Additive Clothing Construction

Do you ever lie in bed at night,
thinking about an idea --

​trying to imagine--
and then solve--
 every issue that might arise
when you actually start
​bringing it into the physical world?​

It is a thing
that happens to me --
so much so
that even as I've been committing 
chunks of time every day
to spinning flax
​ for yards of linsey woolsey cloth,

I have also been designing
the mythical garment
the cloth will become--
and growing wildly curious
about construction possibilites.

Some of this design work is necessary -- 
not least to  help calculate
​ how much yardage
I will need to spin.

​But technical questions
have been driving me nuts
and the only way to resolve one or two--
or at least understand their nature--
is to stitch some cloth together.

Luckily, I have a motley collection
of linen backstrap experiments
sitting in a box
(some of it originally intended for needlepoint,
other bits left over from work for this show,
though mostly untouched) 
so I could mess around a little--
​do a little draping if nothing else.

All are linen,
though few are the same weight, width or sett
so I wasn't expecting to end up
with much of a garment.
Still --an education, not a product
is what I was pursuing,
and these bits of cloth
could provide that.

Every piece has selvedges,
which means overlapping seams
with minimal bulk
and the particular drape that results--
a thing  I hope to make a feature
of my mythical linsey woolsey garment,
and is definitely based
​on all I've learned
from the design of the Sarah-Dippity.
Indeed, that series of skirts
has given me quite a taste
for this business of
​additive clothing construction. 

Use the shapes you have,
and/ or 
make the shapes you need
then put them together,
 take them apart
and baste again
in a different way
until things are right.
​
Basting, indeed, is my new best friend. 
Great big stitches
make it possible to try things on,
even as they are easy to whip out 
when a new (and vastly improved)
idea for sleeve and underarm construction
arises in the middle of the night.

It's been a slow process
over the last few weeks--
filled with delight, frustration
and unexpectedly visceral
textile pleasure.

Indeed those scraps of cloth
​have provided such delight 
that the wee tapestry pocket
might even be too much.

Time will tell, I suppose.
As, indeed
I hope it eventually lets me know
if this shirt wants a nice tidy hem --
​or not.

All I know for sure right now
is that this garment-in-progress
is fantastically comfortable.

​

And between this shirt,
​a couple of sweaters in various states of completion
(more on those eventually)
and my summer Sarah-Dippity,
this is proving to be
quite the sartorial spring.
​Who knew?