Talking Tuesday: The House of Government

I finished Slezkine's House of Government over the weekend, hereafter called HoG.  Some of this post is taken from my original thoughts about it in July, but I've tried to add more context here.  I tape-flagged many passages, particularly in book one (his nearly thousand page tome is divided into several books, each with several chapters, organized by theme and chronology).  

As I wrote previously, Slezkine is at pains to tell the story of Bolshevism as a story of a sectarian religion that overcame the secular authority to establish its own theocracy.  By Slezkine's reckoning, the Bolsheviks were the first revolutionary force to succeed in taking over the State to do so.

Slezkine's epigraph

 Slezkine spends the entirety of chapter three on a long discussion of apocalyptic millenarianism both in the West and elsewhere, from the time of the earliest Christians right up to the present, across different religions and contexts, before tying it all off in a neat bow that places the Bolshevik/Marxist movement of the 19th century into that larger cultural impulse that emerges every so often in the face of major economic or societal change.  

 The urge is to find something better in the face of something terrible or unknown.  Since the Reformation, that urge has manifested itself in a search for a positive form of utopia, which until that point, had a nihilistic connotation.  After the Reformers (rightly called revolutionaries by Slezkine), the concept of utopia acquired the hopeful patina of achieving heaven on earth.  It is not a coincidence that the experience and understanding of time ceases to be a vertical spiral and turns into the hard horizontal line of progress as we understand it today. 

This dovetailed nicely with my re-reading of Laurus in May for a book group, and the subsequent articles by Vodolazkhin the group also read.  The (newly positive) idea of achieving utopia is part of the apocalyptic impulse, and the people who get caught up in these millenarian movements stand ready to use violence and coercion to achieve it.  The violence is a feature, not a bug, and every religious reformer and secular revolutionary have used it to try to achieve a purified state on earth.  

This point was driven home to me after I read an article by Gary Saul Morson on Leninthink, which examines the language Lenin utilized in service of the Bolshevik revolution, and the violence and terror that he openly pursued and engaged as part of the new order.  The thing that struck me about it, was that not only was violence and terror a feature, not a regrettable bug, but Lenin saw its continuance as necessary to the continuance of the Bolshevik state, not just as a means of establishment.  To wit, State-sponsored terror was actually written into the 1936 Soviet constitution because of Lenin's thought on the matter.  It helped me to understand Stalin as the fullness of Lenin's thought rather than someone who took it off the rails.   

 

Building socialism and marching into a rational future.

 Slezkine goes on to detail how the Bolsheviks transitioned from a small exiled sect of true believers in Marxist orthodoxy, to their evangelization campaign (otherwise known as the suppression of the kulaks and forced collectivization), settling into power and feeling the disillusionment that utopia (Slezkine calls this "the real day") had not yet appeared.  It is a reckoning that happens with all apocalyptic millenarian movements: the failure of the end days to arrive.  Each movement deals with this failure differently; for some it is the end of the movement, and mass suicide follows.  Many cults of the 19th and 20th centuries went this way.  Some decide that the end of days should be understood allegorically, and adjust their teaching accordingly, particularly as they become institutionalized (but separate from the ruling apparatus, notably).  Christianity goes this way after Augustine.

 

The original Bolsheviks, the "Old Bolsheviks," as they came to be called, found themselves plagued with ennui and psychological illness after the conclusion of the Civil War.  Revolution had not gone beyond Russia's borders, as confidently predicted, and indeed, was not succeeding in Russia in the way Marx and Lenin had written.  Famine was everywhere due to brutal collectivization in the grain-growing regions of Ukraine and Kazakhstan, plus grain requisitions by the State to fund the massive industrialization effort, and attempts to rationalize architecture of the medieval cities in legible ways (described well by James C. Scott in Seeing Like a State) were stalled or incomplete.  It was The Great Disappointment.

The House of Government.  It is difficult to convey the scale of the place, but it is massive.

 The House of Government itself was part of this re-imaginging of the urban space, and took a staggeringly long time to build.  It was a huge complex on the river across from the Kremlin, with multiple entryways and doors, plazas, and amenities.  It housed thousands of people, plus a laundry, cinemaplex, theatre, gym, hair salon, post office, day care, primary school, medical clinic, social club, grocery store, laundry, cafeteria (to release the women from the drudgery of cooking family meals) and a radio station.  There were 505 apartments housing more than 2600 people.  The House was to provide a launchpad into the future of socialism, where life would be a seamless movement of work and home, a gathering of comrads transcending the homely bounds of filial piety.

