#Elastic Interface

[super-ion]

The Engineer

I catch a glimpse of the pilot as she is wheeled towards the med bay. Her eyes have that telltale glaze of just having been wrenched out of herself.

I've never spoken a single word to her, but for a brief moment as the gurney slides by, those eyes briefly clear, ice blue pinning me to the spot. She raises an emaciated arm and her hand almost seems to beckon to me before something in the gurney clicks and whirs and she slips back into catatonia.

That brief moment of clarity, that piercing gaze, unsettles me. She recognized me.

It's neural bleed. I know it has to be. She doesn't know me, but Morrigan does.

Good god. In the pilot's present state of post combat haze, she probably doesn't even know where she ends and the machine begins.

Does neural bleed work both ways? Is it her head that I'm about to climb into?

My wrist strap buzzes. I have a job to do and I am late.

The pilot is a problem for the med team and the psychs.

The machine is my problem.

I hurry down the corridor, keeping my head down, avoiding the eyes of every passerby.

I don't like people.

I don't like how their eyes follow me. I don't like the whispered gossip that follows me.

One of the techs is waiting for me at the vestibule.

I don't know his name.

All clear, he says to me. Time to work your magic.

He says it without sarcasm. Others have been less kind.

Even so, he can't quite hide the leer as I strip down to the skinsuit. I don't have the physique of a pilot. My body hasn't been subjected to the stresses that ravage their bodies. Unlike them, I have fat and muscle and the skinsuit clings to every curve of my body.

I force a cursory smile and try to forget him as I walk barefoot to my destination.

The vestibule is small, windowless. It's impossible to assess the scale of the machine from here. The only part visible to me is roughly four square meters of pitted and scarred metal plating framing the access hatch and the pilot's cradle beyond.

B0-987T the stenciled lettering reads. And below, in flowing script, is “The Morrigan”.

She's a Javellin class, medium weapons fire support unit. She isn't meant to be on the front lines in a skirmish, but one-on-one, she can hold her own against a Wraith. Which is exactly what happened only a few hours ago.

I place a bare palm on the bulkhead. She thrums with some distant vibration. Her reactor is still online, still in the early stages of drawdown as she transitions to dock power.

“Hey beautiful,” I say to her.

I think of the pilot. I think of piercing blue eyes and I think of neural bleed.

I flinch my hand away.

The tech looks at me, asks if I'm alright. I'm fine, I tell him.

I climb through the hatch and into the cradle.

I feel like an interloper here. The cradle isn't calibrated for my body. Everything still smells like the pilot. Mingled with the smell of the machine is her sweat and her adrenaline and the particular scented soap that she prefers.

There is a faint whirring as her cameras track my movements from a dozen angles. The access ports open to receive me.

Against my better judgment, I imagine eagerness for this exchange.

This is immediately followed by an all too familiar sense of inadequacy. The engineers’ rig is not nearly as all encompassing as a pilots’. It's only the most basic neural interface. No haptics. No neurotransmitter feedback. No access to the suite of sensors studded throughout her hull.

I can't interface with her the way her pilot can.

My rig is a remnant from basic training. The pilot corps wanted me for my exceptional ratings in synchrony and neuro-elasticity, but after serval training exercises, they determined that I didn't have the temperament for the battlefield. I froze up too easily.

A neural rig is a massive investment and removing one will fuck a person up a hell of a lot more than installing one. The selection process is designed to weed out washouts before we even get to installation, but some of us still slip through the cracks. Most end up reassigned to logistics, operating loader mechs or piloting long haul supply frigates. But my aptitudes made me ideal for the engineering corps, so here I am.

Morrigan senses my mood and the cradle shifts slightly, aligning itself to my dimensions. Her eagerness to connect morphs into a sort of tender reassurance. It's a slippery slope, ascribing human emotions to these machines, but she does seem genuinely happy to see me.

I can never be part of what she and her pilot have, but I can be part of something in my own way.

The pilot knows about me, she would even without neural bleed. Does she envy the relationship I have with her mech? Does she envy that I can exist both together and apart with the machine?

Is she jealous of us?

Morrigan slips her jacks into my rig and my mind enters hers and I feel tension leave my body. Some dull ache that I wasn't even consciously aware of ebbs within me.

My senses dull and my visual cortex is fed a series of diagnostic logs and telemetry streams. The techs have access to the exact same data, but Morrigan highlights particular data points that she and the pilot flagged. I log them in the engineering report.

A wireframe schematic of the battlefield spreads out in my awareness. Green markers for our battlegroup. Red markers for the pack of Wraith interlopers.

I hear the ghost of music, strange and ambient, like whale song. The first time I heard it, I asked the techs about it. They had no idea what I was talking about. One even suggested I get an eval for some psych leave.

Later I realized Morrigan was singing to me. Or rather she was interpreting tightbeam comm links as something my brain could process. A human mind can't possibly interpret the full datastream, but with Morrigans's rendition, I can suss out the basic meanings. The battlegroup is a choir and Morrigan is playing me their song.

I caused quite a stir when I first made that connection and started flagging battle events the analysts had missed.

I survey the battlefield before me, reconstructed from feeds from TacCom and all the individual mechs.

Morrigan and I have done this enough times that she knows my preferred display layout, but she holds back, allowing me to pull off the virtual displays on my peripheral vision. There's an odd sort of intimacy to it, her letting me take charge like this.

