misadventures in dressmaking or why i hate polyeseter

my sister is in a choir.  during the holiday season, they wear victorian dress.  so i made a victorian dress.  and, with some help from her and sarah on the homestretch, i was able to finish it up for the first performance this evening. and i made it out of polyester.  which seems like a reasonable choice for a costume: cheap, available, shiny like silk.  oh, except that it is terrible.

and the making of this dress works as a perfect metaphor for the first amendment to the rule list (see this post):

4. if at all possible, avoid man made materials and plastics.

(there's a lot more after the jump)


man, i hate plastic.  more and more, i hear about it disrupting hormones, miring oceans and generally fouling up the place.  they find it in breast milk for pete's sake!  that's not to say i don't appreciate many of its applications- i'm pretty glad doctors have access to the stuff and i'm sitting in front of a big old brick of it to type this missive.  it's just that, in the end, i don't really need to carry my food in individual plastic satchels inside a larger plastic satchel.  i don't need clothes or dishes or containers made out of the stuff.  it really just seems like overkill, doesn't it?

this is a broad topic and i don't want to get into every aspect of it right now, so let's just talk about polyester and why i hate it on a personal level.  it doesn't cut well with a wheel and scissors are only sorta better and as soon as you cut it, it starts to shred, spitting off little wispy spiderwebs that find their way into every part of your life.  if you iron it at a temperature hot enough to remove wrinkles, you will probably end up singeing the fabric, but somehow that same temperature won't leave a solid crease.  it's slippery and prone to pulling and just seems like it is out for vengeance.  and in the end, any scraps you have are immutable flaps of man made waste.  lame.

but in the end, making the dress was a good, if aggrivating, experience.  it is the first women's garment i have made (the other two garments i've made are men's shirts) and the first zipper i've installed.  i also got to work with flexible metal boning, which could have interesting sculptural uses, and work on my pattern reading skills (if you have never worked with a clothing pattern, imagine that you are reading a recipe for cake and instead of "bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until golden brown and a knife comes out clean," it said, simply, "cook.")  i also got to try to fit a muslin.  which could have gone better.

remember: it's always good to learn something new.