The imagined Palace of Soviets.  The scale is also difficult to render here, especially if you haven't been in Moscow and cannot conceive of the size of this.  The Cathedral of Christ the Savior is a massive, massive structure.  People are ants in comparison.  The Palace was meant to dwarf the Cathedral by some good bit.  This sketch won the design competition.  Slezkine has the other finalists' drawings in the book, but this one was designed by the architect of the House of Government and fit the vision best.

 

 

Rebuilt Cathedral of Christ the Savior (on the original plan and to original scale).  The people in the foreground give some sense of size, and there are two complete worship spaces inside the building, the grand upper and the slightly more modest lower church.

The House was to be part of the larger Palace of Soviets plaza, planned on the site of the Christ the Savior Cathedral, situated on the opposite side of the river behind the Kremlin.  The Palace would be a place of pilgrimage, a new symbol of the Soviet Union, a holy site suitable for thousands of worshipers to commune with Lenin's greatness, and contemplate their place in the universe.  Or more to the point: how they were participating in the building of socialism.  Shortly after the completion of the House, the cathedral was blown up to make way for the Palace, but a supreme act of irony, the ground proved too marshy to support the gargantuan structure, and so the foundation pit yawned open for more than two decades before being converted into a public swimming pool.  (The Cathedral was rebuilt on the site in the 1990s).   

 

The Palace of Soviets complex, as imagined with a rationally redesigned street plan.  Moscow is a medieval city with few straight streets (it looks rather like a wagon wheel that radiates out from the river and Kremlin).  The Bolshevik architects aimed to tame it, rationalize it.  They did not succeed.

 The Bolsheviks were in a great hurry, with the weight of history upon them, feeling the urgency of the Revolution, for many of them had not really imagined it in their lifetimes.  The Real Day was exceedingly slow in coming.  The world-wide revolution had not only failed to arrive, the Old Bolsheviks had somehow failed to carry out their own vision.  The New Economic Plan put forth by Lenin after the Civil War was a semi-capitalist concession to the famine and economic catastrophe of forced collectivization, but it was to become the foundation for all the Five-Year Plans that followed.  The Bolsheviks understood that their generation was flawed, having been raised under the monarchy--the original sin that could never be overcome--but they hoped they could build a socialist utopia for their pure Soviet children.  

 

Lenin's Mausoleum.  It is surprisingly a small and intimate space.  The man responsible for Lenin's preservation, Boris Zbarsky, survived the Purges of the 1930s, only to be arrested shortly before Stalin's death.  He died in 1954.  His son, Ilya, carried on his work until his retirement in the late 1980s.

 

Lenin's death in 1924 hit the core of them very hard, as there was no clear way forward.  Lenin himself was somewhat adrift after Sverdlov's premature death of Spanish flu sometime in 1919; Sverdlov had been the architect of the Soviet State, and oversaw most of the administrative details in the first years, serving as Lenin's right-hand man, confidante, and enforcer.  (It was he who ordered the execution of the royal family).  Sverdlov had been a leader of the inner circle of Bolsheviks from the earliest days of exile.

 

Stalin, by contrast, had lingered at the outer edges of the Bolshevik core from the beginning, being hard to get along with and less well-read than the others, but managed to elbow aside Trotsky and claw his way to the top upon Lenin's death.  The Old Bolsheviks were disillusioned enough by the failure of the Real Day to arrive that the (often contradictory) changes to the socialist dream that Stalin put forth (including the Five Year Plans) were barely challenged.  Those tasked with writing the first socialist works of literature were on constantly shifting ground, as Stalin consolidated his power and his vision became the only vision possible.

By the 1931, however, things seemed more settled.  Huge industrial projects like the Dnepr Hydroelectric Dam were nearly complete, and factories were being built in the thousands.  The House of Government was complete and inhabited by the most senior members of the government (except those who lived in the Kremlin, like Stalin and Bukharin, although Stalin's family had apartments in the House).  Situated across the river from the Kremlin, the House residents had easy access via the Stone Bridge.  

 

The planners of the House acknowledged that its design was not in keeping with the ideals of socialism, which sought to overcome individualism and family ties with State partisanship and comradely ties, but they also realized that some intermediate measures must be taken on the way to that ideal.  The concession of private apartments instead of universal communal barracks was to provide the first cracks in their theocratic foundation, as people formed families and brought their possessions into the House and generally took on the habits of the bourgeois they were meant to replace.