God-knows how many tons of metal and ceramic and miles and miles of wire and optic fiber and see waits eagerly for me to start the playback sim. She wants to show off. She wants me to assess the actions of her and her pilot and tell them they did well.

Other engineers, few as we are, have mentioned similar experiences with their assigned machines.

“Alright,” I whisper so that only she can hear. “Show me the dance. Sing me the song.”

[lucerocosplay]

Shohki Mask Cover

construction notes & photos under the cut

This has been a long time coming! I'm glad she's a costume I can work a mask into without it breaking the design of the character. I feel like people would be less inclined to ask that you remove it for photos this way ^^;

I went with a very thin cotton gauze fabric (#9 "coffee" if you're wondering), think a slightly thicker cheese cloth. It's very breathable as a single layer and seemed the best choice for an N95 cover. The shape was really only achievable with this fabric because of the shape of my mask underneath, and some strategically placed 1/2" wide horsehair braid tubing from the dollar tree. I usually stock up around halloween but they stock around christmas too!

Process is very straight forward, just traced my mask on the fold and made some rough adjustments for a card stock mock up. I like 90-110 lbs for this sort of thing but construction paper can work in a pinch too. Cut that out and fit to my face, tweaked the placement on the nose bridge and added a 1/4" allowance for bias tape/facing, and appropriate allowance for flat felled seams.

The ear tab was extended to cover the mask underneath, and included allowance for support fabric (denim scrap in my case) to support two eyelets intended to thread the elastic of my mask through. Then it was just patterning out the rest of the mask elements and making note of seam allowance and how to cut each piece. I trimmed the tape holding together the card stock mask apart and finally got to cutting out the fabric once that was done.

There isn't anything fancy going on, the hardest part was just the inset mesh panel over the weirdly shaped keyhole cut outs on the mouth piece. It's just black nylon mesh typically used for interfacing bras sewn on after making the keyholes.

This fabric is like if toilet paper were a textile, which is great for breatheability and weight but absolutely hell for machine work like this. It's not for a competition so for me, hiding messy stitching with weathering later was ok.

The portion of the mask running from the underside of each ear tab was finished with homemade bias tape. The same method was used for finishing the top portion that runs over the bridge of my nose. The ends were simply folded and sewn down at the ear tabs for a clean finish.

The side "filters" have an extra 1/2" long extension so I can tack in the ends of some horse hair tubing, then double fold the fabric back into itself before hand tacking with tiny stitches from the outside. That helps the light fabric balloon out into that shape, along with another layer of that same mesh interfacing.

They are really fun actually, very floppy with great movement. Though they stick out a tad too much so I did add one small french tack to the center of each to help them point downwards but retain that movement. The "filter" took the most hand finishing out of the whole thing, but that was to be expected.

Once the little side "filters" were sewn in, there was just light weathering to do. I wanted to add some shadows and potential "mold spores" to certain areas to really make the texture pop and hide some messy stitching. Light passes with a dry brush and some acrylic helped a lot, so did referencing photos of mold growth on clothes.

It was a pass of burnt sienna along all seams and large patches where high humidity would accumulate. Then another lighter pass of burnt umber to deepen up areas, and some very sparse areas of white. Finally I wanted to give it the "blue cheese special" and mixed a little viridian green and that same white and hit the white areas first then dry brushed the spaces between mold patches. I'm trying to replicate active mold colonies so reference photos came in handy here. I also used some nail polish to match the grommets to fabric.

Maybe when I am not crunched for time I will get around to digitizing the pattern, but for now I hope the photos help anyone else trying to plan out a mask. Obviously the shape will change a lot depending on the sort of fabric and mask you have on under it, not to mention face shape. I would imagine bifolds would give you more her classic feed bag profile than an origami style mask, however.

[mindblowingscience]

A new material that moves like skin while preserving signal strength in electronics could enable the development of next-generation wearable devices with continuous, consistent wireless and battery-free functionality, researchers report. The researchers developed the material by embedding clusters of highly dielectric ceramic nanoparticles into an elastic polymer. The material was reverse-engineered to not only mimic skin elasticity and motion types, but also to adjust its dielectric properties to counter the disruptive effects of motion on interfacing electronics, minimize energy loss, and dissipate heat.

Continue Reading.

[anarcho-physicist]

i helped* write a new physics textbook and it has a cool (and free) website: softmatterbook.online

*a little bit. The vast majority of the book was written by van Saarloos, Vitelli, and Zeravcic, but a whole bunch of people contributed little bits of writing (myself included) and are credited in the preface.

This book is an accumulation of some of the most fundamental results in soft matter physics, many of which were first discovered or derived very recently. The website hosts a bunch of extra resources (videos, notes, demos, etc.) sorted by the chapters of the book:

Fluid Dynamics

Elasticity

Brownian Motion

Colloids

Polymers

Liquid Crystals

Interfaces, Surfaces, & Membranes

Pattern Formation out of Equilibrium

Active Matter

From Designing Matter to Mimicking Life

It also lists a whole bunch of labs all around the world that are studying the sorts of systems described in the book, as well as mailing lists you can sign up for, conferences, workshops, youtube channels, and software packages. I'm absolutely biased (see below) but I think it's a really great resource for anybody interested in soft matter!

I spent the first year of my PhD helping to put this thing together. I translated research papers into problems, hunted for typos, and wrote most of the solutions in the instructor's manual. I don't make any money off the book sales (my PI told me they made it available for as cheap of a price as the publisher would allow), but my PhD stipend was funded for the year to work on this thing instead of having to TA.

