messy 1st draft (a 'down and dirty' writing phase), followed by a long and nuanced 2nd draft (a big revision phase).  In one, you're using speed to work holistically.  Writing towards the big picture.  In the other, gosh, you're in the weeds and you just LOVE testing out three different kinds of aphid killers to figure out which is going to work on this one corner of your garden.  (There's a third phase - polishing.  It's where you're sprucing sentences, not killing off useless characters.  I used to think revision was sprucing sentences, which is why I was so mystified: but how/when/where do you figure out the big picture stuff???)

They also recommend breathing time between drafts, so that you can get some perspective on your work.  Which is why I pushed hard to finish a 1st draft in December, and am taking a short story class now.  Try something new.  Let the book breathe.  I'll pick it up again mid-March.  See what I've got.  Evaluate the beast in its entirety: what is it saying?  Is it saying what I want it to say?  After 3 months away, what feels extraneous and what feels underdeveloped?

With shorter pieces, at least, I've found that it generally takes me 3 drafts to get some sense of what the story is about, another 2 drafts to get all the pieces excavated + present in some form + hopefully in something of the correct place/shape, and a final 2 drafts to get things polished.  A couple months between drafts is enough time to see the work in new light, but not so much time that I've forgotten everything!  On the other hand, maybe things work differently for a book, I don't know.  That's what sucks about figuring out your personal writing process for a book - you can really only find out by experimenting on book-length projects.  On the other hand, I still love writing more than just about anything else in the world.  Takes a strange kind of masochist to want this, but if that's you, there's no use in running from the truth!  May as well embrace it and work with it.

Writer's block.  OMG, the bane of existence for all creative folk, no?  And totally fear-inducing.  We live for the days the words flow, we dread the days when writing feels like plucking words out of our brain with a pair of blunt tweezers.

There's a lot of controversy about this one.  That it happens is a given.  But everybody has a different opinion for dealing with it.  And again, two camps.  People who don't force the creative process and work when inspired.  And people who think that half the work is showing up to the page, day in and day out, the ones who have a writing schedule and keep at it, even when they're blocked.  Which might sound torturous, but I'm in the second camp. 

Often I'm blocked because 1) I don't know something, 2) I fear something, 3) I doubt myself (which is a variant on #2).  And in my life I've found that it's best for me to face those kinds of situations head on, lean into the discomfort, get as intimate and specific with the fear and unknown as possible ... because that also tells me how to get through it.  So if I'm blocked because I don't know where to go next - I don't know the character or the story well enough - I use writing exercises to explore that problem.  Sometimes it means freewriting prompts (As protagonist: I tend to present the illusion that ...; As antagonist: I am least proud of this characteristic ...") ... or else I throw my characters into a new situation to see how they react.  Maybe I don't use any of the words I've written, but the exercise helps me understand them better, which helps me see how to move forward.



Actually, what I'm discovering could probably fill a book.  (Haha, and you wonder why there are so many "how to write!" books out there.  I bet it's all of us writers, procrastinating on our novels and writing this kind of stuff instead.  I bet we're all reminding ourselves what works for us.)

So maybe I'll just stop there.  (For now?  We'll see.)  More thoughts to come, especially as I pick the book up again for Round 2, come spring.  In the meantime, I find myself pleasantly surprised by how much I'm enjoying my short fiction class!  Maybe there's another book in there :-).  Heh - that's the danger of embarking on this process!  You begin conceiving of projects in book-length terms ...

And for a little life update: Portland's been blanketed in 4 inches of snow, which means the city is effectively shut down.  Which is a bit amusing to me, as 4 inches in Boston was just another winter day ...  My brother, who is in town visiting, said that he began to fear for his nose and left ear while crossing the Morrison Bridge yesterday (after waiting in vain for a bus for an hour, he and some other folks decided to walk instead).  He thought it'd be ironic to develop frostbite in Portland, of all places, after having lived through long, cold winters in New York and Beijing ... but luckily, all extremities are still present and with feeling, so we're cooped up inside but feeling cozy and glad to have one another for company!  Hope you're all well!