#hand in the pants

[endlich-allein]

The Odgen Theartre, Denver, CO. 05/01/1998 © 2_wilde

[muffinlance]

My baby daughter got her adorable puffin-print dress absolutely CAKED in mud crawling around the yard and my first thought was "oh no her beautiful dress"

And my second thought was "oh huh it really WOULD be easy to unconsciously steer her away from playing in the dirt. Unlike my son, whose outfits are usually some kind of solid dark easily washed pants plus a shirt that doesn't trail in the dirt like a dress does."

Anyway something something gender roles start getting shoved on kids from literal birth, but with a little time to think about things, YOU TOO can let your children of any gender absolutely destroy their clothes in the dirt pit they're digging in your garden

[bumblebeebats]

"Don't just throw ripped jeans away, you can repair them using these 10 cute Visible Mending techniques!!" unfortunately my friend the first point of failure for every single pair of jeans i have owned in my life has been the Crotch and Ass. Knees: fine, cuffs: fine; but 3 years in, and all that stands between the world and my astronaut-patterned taint is 0.5µm of denim worn so thin that every squat threatens to tear it to shreds like wet toilet paper. If the Tiktok craft community could figure out a way to resurrect jeans afflicted in such a way that doesn't involve adding a whole ass buttpatch like some sort of inverse assless chaps situation then that'd be great

[hinamie]

the new jjk cafe fits have been living in my head . no thoughts except yuuji in a letterman

[crunchchute]

My Sam & Max cosplay I debuted at a local con during the weekend!

[hoofpeet]

Sheep girl who wipes her greasy cheesy chip hands directly on her own wool

[uncanny-tranny]

Once you stop thinking about queer people's labels as strict indications of what's in their pants and who they do/don't bed and instead view queer people's labels as how they interact with the world, you'll find that you'll get along with queer people better and treat them better, I think.

[vinceaddams]

Any tips on learning to make buttonholes? I've been putting it off for.... *checks notes* like three years.... but better late than never and all that. I don't have any fancy machines so I gotta do it by hand but that seems right up your alley.

Thanks!

It IS up my alley, yes, I do most of my buttonholes by hand!

I'm actually part way through filming an 18th century buttonhole tutorial, but I expect it'll be a few more weeks before I finish that and put it on the youtubes, so in the meantime here's the very very short version. (The long version is looking like it'll probably be about 40 minutes maybe, judging by how much script I've written compared to my last video?)

Mark your line, a bit longer than your button is wide. I usually use a graphite mechanical pencil on light fabrics, and a light coloured pencil crayon on dark ones. (I have fabric pencils too, but they're much softer and leave a thicker line.) You may want to baste the layers together around all the marked buttonholes if you're working on something big and the layers are shifty and slippery. I'm not basting here because this is just a pants placket.

Do a little running stitch (or perhaps a running backstitch) in fine thread around the line at the width you want the finished buttonhole to be. This holds the layers of fabric together and acts as a nice little guide for when you do the buttonhole stitches.

Cut along the marked line using a buttonhole cutter, or a woodworking chisel. Glossy magazines are the best surface to put underneath your work as you push down, and you can give it a little tap with a rubber mallet if it's not going through all the way.

I'm aware that there are some people who cut their buttonholes open using seam rippers, and if any of them are reading this please know that that is abhorrent behaviour and I need you to stop it immediately. Stop it.

Go get a buttonhole cutter for 10 bucks and your life will be better for it. Or go to the nearest hardware store and get a little woodworking chisel. This includes machine buttonholes, use the buttonhole cutter on them too. If you continue to cut open buttonholes with a seam ripper after reading this you are personally responsible for at least 3 of the grey hairs on my head.

Do a whipstitch around the cut edges, to help prevent fraying while you work and to keep all those threads out of the way. (For my everyday shirts I usually do a machine buttonhole instead of this step, and then just hand stitch over it, because it's a bit faster and a lot sturdier on the thin fabrics.)

I like to mark out my button locations at this point, because I can mark them through the holes without the buttonhole stitches getting in the way.

For the actual buttonhole stitches it's really nice if you have silk buttonhole twist, but I usually use those little balls of DMC cotton pearl/perle because it's cheap and a good weight. NOT stranded embroidery floss, no separate strands! It's got to be one smooth twisted thing!

Here's a comparison pic between silk buttonhole twist (left) and cotton pearl (right). Both can make nice looking buttonholes, but the silk is a bit nicer to work with and the knots line up more smoothly.

I've actually only used the silk for one garment ever, but am going to try to do it more often on my nicer things. I find the cotton holds up well enough to daily wear though, despite being not ideal. The buttonholes are never the first part of my garments to wear out.

I cut a piece of about one arm's length more or less, depending on the size of buttonhole. For any hole longer than about 4cm I use 2 threads, one to do each side, because the end gets very frayed and scruffy by the time you've put it through the fabric that many times.

I wax about 2cm of the tip (Not the entire thread. I wax the outlining/overcasting thread but not the buttonhole thread itself.) to make it stick in the fabric better when I start off the thread. I don't tend to tie it, I just do a couple of stabstitches or backstitches and it holds well. (I'm generally very thorough with tying off my threads when it comes to hand sewing, but a buttonhole is basically a long row of knots, so it's pretty sturdy.)

Put the needle through underneath, with the tip coming up right along that little outline you sewed earlier. And I personally like to take the ends that are already in my hand and wrap them around the tip of the needle like so, but a lot of people loop the other end up around the other way, so here's a link to a buttonhole video with that method. Try both and see which one you prefer, the resulting knot is the same either way.

