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Andy

Golden Gloves to Hemline Pt.7 : A New Path to Success

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So…….Where have you been, Andy? You haven’t visited VV Land in O’ so long. Why is that?

Let me give it to you straight. I suck. Chie told me this before we got married, during the wedding ceremony and most days since. Sadly I must say that I am becoming to agree. I, for all my desire, cannot go through that damn book. It’s too friggin hard. “For those who have never used a sewing machine before…” Bull%$#”$&%’&. Had I continued on my intended  path to completing the Burda book, either myself or the book would have been destroyed (probably me)/ So, I decided to take a new route to the sewing promised land. I will be lead by that great sewing prophetess, my wife, Chie Duncan.

What I will be doing from this point is working on hands on projects under direct guidance. Chie will be assigning me (just like the rest of the day…) little sewing projects while she is  tasked with molding me into a Project Runway worthy seamstress. I don’t know what she has planned but I can’t imagine its any more daunting that damn Burda book.
She tells me our first my project, I will be constructing, from nuts to soup, a skirt for my daughter, the magical Kiko. Chie, being the trickster she is, has decided to let me tackle the first parts on my own. She wants me to read and print out the pattern and then cut out the fabric pieces. From there she will work on the actual construction with me.  Not too bad right?????? Click the following link I have been assigned here   What you will notice immediately is that the language is not English. It seems, that my tricky tricky wife, has decided that it would be much more fun for me to complete this task if it is in Japanese. Thank you, babe it is always an adventure. So Step 1: 12 hours of translation. Step 2: Print out the pattern. Step 3: Cut out the pattern. Step 4: Cut out the fabric pieces. Step 5: Sew the garment. Step 6: Dress Kiko in garment and take pride in my accomplishment. Step 7: Wake up from my dream. Step 8: Stop crying. Step 9: In real life try sewing. Step 10 Start drinking. Step 11: Continue drinking。Step 12: Pass out in a shamed, failed and drunken slumber.
Whose excited!?!?!? This guy 🙂

Golden Gloves to Hemline: Pt. 6 Pattern Tracing

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Image via The Graphics Fairy

Hello V² ladies….It is the I, seamstress( what the hell would the male version of that word be?) extraordinaire Chie’s faithful, lovable and relatively attractive husband Andy. Last time we looked at the Burda books pattern introduction. I got dizzy trying to understand and Chie make repetitiveness comments about my stupidity and general uselessness. Today we will tackle the actual mechanics of pattern tracing. On the list of lives lived to the fullest 1. George Washington 2.Puff Daddy 3.Andy Duncan.

How to Trace a Pattern:
Let us begin…Simple, easy and large flat surface are words used in the first sentence, I am already pleased. For this we need blank paper and colored tracing paper. Check. Does the color matter? Can I use something manly like magenta? Oh the possibilities of my colored paper are endless. We also need something called a tracing wheel which looks like a mini pizza cutter. I have never seen Chie wield this tool, I will ask if she has one when she wakes up from her drunken slumber (oops, I shouldn’t have said that). This set of instructions instructs us to trace every detail. Literally every detail. It screams in a very passive aggressive way “Trace every detail on the page you moron”. Is it realy that big of a deal or are there that many people who skip this step? This seams pretty easy to understand. white paper,tracing paper, pattern pieces, trace absolutely everything and do not for a second deviate from the pattern. It is like dealing with a very anal elementary school teacher.

What is Seam Allowance:
Here is a question that I am looking forward to having answered. I have no idea what that term means…”the space between my seam line and the raw edge of the fabric.) That’s all, kind of a let down.One very frustrating thing is that this book says that it does not include seam allowances. Why the hell not?!?!?!? I need specifics! It seems that I jumped the gun a bit with my screaming at the book. It tells me that I should use a 1/2″ seam allowance. I would still prefer it written down but hey, I aint scurrrrrred. On a side note, I cannot recall having seen Chie do this,…why is that? Is she just winging it or is she doing some stealthy Japanesey ninja sewing? Method one for adding a seam allowance involves rulers, french curves and measuring whereas method 2 involves a double pizza cutter tool and seams much easier….I’m sticking with the double pizza cutter method. Much to my surprise there are now instructions on how to cut. I really thought there were things in my life I could consider myself to be a master of, cutting with scissors was one of these skills, sadly Burda is informing me otherwise.