 

In the early 1930s, it seemed that most of the Soviet Union had made its conversion, rid itself of its internal enemies, and what was needful was evangelists of the Revolution to take the mission beyond its borders as well as the active building of a rational socialist society within the USSR.

 

The assassination of Kirov in December 1934 changed everything.  The sudden and violent loss of Kirov proved that socialism wasn't as stable as everyone believed, that there were still enemies hiding in plain sight.  

 

Slezkine points out that throughout history, when societies experience wide scale or rapid change or unrest, there comes the need for a scapegoat.  Someone must be to blame for the ills of society, and the pressures build up until a suitable target (or targets) can be found.  (Rene Girard has written at length about scapegoating as a sociological phenomenon).  The act of scapegoating, until recently done by interrogation and execution, usually apart from the formal legal apparatus, is a way of releasing tension and bringing things back to center.  Scapegoating is the driving force behind the witch trials of the late Elizabethan era and beyond, lynch mobs of the 19th century, and so forth.  In the USSR, following Kirov's death, a great questioning arose amongst those in power: how had this happened?  Were there really saboteurs everywhere?  There must be more enemies hidden from view, who must be exposed and thrown out or the Revolution will fail.

Thus began the Great Terror.  Stalin started with the inner circle first.  Anyone with even a loose association with Trotsky or the Socialist Revolutionaries was arrested, interrogated at length, and then imprisoned indefinitely or exiled to a gulag in the Far East, usually without a formal trial.  The circle expanded far beyond that, and quickly, to the mass arrests of 1937 and 1938, with mass executions.  

 

It is unclear to me why the scapegoating in this instance was so large in scale, but the method follows a well-worn track.  As with all instances of scapegoating in ages past, for no discernible reason, it died down after 1938.  There were still arrests, interrogations, exile and executions, but the mass scale of them was over. 

 

After Stalin's death, there were whispers about what had happened, but no one dared talk of it openly until Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" to the Politburo in 1957, in which he acknowledged the mass executions and exile and so-called excesses of the 1930s, but it was still up to the victims to pursue formal rehabilitation, a process that required an Old Bolshevik to vouch for you or your relative in writing.  By 1957, there were almost none left alive to do so.  Those who survived exile returned broken and old beyond their years.  Many were left in limbo, dependent on relatives with no access to pensions or any other State support, and their children cut off from education and opportunities to advance (for the sins of the father shall be visited upon his children and his children's children).  Only the rehabilitated (even after death, rehabilitation was possible) could consider entering the Soviet Kingdom of Heaven. 

 

The true believers were mostly ascetic hard workers--the Revolutionary monastics, the original disciples, tasked with the conversion of the country.  They kept long hours, leaving the care of their children to peasant-nannies and babushkas.  Even though they formed families (and reformed them frequently, changing partners and apartments with ease), they sought to form their children in the tenets of their faith, so their children could inherit the earth.  (Tellingly, the women of the Revolution had to choose between having a family or participating in the Revolution; they mostly chose Revolution). The Old Bolsheviks were the intelligentsia who had no place or role in Tsarist society and great readers of classical literature.  They undertook to educate their children similarly give their children a place in the new Soviet order. 

 

It was this reading education that ensured their children would never become true believers, their moral imaginations formed not by socialist texts, but rather by the literature that had excited their parents: Cervantes, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Swift, Dickens, Goethe, Heine, and many others.  The children of the true believers would go on to control the levers of power after Stalin as members of the nomenklatura, but they were never truly invested in building socialism in the way that their parents were.  Raised by grandaparents or in orphanages after their parents were swept away by the Terror,  the children carried out the motions of faith with little or no belief.  By the 1980s, the USSR's spiritual core was completely hollow.  The Old Bolsheviks' zealous faith passed away after a single generation.

All Souls Enchantment

 

I think I've only mentioned my love of A Discovery of Witches in passing here, but it bears repeating.  I love this series!  The television drama series is a great adaptation of the book (I'm very eager for series 2 in January).  Like all great adaptations, the book and the visual drama inform one another, talk to each other.  

Sometimes a movie or tv series convinces me to read the book; in the glut of unedited novels currently in the universe, it is often hard to spot the gold from pyrite.  (I say that as a writer who is increasingly despairing of modern publishing).  The English Patient was one such, and I remain convinced that book and movie are complementary to one another, and that full understanding of the beauty of each is best had in the presence of the other. The movie is a visual feast and visceral truth, and the book is a poetic rendering of the human condition. I love them both equally.