I was ridiculously lucky to get the chance to work on this thing, even if at times it felt like learning how the academic sausage gets made.

[fuckyeahfluiddynamics]

Water Jumping Hoops

Small creatures like springtails and spiders can jump off the air-water interface using surface tension. But larger creatures can water-jump, too, using drag. Here, researchers study drag-based water jumping with a simple elastic hoop.  (Image and research credit: H. Jeong et al.) Read the full article

[sleepycatmama]

I really wish I understood and was competent at making modern daily clothing. I'm ok with sewing for quilting, or making SCA tunics and shifts and such, but the modern tissue paper pattern is an intimidating mystery to me. (All this weird stuff with elastic and interfacing - I just want a nice simple dress or blouse!) And what's worst is that I don't really have any way to get practice, because I can't find patterns that a) fit me and b) are designed for woven fabric, not knit, which is all I know how to sew and what I want to use.

[six-costume-refs]

Do you know if you can buy the ankle straps the queens wear on their boots?

Hey!

You can't buy them directly, unless you're able to find someone you can commission for just the straps. But you can make a set yourself pretty easily!! Here's what you'd need to do: - The base material. Six used to use the same leather as the base of their boot, but they've since switched to a suede to hold the crystals more easily. You could use a suede, leather or faux leather, or even a felt. Do note that you'll want to make sure you choose a material that allows you to punch holes for your buckle, and you definitely won't want something stretchy. - You'll also need some sort of interfacing. The interfacing depends on the material you want to get, but I'd suggest something decently thick but still flexible. Off the top of my head without any sort of actual samples in front of me, I'd suggest a Pellon 809 or similar (that's for the US, unfortunately I'm not sure on international availability). - And of course, buy a small set of buckles (Six's are ~1.5cm/5/8", but you could also use 1/2 or 3/4") + small black ribbon or elastic for their loop. - To get your measurements you'd measure the circumference of your ankle with the boot on, and choose where you wish the straps to start from there. You can make a basic pattern using that length measurement, a width of about 4.5 or 5cm/~1.75-2" for the main wider section (use your crystals to determine this too), and then make sure your smaller ends fit into your buckles. - From there, sew together your straps and add a hole through which to buckle on your strap once they're added. - The only things left now are to embellish the strap (which I'm assuming you already know how to do from the heels), attach the strap (you can sew, glue, or even add snaps), and attach the buckles.

And voila! Your very own straps.

[vampire-meta-knight]

Goth DIY: Altered Clothing part 2 (final part)

Part 1

This part will be shorter since we have less to cover. But it's still a long post, so I'm putting it under a cut.

Skirts and dresses! The last two dresses and green skirt took the most sewing, but the first dress was as simple as sewing studs on the neckline. The black velvet skirt was altered a bit more to fit me, as it was originally a skirt that had small pleats at the top that made the skirt cling to my stomach and flare out further down, which wasn't flattering on me, so I cut that part off and added a new waistband to get a circle miniskirt, then added lace trim to the hem for extra cuteness and a fancy touch.

Attaching skirts to a crop top is an easy way to make a dress if you don't want to sew one from scratch, but the waistlines did turn out a little wonky, so I use a belt or cardigan to hide that. I also sew a thin line of elastic onto the skirts to gather them before sewing them to the top to make it a little easier and to maintain stretch, since these dresses just pull on. I also don't hang them by the tops, but by draping them through a hanger to avoid stretching out the tops because the skirts are a little heavy (at least mine are, since I added so much to them).

For the green skirt, I added triangular inserts called "godets" to make the skirt flare out, since it was too tight before and didn't swish. I like a good swish.

The skirt with all the lace and pins and grommets and nonsense was one of my earlier projects, so it has three mistakes which I implore you to avoid. One: I didn't line the fabric loops up with the waistband very well, so they look crudely tacked-on. Two: I didn't add any fray check to the holes I made for the grommets, so they stretched out and the grommets are no longer attached to the fabric, just floating there on the ribbon. Three: I didn't stretch the skirt as I sewed on the lace, so now it doesn't stretch in that area; it still fits my waist, but I have to fight with it to get it over my hips. The design is still cute, but I would definitely do it better if I were to make it nowadays.

The half-and-half skirt only has a small alteration, which was actually to make it fit rather than to change how it looked. You see, sometimes you order something online in the same size you always wear from that brand, and sometimes that thing ends up running small and has no stretch. When that happens, when the skirt almost fits you and is just so close to buttoning all the way, get yourself a waistband extender. I made one, but you can also buy them. It's just a piece of elastic with a button on one side and a button hole on the other. Put that on, and BAM! The skirt (or pants) fit you. They won't quite zip up all the way, and it is a noticeable change, so I made a cute lace-covered patch to cover up that alteration so you can't tell I changed anything about it at all.

Now onto the sweaters. I love wearing sweaters in winter, but there seems to be a shortage of goth ones. Nothing a few safety pins and lace trim can't handle! The first three only have safety pins added to them. The coffin ones were done the same way I did my sweatshirts, but this was before I knew about fusible interfacing for appliques, so they got a little wrinkled and don't look as nice. I have a better method now, as detailed in the post I linked. The fabrics were all Halloween fat quarters from Walmart, and I found a picture of a coffin on Google Images as a base to cut out the right shape.

All of these sweaters were thrifted except the two solid black ones with pins--the first one came from Walmart, and the second one was given to me by my mom. Sweaters are plentiful at thrift stores, and they don't even have to be black to be turned into something goth.