How to Test your Pattern:
This section opens up with the line “There are plenty of proverbs connected to sewing.” I don’t know where for my sarcasm to begin. One such pearl of wisdom is “A stitch in time saves nine.” I haven’t the slightest idea what tat is supposed to mean but apparently this Allison chicks heartless boyfriend beats her over the head with this saying when she screws something up. I don’t know that this man values his scrotum very much, which is too bad because as far as I know we only get 1. Ultimately this section seems to be telling me to make a muslin…this took a minute as I tried to process why I would want my fabric to have a religious experience….thankfully my iphone has a dictionary and now I know know that the muslin is a practice version of your outfit that you sew with crappy fabric. That kind of sucks that you need to spend time making 2 outfits, one of which is some throw away thing. Chie has a full time job how does she have time for all this crap? The next pages of this section lay out 12 steps for getting from pattern to fabric pieces to actual sewing of muslin and ultimately the real deal outfit. I can tell they meant me to take this section seriously because it was introduced by a quote in huge red font! Burdastyle is not screwing around with me here. Probably good to keep in mind, and Ill be sure to photocopy these instructions and place over me in my fabulous and enviable sewing space.

That was a good use of 90 minutes. It is now time to reclaim my masculinity and continue reading The Hunger Games series….oh wait that was a book written by and for 12 year old girls! My testosterone has hit a new low.

Golden Gloves to Hemline: Pt. 4 Manly Meadurements

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…I have not been sleeping much….Our bed hovers over Chie’s sewing space. In that sewing space sits, what will forever be known as “The Machine”. It is a machine, an inanimate object, surely I know this….but still, I feel at times, it senses me, it knows I am there and it mocks me. Sometimes as I hear Chie sewing, I can, in not sew (hahahahaha still funny) audible words hear “The Machine” speak. It never speaks kind words mind you. It always says the same thing….”Andy, Andy, come on down, try and make me work….try and make me sew…..try and make a skirt, it won’t be so hard.” And then….it laughs that laugh! That mocking laugh. It is possessed and the only way to conquer “The Machine” is to beat it, to beat it at its own game.

So, we push forward. Onto chapter 2 “Using Patterns”. Apparently patterns are really important. Some chick named Coco used the same pattern a lot and now is pretty famous. Sounds like a lazy designer if you ask me. I watched Heidi Klum make people on Project Runway make dress for drag queens out of toilet paper and car parts…let’s see Mssssss. Coco do that!

Back to business, Tara St. James says “I like to play with patterns…” I like to play with video games, to each their own, I guess. Many patterns are based off of rectangles and squares, which are then manipulated into other shaps. That’s good. I can handle 4 sided objects. Allison, it seems hated patterns for a while and instead, for years,just wrapped fabric around herself like a mummy and sewed. Kind of ghetto, but I’m down with that. The patterns in this book seem pretty moron proof, they have “Front” and “Back” printed on them. We have been reduced to kindergartners, perhaps the main class is not sew (yup, still funny) far beyond me. I am a bit confused because it says that the book patterns include ‘style lines’ and ‘darts’. What the what now? Did I miss a page or a chapter somewhere.What the hell are either of those? SHHHHHHHH….Don’t tell I don’t know what those are, she will do one of the dances again. The sizing page looks very familiar to something else…what is it? Oh yeah,the periodic tables of elements. A-w-e-s-o-m-e! I failed chemistry. Why are Burda sizes different from U.S. sizes? And the bigger question is, why are both sizes different from actual measured sizes? I think sizing would be more fun if instead of numbers they used animal names. Instead of size 0 a.k.a 32, call it ‘mouse’. Or instead of 14/46 call it elephant! I think that would be more fun. Sorry, I’m getting distracted.

Measuring Yourself, is the next section. I came up during the FUBU hip hop era, I haven’t the slightest idea what actual clothing size my body should be wearing. This should be interesting. I should try this now and then after I do a weight cut for my next fight, might be interesting to see how many inches I lose off my body before a fight. It is telling me how to measure my bust…do I really need that? Hip and waist I can see, but bust? God, my friends are going to mock me sew (Yes! I got 1 more in) bad for measuring my bust size. It wasn’t bad enough just sewing, but now this!

Well, here are my measurements ladies. Fatter than I should be but I’ll be slowly working my way down. I am curious what I am going to do with these measurements. All the clothes patterns in this books is book are for, you know, non-male types. The measurements will go to waste. Maybe there is a chickiddy that has the same measurements as me that I can make a dress for! Oh, on second thought I hope not…a women who could wear clothes for a man with an 18 inch neck and hips trained for 400lb squat repetitions is probably a women to be feared and avoided.

Bust: 40.5
Waist: 33
Hip: 35
Sleeve Length: 22
Neck Width: 15.5
Side Leg Length: 37
Front Waist Length:38
Upper Arm Circumference: 15

Well, today was productive, and best of all I didn’t have to fight “The Machine”. If only I could figure out how to avoid him/her (I can’t tell which gender it is) at night life would be perfect. Until next week ladies

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