Round 56, Hour 20

[lolmac]

Another hour has come and gone.  How are the words coming?  Are they just trotting up briskly, ambling lazily, or running away and hiding in dark corners?

Comments

[smallearthcat.livejournal.com]

Things are still coming along alright here. I've reached 2900 words, but things are starting to slow down a little since I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with the story at this point.

[lolmac]

Best of luck! When you reach this kind of point, do you switch projects, or take a break, or keep on plugging?

[smallearthcat.livejournal.com]

Kind of depends, really. I don't usually switch projects unless I have something I'm in the middle of and think I can make more headway on. In this case, I figured I'd take a break and think it through a little and wound up taking a nap. But I also figured out where I wanted to go with it, so...

[lolmac]

Excellent! A visit from the Nap Muse!

[justice-turtle.livejournal.com]

I'm trimming a pattern. I haven't trimmed a human-size pattern on tissue paper in ages. They are large and unwieldy. But I prefer it over attempting to draft a circle-skirt pattern off my own butt, because that absolutely never goes well. ;P

[lolmac]

By 'trimming', I take it you mean unfolding it and separating the individual pieces so you can lay it out on the fabric?

[justice-turtle.livejournal.com]

Yeah - unfolding it, cutting out each individual piece (well, the ones I'm gonna use) juuust outside the outermost lines like a paper doll, and getting ready to lay it out on the fabric. That... is how one does the thing, right?

(This is going to be another one of those moments like when my aunt had to explain the concept of a dishpan to me the other day, isn't it? ;P)

[lolmac]

You don't actually have to trim the pattern closely before its first use. (Yeah, now I tell you, right?)

As long as the pieces are separate from each other, [ETA: and ironed. Iron the creases out!] and any really huge bits of empty space are whacked off, you can lay them out on the fabric, ignoring the extra tissue entirely, and then cut through both fabric and tissue at the same time when you cut out the pattern pieces. You end up with pattern pieces that are entirely trimmed, and you throw away extraneous tissue bits at that point.

Another pro tip: I don't cut around the notches (which is a real awkward PITA). I cut them right through following the line of the edge, and then either mark the fabric at that point with a fabric pencil, or else snip a quarter of an inch into it where the points of the notches would have been. One clip or pencil mark for a single notch, two for a double, three for a triple. You then match the snips or the marks the same way you match notches. This one small trick saves more time and grief and cramped hands!

(Additional pro tip: three notches should mark your center back, two notches should mark the sides, in general. Double and triple notches exist to differentiate easily from singles. A sleeve cap should always have a single notch on the front curve and a double notch on the back curve.)

[justice-turtle.livejournal.com]

So it doesn't blunt your good sewing scissors to cut through the tissue paper? (Oh, is that why the stuff is so plaguey thin?!)

I take it one also cuts to the actual size line one plans to use, then, rather than cut to the outermost line and then use awkward complicated folding of the paper pattern to get something that is almost but not quite entirely unlike the correct fit. ;P