That's all of my altered clothing so far, unless there's anything I'm forgetting! Which there easily could be, because I shared about forty garments O-O

I'll share the jewelry I've made next, and then the clothes I've sewn from scratch! This will come sometime in the future, though, because it took awhile to find everything, take pictures of it, and then write about it. And between you and me, I've made a LOOOOOT of jewelry and clothing, so give me some time. As I said in the last post, feel free to message me if you want more detailed instructions or ideas. I'm always happy to help!

Stay crafty!

[20dollarlolita]

Can you believe it? 20dollarlolita Pattern School Step 2!

Only took me a year and a half. For people who don't remember a year and a half ago, we've started a project about learning to sew from patterns. The eventual goal is to help people become proficient enough at reading patterns to be able to tell what's going on in a pattern with instructions in another language, taking a pattern that doesn't fit and resizing it so that it does, and taking a pattern that isn't technically lolita and make it work in lolita fashion.

Step 1 was to make a non-fitted item from a commercial pattern. There were two goals of step 1: first to ensure that everyone was familiar with notches, grainlines, and other pattern markings; second was to give people experience with selecting fabric and trims to help give a non-lolita pattern a more lolita feeling.

For step 2, we're modifying a commercial pajama pants pattern into bloomers. In this step, we're going to become familiar with how to prepare a commercial pattern for modification, to compare pattern size to body size and to use your tape measure to judge added fullness, and how to do some basic flat pattern manipulation to add in style ease. Bloomers are a great first manipulation/fitted project due to the loose fit and the fact that, in most lolita applications, the vast majority of it is under your skirt and therefore invisible.

For this specific sample, I'm going to use Gertie's Harlow Pajama Pants pattern for this. I'm doing this because I bought a commercial pattern from Green Store and then promptly lost it, and these pajama pants are a free download. If you are printing the tiled version on your home computer printer, you only need pages 41-52 and 58-71, which will save you about 40 pages of printing.

I highly recommed doing some research and having a good idea of how long the bloomers you want to make should be, as well as how they are decorated. This is my research board.

You can use any pajama pants pattern that has a casing (elastic or drawstring) at the top, and no zipper. In this case, pants with a looser fit are going to be easier to turn into bloomers. If you like wearing your pants at a certain point on your body, I'd check for pajama pants that are at that waistline. The pants that I'm using are designed to sit at your natural waist, which might be too high for some people.

Your first step is to assemble and fortify your pattern. If you're printing this on copy paper, it's going to be strong enough, provided you use enough tape when tiling your pattern. If you're using a tissue paper pattern, like the kind you'd buy at the craft store, it helps to fuse some inexpensive interfacing onto the back of the pattern. We're going to work with these patterns a lot, so it's important to make them a little bit stronger.

Now, you are going to need to go into your pattern instructions and find two important things. The first is your overall seam allowance. In most commercial patterns, this is 5/8 of an inch. Some other patterns might have different seam allowance.

The second is how big your elastic casing at the top will be. In this case, my seam allowance is 5/8" of an inch. Because my hem casing is .25"+1.25" (the amount you turn up plus them amount you turn up the second time), I know that my elastic casing will take up 1.5".

You're now going to mark on your pattern what the stitching line is. Your pattern has seam allowance included. This is very useful for when you cut out the pattern. However, if we take our pattern measurements with seam allowance, we won't have accurate numbers. So we have to clarify where the seam allowance is.

The first thing that I do (not pictured) is to write how much I'm removing along each line. In this case, I write 5/8" along the side and crotch seams, and "1+1/2" at the top where the casing is. Since we're going to drastically shorten these pants, it doesn't matter what the hem allowance is.

Then, I take my ruler, and I mark my stitching line. I do it in pencil, check that I'm correct, and then go back and re-draw it with a red marker. This helps me make sure that I'm following the correct lines.

Make sure you transfer your notches onto your new stitching line. You can see in the picture above how I'm using the ruler to measure where the notch is going to go.

The next step, walking the pattern, is a little tricky to explain. Here's a post that goes into it in great detail.

Basically, you're going to overlap the seam lines, to make sure they line up. The only problem with doing this is that both seam lines are curved. So, instead of lining it all up at once, you're going to go about an inch at a time, letting the pattern rotate so that it stays flat on the table. At any given point, you're only going to have an inch or so of the line overlapping, but that's all you need. If you run into notches that don't line up, cross one out and re-draw it so that it matches the other notch.

If this seems really complicated, you don't really need to do that on this project. It just is a good practice to have.

So you now should have a pattern with all the commercial markings, but where you've drawn the stitching line.

So now, you're going to put your two pieces together along the outseam. Since this is a pretty straight part of a pajama pant, it shouldn't be too difficult to get them to line up. Remember to overlap them on your stitching line, and not on the edge of the pattern.

We're putting them together so that you can measure them both at the same time. it saves us some math.

In bloomers, there are three major measurements to take into consideration. You need to know how big you want the leg to be, how big you want the booty to be, and how long you want the leg of the bloomer to be. In addition, you need to make sure that the waist of your pants will be big enough to fit your waist. In most pajama pants patterns, this isn't a problem, but checking it is good practice.

So, in this picture, you can see that I've measured the cuff of the pants. These two pieces together make up one pant leg, so I just need to measure the two pieces to know how big the pant leg will be.

I then take my tape measure and hold it around my leg at the same size that the pattern is at that point. I just use my eyes and judge if I think that'll be enough room to make my bloomers nice and poofy.