Pavillion of Women was another one that I liked the movie (not outstanding, but interesting) and read the book. The book blew me away, it was so fabulous. Very occasionally I like a movie better than the book, but usually the book is more fleshed out.

Re-watching A Discovery of Witches rather reminds me of the joy of seasons 1 & 2 of Outlander, which were excellent adaptations that spoke to the text and informed it, rather than the grudging viewing I've done since early in season 3, when the writers went off the rails with the story line.  I don't know why I can't quite quit the drama series; I'm so annoyed with all the things the writers have changed from the books for no good reason, and then have to catch up in ways that don't make sense.  On the other hand, when they nail it, they really nail it, so I guess the system of periodic rewards keeps me coming back?  I dunno.

I read the whole All Souls triology this spring, and then Time's Convert, an add-on novel that explains the backstory of some of the supporting characters.  It is a world I enjoy escaping to, and I found myself coming back to the series this month.  Matthew B. Crawford's book was great, and while I'm only about 100 pages from the end of Yuri Slezkine's doorstop of a book, I am a bit stalled on it mentally.  

So I restarted the first book, A Discovery of Witches, and watched series 1 again.  After reading the book, the adaptation is even more brilliant, as I could fill in details from the book in my mind.  It made for a very rich and satisfying viewing experience.  There have been few enough of those in the past six months, and I'm grateful this one seems evergreen.

Outlander writers: take note.

Talking Tuesday: The Iron Woman

 The Iron Woman

 

She has

a durable coat

forged of iron,

made in the fires of life.

 

This iron

worn thin,

reveals

obsidian glass

grown brittle.

 

Beneath the smooth

black surface

a soft thing

swells with

sadness and joy

the Feelings of Everything.

 

~Juliana Bibas

Summer 2020

 

What Lies Beneath: The Bare Necessities

Before I get into the nitty-gritty of sewing underwear, I thought it might be fun to have a quick digression into undergarment history, as what we wear now has little in common with what people historically wore.

The short story is that for most of history, women and men did not wear underwear in the modern sense of a stretchy fitted garment around the pelvis (although medieval men wore braies, which are a woven linen undergarment with some resemblance to modern undies).  The shift (or long shirt for men) formed the basis of most undergarments from the most ancient times, and the lack of indoor plumbing necessitated easy access.  Women had to handle their monthly cycles and other things without modern sanitary supplies, using some combination of rags and belts under the clothes (giving rise to the theory that men's fluids are culturally neutral and women's are somehow a Very Bad Thing).  For the purposes of our discussion, I'm going to stick to women's undergarments.

(Some historians have speculated that women just bled into their clothing, but I find that hard to believe, given the expense of clothing and the fact that it had to last a long time, sometimes for multiple people.  It is also true that women spent much more of their reproductive years pregnant or nursing, so not having regular cycles, then an earlier onset of menopause--some historians think around 40.  Today it is more like 50, although perimenopause usually starts in the 40s.  That said, cycles still had to be managed at least some of the time, and it seems against all logic that they wouldn't have had some kind of absorbent material under their clothing.

Knitted pads from 19th c. Norway

It's probably part and parcel with the misconception that everyone prior to the modern era smelled terrible and didn't clean themselves regularly.  It is true that body odor would have been more present in earlier societies, but any person who doesn't want to keep themselves clean by the standards of the day is ill.  People didn't shower or bathe the way we do, with our modern indoor plumbing, but they kept themselves clean, and tried to keep smells away).

Image from the Rijksmuseum

 Linen was the first thread used for textile making, wool came later, after sheep were domesticated.  (There is a great history of the development of textiles and the domestic labor related to it in Elizabeth Wayland Barber's seminal book, Women's Work.  I highly recommend it).  Because textiles were expensive, relative to household income, garments were constructed to waste as little of the fabric as possible, which meant cutting things in more or less geometric shapes, and maximizing all the space.  (Like today, a wardrobe was still suited to the owner's budget; some people had more, some people had less, and most outer clothing was usually made by professional seamstresses.  It was the undergarments like shifts that were often made at home). Stockings and hose were cut on the bias from wool or broadcloth and seamed, then held in place with garters tied at the knees.

 In the case of hose, they were basically two tubes of fabric tied onto the waist with ties, the crutch* left open and the shirt tucked in, or some kind of braies underneath, although from the Tudor period onward, hose were joined much like modern tights.  Women's stockings remained separate and gartered until the mid-20th century, with the invention of nylon.