Sometimes I can pull the thread from the end near the needle and have the stitch look nice, but often I grab it closer to the base and give it a little wiggle to nestle it into place. This is more necessary with the cotton than it is with the silk.

The knot should be on top of the cut edge of the fabric, not in front of it.

You can put your stitches further apart than I do if you want, they'll still work if they've got little gaps in between them.

Keep going up that edge and when you get to the end you can either flip immediately to the other side and start back down again, or you can do a bar tack. (You can also fan out the stitches around the end if you want, but I don't like to anymore because I think the rectangular ends look nicer.)

Here's a bar tack vs. no bar tack sample. They just make it look more sharp, and they reinforce the ends.

For a bar tack do a few long stitches across the entire end.

And then do buttonhole stitches on top of those long stitches. I also like to snag a tiny bit of the fabric underneath.

Then stick the needle down into the fabric right where you ended that last stitch on the corner of the bar tack, so you don't pull that corner out of shape, and then just go back to making buttonhole stitches down the other side.

Then do the second bar tack once you get back to the end.

To finish off my thread I make it sticky with a bit more beeswax, waxing it as close to the fabric as I can get, and then bring it through to the back and pull it underneath the stitches down one side and trim it off.

In my experience it stays put perfectly well this way without tying it off.

Voila! An beautiful buttonholes!

If you want keyhole ones you can clip or punch a little rounded bit at one end of the cut and fan your stitches out around that and only do the bar tack at one end, like I did on my 1830's dressing gown.

(I won't do that style in my video though, because they're not 18th century.)

Do samples before doing them on a garment! Do as many practice ones as you need to, it takes a while for them to get good! Mine did not look this nice 10 years ago.

Your first one will probably look pretty bad, but your hundredth will be much better!

Edit: Video finished!

And here's the blog post, which is mostly a slightly longer version of this post.

[thedreadvampy]

Losing my shit about this article in which a transphobic Tory was so busy panicking about existing in the vicinity of a Trans that she almost certainly misheard "jeans" as "penis" and decided that not only was this a problem with the other woman, but also that the world must be informed of this pressing danger.

"a trans woman! I had to stand directly behind her....I thought, 'this is going well', I'm handling The Situation fine'..."

translated: I saw a tall woman with broad shoulders. How would I get out of this alive? I thought. she has a PENIS. PENIS PENIS PENIS. through some force of PENIS I mean will I managed to PENIS behave normally towards her. My hands were PENIS PENIS PENIS shaking as I tried to dry them. summoning up all my PENIS courage I said 'dryer's crap innit'. she turned to me and said " yeah I'm just goiPENIS PENIS PENIS"

It's been a week and I'm still shaking. This proves trans women are the problem and I'm not weird. I'm fine. It's fine. If you think about it I'm the hero hePENIS!!!!!

very this

[somereaderinblue]

Ares: What are your goals?

Telemachas: To pet all the dogs.

Ares: No, fitness goals.

Telemachas: To be able to run fast enough to pet all the dogs.

[spacemanspiff0fficial]

They always say if u love smth then let it go 😔 as a long-standing Sidon girlie I was struggling w coming to grips I fear (which ended up not being all that hard to do bc Lady Yona is so cute I love her.......)

Before that happened I did manage to snap some photos mid-fish domestic. In case I had one last fighting chance

[gayafsowhat]

Eepy hours

[sunnibits]

guys you can see the cute little lower back dimples… oh my fucking god……

[beyondthesefourwalls]

🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠

[doctorsiren]

Can you draw reigen ridley

this is what you meant, right?

[crabsnpersimmons]

"Hair dyes or perms or just a quick snip, you can always count on your ol' pal Clip!"

it's about time i officially shared my design for Clip from my hairdresser au! here's the silly boi himself!

a.k.a. the most complicated character i've ever designed...

close ups and additional comments under the cut!

that's my boi, despite his crazy design, i love him. his silly top knot hat, the horn-like points around his faceplate, his speckled colours, his four arms, and his funky pants. he's just soooooo fun.

Clip likes to play games and knit! he even made the patchwork pants he wears (he made Sun and Moon a pair too, but they're too precious for them to wear... also a little gaudy to wear in public—doesn't stop Clip tho!). He actually makes everything the boys wear, since there's not a lot of things in their size/shape.

instead of resting at night, he can be found in their living room, playing Kirby 64 for the nth time and/or knitting something. he's just too restless to stay still, he's always gotta be doing something and if it isn't gaming, knitting, or hairdressing, then he's up to No GoodTM.

Clip... likes popping balloons. he says "Goodnight!" with each popped balloon and once he's done, he tosses up the scraps like confetti all while giggling joyfully.

needless to say, he is not fun at parties. Sun and Moon don't let him near balloons for this reason.

and yes, he has sewing needles on hand at all times. for fashion emergencies... and for unsuspecting balloons.

Clip's not allowed to have a phone (just imagine all the in-app purchases Sun and Moon would have to deal with), but he likes to keep up with his customers and their games, even if he doesn't get their fixation over bluenets he'll never openly admit it but he prefers curly-haired blond hunks that look sweet in soft pastels but could also squash him like the spider he is

also, he's great at microbraiding! though i imagine if Sun and Moon are free, they'd come help to shorten the wait but also to compete and see who braids the most (Clip always wins of course—make anything into a game, and he's winning)

aaaaand there's this! i wanted to make sure Clip would be able to freely rotate his waist so his arms could have their full range of motion, and this was the solution i came up with: a crop top on top and a wrap around his waist. and Clip here is being a sneaky little scamp about it.