If your pattern doesn't tell you your hip line (mine didn't), it's usually at the point where the two notches on the crotch curve are. One of the reasons why we're doing this on a commercial pattern is that someone did the work for us and put those notches where they should be.

Now, remember, these two pieces are only half of the pant pattern. When we measure the hips of the pattern, we have to multiply this measurement by 2. Half the hip measurement x 2 is the full hip measurement.

Once again, hold this out next to your body and make sure that you like how much fullness you need. Remember that, in addition to having extra fullness because bloomers are poofy, you need room to be able to move and sit down. This measure between the size of my body and the size of the pattern looked pretty good to me. I could definitely have gone a little bit bigger.

The pant leg measurement is okay to be a little bit too long. You can always make it shorter. However, feel free to chop about 18" off the bottom of a full length pant leg. This just makes things a little easier.

Now, we're going to move the two pattern pieces until they're the size we like. If both the hip measurement and the leg measurement are too small, we're going to move both pattern pieces apart. To turn pajama pants into bloomers, this is likely to be the most common adjustment.

If the hip measurement is pretty okay, but the cuff measurement is too small, you're just going to move the bottom part of the pattern apart.

You'll notice that this is still enlarging the hip measurement a little bit. This is fine for bloomers since the style is for a lot of fullness in that area.

And if your cuff is the correct size, but your hip measure is too big, you can keep the cuff size the same and move the hip line apart until it's the size you want.

This technique of lining up the pattern pieces, and then moving them until they're the size you want, is the basics of flat patterning. As long as you follow the philosophy of keeping the measurements you like roughly the same, and moving the areas that you don't like until they measure what you need, you can easily resize a pattern without having to re-draw everything.

If you had to spread your pieces apart, tape some paper underneath the gap. This piece of paper should bridge the gap between the two pieces, turning them into one piece. Really quickly double-check that these pieces measure how you want. Then, mark a line in the middle of the paper bridge. Draw your notches onto the cut line. Cut the two pieces apart on that line. You've now made both pieces bigger. Tape another little piece of paper onto the cut edge of each piece, mark out your seam allowance, and cut that off.

Bonus points: swap the position of the pattern pieces, so that the crotch curve is one continuous line. Measure the length of that. Then, hold your tape measure along where the crotch curve of your pants will fit, and make sure that you have clearance there. I'm not going to photograph that, andi t's not super necessary with most pajama patterns.

Go ahead and cut your pieces out.Even though I'd shortened the pattern, mine were still too long to fit on a 2-yard cut of fabric. Since I knew that my pants were a little long, I just let the end hang off the edge of the fabric.

Here's the really magical part about this. Even though you've resized your pattern, you still have all your seam allowance, notches, grainlines, and your pattern instructions. Since you kept all your pattern markings consistent, you can now follow the instructions that came with your pattern. Go up until it tells you to hem the pants, and then try them on.

In my case, my pants were way too long to be bloomers. I knew that I wanted to do a casing with a heading, which does use s pretty big hem allowance, but even so, I'd need to shorten them.

Check out your bloomer research board to see how long you want them to be. I wanted some long ones that did the old-school bloomer peek, so I made them on the longer side. I also didn't want them to ride up into my butt when sitting in a wheelchair.

So, time to fold up the bottoms, add my elastic, and call the basic construction finished.

I looked up on my research board to try to find a good way to decorate these. One of the nice things about bloomers is that you can wear them with a wide variety of coords. This makes them one of those items where you can add some extra lace, and then use that lace in multiple coords. I feel like, since these bloomers are a good way of adding detail in multiple coords, it's a good excuse to add a little bit extra lace. You can see how much of a difference it makes in this picture. It really turns them from baggy shorts into real bloomers. I really recommend sometimes investing in a couple of big purchases of lace. If you have lots of lace on hand, you're more likely to include it in your projects, which can really help push a meh project into proper lolita fashion territory. I have a rule that I don't spend more than $1.50 a yard on lace unless it's really fantastic, and I manage to find things at that point on Aliexpress and sites like Cheeptrims.

Now go on and let them peek out of your favorite skirt. And remember, definitely don't press that skirt before putting this picture in your tutorial.

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Wearable devices get signal boost from new material

A new material that moves like skin while preserving signal strength in electronics could enable the development of next-generation wearable devices with continuous, consistent wireless and battery-free functionality. According to a study published today in Nature, an international team of researchers from Rice University and Hanyang University developed the material by embedding clusters of highly dielectric ceramic nanoparticles into an elastic polymer. The material was reverse-engineered to not only mimic skin elasticity and motion types, but also to adjust its dielectric properties to counter the disruptive effects of motion on interfacing electronics, minimize energy loss and dissipate heat. "Our team was able to combine simulations and experiments to understand how to design a material that can seamlessly deform like skin and change the way electrical charges distribute inside it when it is stretched so as to stabilize radio-frequency communication," said Raudel Avila , assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Rice and a lead author on the study.

Read more.

[crowsbeak-cos]

Fizzarolli update!!

Here's where I'm at on the tunic-

The main body of the tunic is about done, all I really need to do is make and put the mint bias tape on the hem

I do need to seam rip the armholes, I'm going to be attaching the lime green puff sleeves to the tunic itself instead of my initial plan (more info on that under the cut)

I'M ALMOST DONE RHINESTONING!!! All I have left to do will be the little bit around the hem, which i can't actually do until I get basically everything else done with the tunic- though I might put a few rhinestones at the shoulder area for some extra sparkle

I'm no longer doing the stripes of the sleeves and the pants out of the same cotton of the tunic- I'm planning to make them out of a custom-print stretch fabric, both for comfort and easy wear. I'm still going to rhinestone the hell out of them, but those are waiting until I can afford to get that fabric printed.