But getting back to the shift, that crucial foundation garment, the diagram below is for an 18th century shift, the main idea doesn't change that much from antiquity. 

From Marquis.de

Shifts were worn next to the skin because linen could be easily laundered and was tough enough to withstand regular beating on the rocks in a moving stream.  They were changed frequently, much as we change our underwear today.  The fabric provided a layer of protection for outer garments, which usually were made of fibers that were more difficult to launder, such as silk, wool, or leather.  

Starting in the Elizabethan period, women commonly wore a form of stays to create a specific silhouette and support the bust and back for the heavy labor required for daily living, and the shift always went under the stays, since jumps, stays, or later, corsets would wear out quickly if they were constantly against the skin and couldn't be laundered.  

Guilty!  My top costuming annoyance is putting a woman in stays (or a corset) with no shift underneath.  Wrong, wrong, wrong!  Stahp.  Props to Outlander for consistently getting this one right.  TURN: I'm giving you the side eye.  I think even Mary: Queen of Scots got this one wrong in a few places, and I loved that film. 

(Interestingly, jumps, stays, and later corsets, were commonly made by men as a professional occupation, as opposed to the women's work of spinning and sewing for the household.  The main reason is that support garments are boned and made from several layers of stiff material like heavy canvas, usually bound with thin leather, all stitched by hand.  The hand strength required to perform the work day in and day out was more suited to men.  Having made a pair of stays--see below--I can easily see why).

Shifts were often included as part of a dowry; a wealthy woman in the late 18th century went into her marriage with 60 shifts to her name, and she remarked (without irony) that she would probably never need another.

You can see my garters tied under the knee.  Garters tied above the knee are usually incorrect, as they would not hold a stocking there, having no natural place to rest, since it is the widest part of the leg.  Garters under the knee make more sense.

The earliest textile garment we have is the Tarkhan dress from Egypt; it is easily recognizable as an early ancestor of the shift.  (Hence forward, I'll use the term shift to refer to the white linen undergarment worn by women and men, with some variation on sleeve style and hem length). 

Tarkhan Dress (it would have originally reached the knees)

Starting in the 19th century, women's undergarments became a bit more, well, more.  Instead of a simple shift and gartered stockings under layers of petticoat skirts (which could be whipped out of the way easily), split drawers (sometimes called panteloons or bloomers) became fashionable, but still included a shift on top (by this point it is more commonly called a chemise).  Confusingly, in the late 18th and early 19th century, men wore an outer garment called panteloons, that were a particular type of knee breeches.  Corsets become longer and more restrictive (and less conducive to heavy labor, rather than being an awesome back support), as the female ideal shifted from a robust laboring woman to assist with all the tasks of the home and field, to a delicate, thin, fainting thing, barely able to stay upright.

Image via Ruby Lane

By the Edwardian period, women's underpinnings had become truly fiendish things called combinations, and I struggle to understand how bathroom use worked, as indoor plumbing was far from common, and even with indoor plumbing, you'd still be in for a job every time you had to go.  Between the long-line corset, garters, and drawers without a center split, I'm really at a loss--perhaps there was a buttoned crutch?

Image via

 For a fun read, The Dreamstress did a project called the 1916 Project, where she wore clothing she made based on extant clothing from the 1910s for a fortnight and did living history research at home. 

Image Via Costume Diaries

Things improved somewhat after WW1, when the looser silhouettes of the 1920s came into fashion.  Combinations and bloomers were still around, but were considerably looser and shorter (and came to be called cami-knickers), closed with a button or snap at the crutch, and no longer included a longline corset.  By the end of the 1920s, women wore loose woven shorts (see below) and an almost modern-looking bra, but corsets didn't disappear until  the 1940s, only to reappear as panty girdles and waist cinchers to achieve Dior's New Look.  Menses were handled with belts and reusable pads that were attached to the belt with pins or clips.

Image via Etsy

Different types of bust shapers followed in the 1930s and 1940s, in the quest for the fashionable silhouette, but the basic two-piece foundation garment was set.

Image via

 The bottoms became shorter over time, and sometimes included shapewear like the panty-girdles of the late 1940s and 1950s.  By the 1960s, underwear begins to be made of stretchy knitted fabrics closely fitted to the body like nylon or later, jersey, as fine-knit textiles became widely available and popular.