But the puff sleeves. My god do I have info for you about those

SO see these fuckin things

yeah they're kind of a pain in the ass to make- here's what I've got:

Since I'm getting that striped fabric custom printed on stretch, the lime section of the sleeves need to be attached to the tunic instead of worn underneath like I originally planned. I do think it'll look a lot nicer this way, and I won't have to add in as many weirdly placed snaps to keep everything in place.

If you've ever sewn sleeves before, you know that generally puff sleeves aren't all that bad, you just need to make sure you don't do any weird fancy shit. But because Fizz. Is Fizz, I get to do fancy shit (yayyyyy)

First off (and what I have done), those hearts. They're separate pieced I backed with interfacing and appliqued on, using a pretty tight zigzag stitch to try and limit fraying. Then of course, the rhinestones get individually glued on-

You can see the tight zigzag i did (Yes, lighting is shit, it was like eleven pm when i took these sh), you can also see that my machine has been having weird tension issues for a bit that are causing a little bit of puckering. I'm not super worried about on these since they are puff sleeves, but hopefully I can figure out wtf is causing that sooner than later.

Since the combo of applique/glue/rhinestones adds a fair bit of weight to the sleeves, I'm a little worried about them collapsing on me? They're going to be lined, so I'm hoping that helps support the weight. If that doesn't work, I'll add in a really thin interfacing inside to help keep them puffy.

I also need to figure out how I'm going to do the cuffs on these- Usually when i do puff sleeves I don't line them, but with the layers I'm putting underneath and hopefully making this competition quality I'm putting in that lining. I'm trying to limit as much visible topstitching as possible, so I don't think I can do the elastic cuff I was planning to do? i might do a thin black cuff (similar to what's at the elbows on the striped part of the sleeves?) and rhinestone that to hide my seams. It won't be screen accurate, but we're fighting cartoon physics with this one and need to adjust for how clothes actually fit and move. As long as I'm able to make it blend with the rest of the cosplay I'm not super worried about it .

Once I have everything on the tunic done, I'll be giving another update on this whole Fizzarolli nightmare- the goal is to at least have the tunic done before I hit the one year mark of making this shiny clown <3

[bomberqueen17]

car organizer

So I wanted to make myself the kind of organizer that hangs over the back of your car seat to hold your stuff, to keep the things that ought to stay in my car in, because with my old car, I hauled so much cargo and loaded and unloaded the thing so often and wound up with so much random junk in there that I lost my tire inflator, foldable shovel, and most of the rest of it. I thought, if I just attach those to the back of one of the front seats then it doesn't matter what I do with the car, if I'm hauling baby chicks or small humans, passengers or cargo or what, I don't have to worry.

I shopped around but I didn't see anything like what I wanted, so I went down in the basement and poked around.

Thus follows not exactly a tutorial, but a description of my thought process. This took forever but if I had to do it again I could do it faster, I think.

I had a weird but perfectly-sized rectangle of heavy-duty polyester canvas (twice as long as I needed, but exactly as wide, so I could use it double thickness), some suit interfacing, and then several yards of an all-plastic but beautiful brocade I bought from Jo-Ann's back when I didn't know how to shop for fabric.

So I bought myself a new tire inflator and folding shovel, and then measured the jump-start powerbank I already own, and made pockets exactly sized for those three things. I also guesstimated a pocket for my motley collection of ratchet straps. And then I laid those out on the bit of canvas, and figured I had room for a wide short pocket across the top-- gathered the bottom, and put a channel at the top and pulled elastic through, then sewed two seams down it to hold it into three separate pockets.

I did french seams on the first square pocket then realized that made it too small so I had to piece a little extension around the back of it. Then I realized that all-plastic brocade ravels horribly... unless you run a lighter along all the cut edges. Bickety-bam instant selvege. So I melted the edges of all the rest of my fabric, and no more French seams means no more excessive seam allowances.

(I didn't exactly follow this method but I did find a good tutorial here for how to make a cargo pocket. It might have worked better than what i did, LOL. I only made one pocket pleated, and one gathered, the others I tried mostly to make to size.)

[image description: a black panel of canvas lies on a table, with three pockets made of brown/black/gold polyester brocade lying atop it, chalked around like crime scene bodies.]

Laid them out, traced with chalk, futzed with the placement. Realized I didn't have to center that top one, and if I off-set it, I could fit the ratchet strap pocket next to it.

Attached the pockets to the canvas, then spray-adhesived the interfacing to the back, then folded the canvas in half, sewed it right sides together leaving one short side open, turned it right-side out, gingerly ironed it (everything is plastic). I had some of those huge thick plastic strips they seal around big boxes sometimes in the garbage in the basement so I pulled those out, carefully ironed them flat under a press cloth, and then cut lengths of them-- it was heavy-duty stuff, I think a dehumidifier had come in the package, solid plastic an inch wide-- and used those as horizontal boning at the bottom, middle, and top, securing in place with a line of stitching above and below wherever there weren't pockets. The top, I closed up by just folding the front over the back; it was the selvedge edge, so I left that raw, and zig-zagged it shut with the piece of "boning" inside, then pushed the boning up against the seam with my fingers and sewed the other side of the channel with a straight stitch.

I could not for the life of me figure out how to measure the straps. so i went out and sat in my car with a lighter, scissors, needle, thread, a pair of old shoelaces, a length of 2" wide elastic torn out of an unsuccessful earlier make (i have a roll of the stuff... at the farm, not here), and a length of heavy-duty twill tape I don't know where I got.

I held the organizer up to the seat, safety-pinned the twill tape to the top, threaded it around the headrest, safety-pinned it to the other side. Decided it needed more support, as the upper corners wanted to flop. Used a drawstring threader to pull the shoelace through the flap at the bottom of the seat, where all the cabling for the heated seat is stored-- there's upholstery covering it, open at both sides, so I threaded the shoelace through that, just to pull the whole shebang in taut against the seat instead of letting it swing freely into the knees of whoever might sit back there. Sewed it down on one side, safety-pinned it to the other. Cut the shoelace off, then sewed the remnant to one upper extreme corner, wrapped it past the headset, safety-pinned it to the other side. Finally took the 2" wide elastic, sewed it firmly down on one side, passed it around the seat, measured it, then passed it behind the seat to sew it down un-stretched to the other side, then put it on properly. So the non-stretch fasteners are only sewed on one side, and can be unpinned on the other if I need to take the thing off.

Then I loaded it up with stuff.

[Image description: the rear of a car driver's seat, taken from the rear seat behind it, with an organizer hanging from the headrest, brocade pockets stuffed full of objects. There's a green object hanging from a keychain at the top left-- it is a folding knife patterned to look like a leaf.]

Now the things that ought to just always be in my car can (mostly) just always be there. I should check that the tire inflator works, and I should periodically charge up the jump pack, but I already checked if the foldable shovel works (it does), and I carefully bundled up the ratchet straps into bags I made out of the cuffs of old crew socks, which sewn shut where I cut the threadbare foot off make perfectly-sized padded stretchy storage bags for light duty ratchet straps.

Top left to bottom right, it's got:

Ratty old work gloves, a clipped-on keychain with a decorative rosary and a functional folding knife, a sock-cuff bag containing a multitool screw driver, a little baggie of tampons, and some Kleenex The tire inflator kit, the jump pack kit three ratchet straps, a folding shovel multitool thingy, and a bag of toiletries with spare socks, chapstick, hand cream, a travel toothbrush and dry toothpaste kit, and a couple other things-- most of it is shit that was handed out the one time I flew business class on Icelandair.

Then, to the right, around my center console, I took a vintage like circa 2004 Old Navy nylon drawstring backpack, threaded those heavy-duty twist tie things they use to close disposable coffee bags through the drawstring bit of the mouth to keep it open, sewed some of the twill tape to the top, and added a magnetic catch to hold a plastic bag in place. The magnetic catch didn't do enough so I have some half-broken old hair clips holding the plastic bag in better position: that's now my car's trash bag, and the backpack's two tiny zippered pockets hold spare plastic bags.

Now the last thing I want to do is to get some hooks to hang from the passenger headrest, and get loops attached to my snow brush and squeegee, and hang those from the hooks, because otherwise they are always scattered around the floor of my car in the way of whatever I want to do.

Anyway. Ready for the inaugural road trip Sunday, when I drive back to the farm.

[origami10]

So you know how artists have, like, mediums that they're proficient in? I think my cosplay mediums are interfacing, elastic, Goodwill, and the sewing machine. I think I could make just about anything with them.

[embroidery-pro]

Your Comprehensive Guide to Successful Sewing

Guide to Successful Sewing

Whether you're a beginner just starting your sewing journey or an experienced seamstress looking to refine your skills, the Guidelines offer a wealth of knowledge to help you succeed in your sewing projects. This comprehensive collection of educational articles covers all aspects of sewing, from basic techniques to advanced methods. Exploring the Guidelines The Guidelines are organized into various categories, each focusing on different aspects of sewing. Let's take a closer look at what you can find:     1 - Sewing Tools   Basic Tools   Sewing Tools   More Sewing Tools   Mats for Rotary Cutters   Rotary Mat Q&A   Scissors and Shears   Rotary Cutters   Measuring Tools   Marking Tools   Tube Turners Part 1   Tube Turners Part 2 2 - Equipment   Setting Up a Sewing Room   Sewing Machine Basics   Buying a Sewing Machine   Pressing Equipment   Ironing Boards   Sergers   Presses & Home Pressing Systems   Serger Stitches   Computerized Sewing Machines 3 - Understanding Patterns   Pattern Markings Part 1   Pattern Markings Part 2 4 - Fabric   The Right Fabric   Preparing to Sew - Fabric and Pattern Preparation   Cotton   Identifying Fibers & Fabrics   Denim - More Than Just Jeans   Napped Fabrics   Unconventional Fabric Sources   Straightening Fabric Grain   Sewing with Knits   Working with Napped Fabrics   Wool   Slick Tricks: Laminated Fabrics and Vinyls   Sewing with Handwovens   Identifying Plaids   Sewing with Minkee-like Fabrics 5 -Linings & Interfacings   Interfacing 101 6 - Notions   Button, Button   Pins   Invisible Thread   Elastic - the Notion that Gives   Selecting Snaps   Bindings & Tapes   Using Bias Tape   Rick Rack 7 - Home Dec   Bed Coverings   Drapery Types   Table Treatments: Tablecloths   Table Treatments: Placemats, Napkins and Runners   Decorating with Quilts 8 - Home Dec How To   Pillows   Fabric Napkins   Covering a Lampshade with Fabric   Making Rod Pocket Curtains   Tab Top Curtains   Making a Shower Curtain   Covering a Bench Top   Tassels 9 - Quilting   Quilting Tools   Quilting Terms   Notions for Quilters   Pre-Cut Quilting Fabrics   Quilting Rulers   Quilting Designs   Making Bias and Bias Binding   Binding a Quilt   Prairie Points   Yo-Yos   Seminole Piecing