Which brings me to the present, and the underwear dilemma that faces women: how to manage all the bodily functions and not be annoyed by the garment?  In the West, a large percentage of us have easy access to indoor plumbing and modern sanitary products, although it is true that in the developing world, these are largely unavailable and menstruation still considered shameful and unclean.   But, most menstruation products commercially available contain some kind of plastic barrier, which is hard on the environment, and doesn't breathe.  It does no good to wear natural fibers if you need to put a piece of plastic in there too.  

Of course, there are also the crunchy granola options: reusable cloth pads, diva cups, and the newer trend of period underwear (which also contain a layer of plastic in the form of PUL).  Reusable cloth pads are nice, but are mostly a hefty investment if you don't want to make them yourself.  (Although, interestingly, amazon has gotten in on that game and now offers sets for under $20, most of which contain charcoal bamboo, about which more in a moment).  

There is also the not-insignificant factor that as the pelvic floor ages, the muscles that support the bladder don't do their job.  Having babies makes that particular issue worse.  There is the terror of the postpartum sneeze or running up a flight of stairs.  Or you have a completely dysfunctional pelvic floor that stays tense all the time and the muscles don't do their job because they rarely relax (ask me how I know). 

(Here comes the part where I overshare...brace yourself). 

I have a few requirements for underwear that have never been met by commercially-made versions.  These are: 1) actual high waist; 2) full bum coverage 3) elastic that doesn't pinch my legs or waist; 4) natural fibers throughout, 5) a gusset that comes up high enough in the front to actually provide full coverage.  Because I am a grown-ass woman, not a little girl.  For those unfamiliar with underwear construction, the gusset is the bit that is usually two layers of fabric and sits in the center of your crutch.  It is seamed at the back to attach it to the underwear.  (It looks like commercial underwear had higher gussets in the 1970s!! 

There is no surer way to feeling cross with your day than ill-fitting undergarments.  I include bras in that metric, but that is a whole other post.  The weather this summer stressed me beyond breaking, being both extremely humid and extremely hot, for much longer than we usually have high heat and humidity (it started in earnest Memorial Day weekend and hasn't let up since).

I'd bought Jennifer Lauren Handmade's Trixie briefs pattern when it came out, but was daunted by the idea of making underwear.  Me and foldover elastic have not historically gotten along.  But after realizing that about 10% of my daily irritation was coming from under my clothes, I decided to take the plunge.  I cut up a Laguna jersey dress that was in my fabric bin for the scraps anyway, and used the fabric to make a trial pair in a fit of rage-sewing; I don't recommend it.

I didn't have enough matching foldover elastic on hand, so I used what I had, figuring the whole experiment was going to be a bust anyway.  (See rage-sewing above).  I extended the gusset and tripled the fabric layer.  When I finished, I laughed and laughed and laughed, because they were GIGANTIC.  I mean, truly enormous looking.  There is no way these are going to fit, I thought.

But wait!  I wore them for a day, and was converted.  They seemed too good to be true.  Basically, not reminding me of its existence, ever.  My day went 5% better as a result.  (Only 5% because I was still working on the bra issue).  I thrifted some shirts with the right fiber content and bought two yards of Laguna to make additional pairs.  The thrifting was mostly done in the name of make do and mend, and use what is already available rather than buying new.  It sort of worked. (I mostly used the shirts to make the paneled version, which uses less fabric per piece, so some of my paneled pairs are...interesting, but they get the job done).  

The first few pairs had some errors--mostly in stitch length.  It really does make a difference what width your zig-zag is on the elastic edges.  The golden number for me was 4x4 on the elastics, and 1.5 x 1.5 on the seam allowances.  But the application of elastic is not as bad as I expected, so I'll take that.  You just have to remember to start on the inside of the fabric so you end up top stitching on the outside for the last run of stitching.  Makes for a nice neat edge.

I decided to fiddle with the gusset some more, as I thought there had to be something better than three layers of fabric, or worse, a layer of PUL, and discovered a magical textile called charcoal fleece.  It isn't sold in the U.S. but I found a Canadian supplier, and received my yard very quickly, under the circumstances.  From then on, I cut all my gussets from that.  It is awesome.

Because the fleece is significantly thicker than the main fabric, I had to puzzle through how to attach the gusset neatly, because following the pattern instructions resulted in a too-bulky seam at the back, or a double seam right at the back, but I think I've cracked it now.  

Making the most out of scraps--it sort of reminds me of a circus tent, but whatever.

I sew the initial seam to attach the front to the back at the gusset, according to the pattern directions, then turn the seam allowance toward the front, and lay the fleece gusset on top, right at the seam edge, but not overlapping if possible.  Then wide-zig-zag the edges down along the original seam line, and repeat at the front.  I tried a few pairs with the gusset seam turned to the back and overlapped with the fleece, but it doesn't look quite as neat.  It seems to hold up okay with wash and wear.

After that, I was on a mission to get a long laundry cycle's worth. And thus began the underwear odyssey, and a drawer full of well-fitting, non-crazy-making underwear.  Yippie!

Now that I've blistered your eyes, it is worth saying that I think it is important to discuss these things and find solutions, because there is no reason to be held captive to whatever commercial interests dictate our bodies *should* be like.  Friends don't let friends wear bad underwear.
There are a lot of competing messages about women's undergarments, from the way they are presented in the packaging, to the cut and fabrics used.  There seems to be very little thought given to what women might actually want in these garments, and the lock-step grading system means that a lot of us have ill-fitting undergarments.

*Crutch is the older variant on the term, not a typo; I prefer it in writing to the more modern one.

Sewing Mysteries: Interfacing for Short Waists

This is my Alter-It August post (in September!) as most of these alterations were accomplished last month, although I finished the final fix this past weekend.

It is my experience, as a short-waisted person, that waistbands Do Not Behave.  They roll, they wrinkle, they scrunch and fold.  I've spent considerable effort trying to make a better waistband.  Some sewists recommend narrow waistbands (3/8" or less), or faced curved waistbands that finish the top edge of a skirt or pants.  I find these are fine for certain styles and body types, but my style preference is an attached waistband, because most of my bottoms have elasticated backs, and I have a 10" waist-to-hip ratio on a good day.  (Most modern skirts are sloped on a 6-8" ratio and gape badly on me).

My go-to for a stable (ish) waistband is to make a 1" finished waistband with Petersham for interfacing.  (I had to look back through old posts to find the tutorial link, and it looks like I started using this method in September 2015!  How much has changed since then...)  The trick is to cut a 4" wide waistband, and make the seam the same width as the Petersham (1" in my case), and then fold over twice before top-stitching or stitching in the ditch to finish the edge.  That way you have no lines from a seam allowance, plus the extra layers of fabric provide some stability, particularly in heavier fabrics like denim.  

Alas, it does not entirely eliminate waistband rolling, and in lighter fabrics like rayon or linen, it doesn't help at all.  The fabric can't stand up to the combination of body heat and sitting right under my ribs.  I was pretty frustrated with my skirts by mid-summer, as all had rolled and creased waistbands that washing didn't fix, and by the end of the day felt schlubby and terrible.  I decided it was time to crack this monster and figure out how to make a better waistband.

Petersham I removed from two skirts.  One of these was after only a day or two of wear; the other was after several seasons of wearing.

I did some reading about what others have tried.  My experience with fusible interfacing has been a joke--it peels right off and scrunches into a heap at the bottom of the band on the inside, and sew-in interfacing hasn't fared much better.  My best experience has been to use quilting-weight cotton as a stabilizer, but that still wants to wrinkle a bit (see the teal skirt, above).  

Someone suggested using lawn (which is very tightly woven) in conjunction with Petersham, so I decided to try that first.  My lavender skirt had stretched out badly on the first wearing (do not use jersey to interface!) and didn't even fit me.  It was more than 2" bigger than any other skirt I owned.  So I unpicked the waistband, put in Petersham and a strip of lawn, and made the waistband narrower to accomodate the 1" Petersham.  It was okay.  It did stay put better than Petersham alone, and seemed better overall, but it still wasn't quite the fix I was hoping for.

Every time I've tried to tackle this problem, I run across a Thread Theory article about Ban-Rol, but until recently, wasn't able to find it in anything but huge rolls for many dollars.  I didn't want to spend that much on a big roll if it didn't work and couldn't find anyone selling it by the yard.  

Original 1" Ban-Rol

Sometime last winter, I altered a pair of suit pants for my husband.  He's had this particular suit for a long time, and the construction on the pants was quite interesting to me--they were obviously made with alterations in mind (I suppose if you are going to spend serious money on a suit, you need it to last through body changes!), and the waistband was interfaced with something that looked like Ban-rol.  There is a whole discussion to be had about longevity in clothing, and how to build in the possibility of alteration down the line, but that is a whole different rabbit hole.