10 -  Fashion/Apparel

  Body Types   Clothing Care and Repair 11 - General How-To   Pressing Pants   Simple Seaming Techniques   Seam Finishes Part 1   Fold-Down Casings   Simple Hems   Staystitching   Easing, Gathering & Shirring   Working with Fold-over Elastic   Applied Casings   Twin-Needle Sewing   Seam Finishes Part 2   Ruffles   Working with Stripes   Piping   Princess Seams   Flat Fell Seams   Bound and Hong Kong Seam Finishes   Beading Part 1   Beading Part 2 12 - Garment How-To   Attaching Buttons   Easy Waistband Casings   Centered Zipper   Button Loops   Covered Buttons   Understitching   Dart Basics   Topstitching   Shirt Collar Pointers   Read the full article

[teras-art]

I've been bouncing between projects lately, working on things here and there and then working on something else.  I haven't had much to post.

I did finish one of the projects though, and here it is!  I have admired the Killstar Sickly Sweet Waistbag for a while, but it has unfortunately been sold out the entire time I've admired it.  So, I've had it in the back of my mind that I might try to make a waist bag with bat wings myself.

I used this free pattern as my base.  I free-hand drew pattern pieces for the wings, which I attached to the front piece of the bag in the same way I attached the straps to the back piece of the bag.  I probably should have added some more interfacing in the wings, I don't know how well they will stand up on their own, but they don't immediately wilt, which I will take as a victory.

I also wound up adding an inside zipped pocket to the back and a small eyelet hole, because I have intentions of using this when I walk my dog and that would be a nice spot for dog waste bags.  It would also work well for a power block and cord at events that allow small bags.

Two of the three zippers I used were from previous items I had altered.  One was a side zipper for a skirt I wound up taking apart and adding an elastic waistband to.  One was part of a removable cover to my dog's little stairs to get on the couch.  She really didn't like the little stairs compared to another ramp I have for her, so I wound up taking the cover off and making the stairs into a ramp myself rather than buy a new, expensive, ramp.  The good news is that my dog loves and uses the ramp and I got fuzzy scrap fabric with a huge zipper out of it.  It was a double zipper, too, so I actually managed to use it on two projects.

The way I attached the straps is a little wonky, but no one will really see that part of the bag.  For the most part, everything seems sturdy!

[doll-princesse]

Molly's clown outfit from a while back is so cute and whimsical. What was your inspiration and thought process going in? Also, would you mind sharing the pattern for it? What sort of places do you recommend to get patterns from in general? Thank you so much

Thank you for the kind words!

Last April, I attended a lecture on the philosophy of clowning. It was all about finding joy and whimsy in life, stomping out seriousness, that sort of thing. So that was my inspiration!

For inspiration, I looked at both actual clown outfits, clown dolls, historical clowns/ pierrots/ jesters, and modern Halloween costumes. There’s lots of different areas to draw inspiration from, but for my first clown outfit, I decided to keep it simple. I went with the most basic harlequin color block style. Normally it’s a onesie, but I was into making separates at the time and didn’t have time to draft a whole new pattern.

My fabric choices were guided by what Joanns had in stock. I wanted polka dots and very colorful/ 90’s kidcore/ rainbow aesthetic. I wound up with two teal and white polka dot fat quarters, a half yard of a rainbow print, a roll of rainbow baby rick rack, and two kinds of narrow polka dot grosgrain ribbons.

I also used stash materials including red bias tape, narrow teal ribbons, solid red grosgrain ribbon and baby rick rack, white cotton fabric, red buttons, lightweight interfacing, and variegated thread.

For patterns, you don’t need any specific one. As long as you have a basic dress pattern with a puff sleeve, and a bloomer pattern, you can hack it into Mollypop’s clown separates :)

I used:

basic dress bodice, lengthened to shirt length. (Do NOT cut bodice front on the fold. Add a seam allowance at the center front to allow for splicing together the two different fabrics).

Long puffed sleeves— short ones can also be lengthened. One of each fabric. These were hemmed, trimmed with rick rack, and gathered with elastic.

A bloomers pattern and rectangular waistband to make the puffy pants. The pant legs were also hemmed and trimmed with rick rack. Then they got an external casing from red ribbon to run elastic through. Gathered top to the waistband, put a snap at center back to close.

To make the neck ruffle, I trimmed a white rectangle with more rick rack, then gathered it. Then I bound the neckline with a bit of bias cut polka dot. Another piece of red ribbon was used as a sash.

I drafted her hat from a cone. Any witch hat pattern could be used instead. I took inspiration from the “brimless” witch hats in the manga Witch Hat Atelier.

Her braids got wire braided in, just like I saw done in my sister’s school play when we were kids.

Lastly, her big smiley face sticker is from a real clown at a clown event I attended at the university :)

I need to reblog to talk about patterns, b/c I’ve hit the post limit :(

TBC in reblogs