This summer, I did another search and found The Sewing Place, which offers several different types of Ban-Rol, at a reasonable price, cut per yard.  It was the perfect way to try both the original Ban-Rol stabilizer, and the elastic version, which is used on commercially sewn elastic waistbands.  (I noticed it on a pair of RTW shorts this summer.  The waistband is both comfortable and sits nicely all day).  

I started with my red and orange skirts, as they were both ripe for change.  I added Ban-Rol to the front waistband of the red skirt (swapping the center box pleat for the more flattering side pleats while I had the waistband off), and inserted the elastic Ban-Rol in the back to see how the two things played together.  I stitched three lines through the elastic to secure it.  What a difference!  The skirt looks so much better now, and I'm much happier to wear it.  I also shortened it by 2.5" while I was at it, to bring it to the length of my other skirts.

With elastic ban-rol all around.  The fit is weird.

The orange skirt was trickier because the waistband is put together a bit differently and the fabric had stretched a bit while I was making it initially, so it was already limp and unhappy.  I first tried running elastic ban-rol through the whole waistband, on the theory that if it worked well on my shorts, it should make my skirt better.  

Elastic Ban-Rol.  I think in the future I will have to burn the edges to melt them, as the cut elastic loops that run through the white fabric want to poke out.  Just sewing over the edge doesn't seem to cut it.

It was very comfortable, but it also felt too big and didn't sit right on my waist.  I worried about it falling down (groundless, given my waist-to-hip ratio, but there it is).  So I pulled out the elastic from the front part only, and installed regular Ban-Rol into the front waistband, absent Petersham interfacing.  It is...okay.  

Hard to tell, but the ban-rol front plus elastic back is better.

Earlier this week, I unpicked almost all the waistbands on my summer skirts (including the new Nutmeg skirt, shown below) and installed Ban-Rol alongside the Petersham, and that seems to be the golden ticket.  The Petersham provides stability for the fabric (I mostly wear linen or a linen-rayon blend in the hot months), and the Ban-Rol keeps the waistband firm and stable.  All.Day.Long.  

I'm still working out how to best use the elastic ban-rol, as it is much more comfortable than traditional braided elastic, but it is also much stretchier, so all my metrics about length and fit have to be redone if I use it in the future.  It also seems to behave better with several lines of stitching through it, but that also affects how much stretch it ultimately has.  The best skirts I have at the moment are my Nutmeg and teal linen skirts, both of which have Ban-rol waistbands in the front and a few channels of 3/8" braided elastic in the back.  The other little trick I find with Ban-rol (at least for a retro-fit) is to sew the edges down to keep it from sliding around at the side seams and possibly poking through the top. 

Perhaps this will be useful to someone else!  Let me know if you have experience with Ban-Rol (either type) and how you use it.

Yarn Along: Life in progress

This post is a bit long, so I recommend some junky chocolate and a fizzy beverage--ha!

~knitting~

 I finished my movie theater scarf!  It turned out much better than I expected, and the second half of the knitting was very enjoyable to me.  The garter tab start was also new (I started this scarf before the linen one on the same pattern), and I like the finish it gives the top edge.  

  I decided to integrate several bands of different stitch patterns from a couple of other patterns, to make the bottom half more interesting.  I'm glad I did!  The scarf blocked out differently from what I expected, and I'm quite chuffed with the result.  

 It is lightweight and a nice size for my style preference.  (I did panic a few weeks ago, and started to pull it back because I thought it was coming out too big, but after I got it off the needles, I realized it was just fine, so then had to thread something like 400 stitches back on the needles and get myself back into the pattern I was on.  It...took a while). 

After that, I decided to start my Kate Davies scarf kit that I bought when it came out in the late spring.  I'm normally not one for lace work, or charts, but Kate has never let me down, and so far so good.  (Who am I??)  I swatched quite a few needles for gauge, and ended up picking one that produced denser fabric, but I think it will be more to my liking in the end.  I'm quite a tight knitter, and generally, I get gauge on the needle Kate suggests, but in this case, I had to go up to size 9 (from the suggested 6) in order to get gauge and I did not like the fabric. 

 The garter tab at the beginning looked terrible, so I dropped back down to 7 and that seems to be fine. (Although it did take me about five tries to get the thing set up correctly.  Word to the wise: there are way too many stitch markers recommended).  I realize my piece will be denser than the sample, but I'm okay with that.  I'd rather have a better yarn+ needle match, particularly when I'm working with a pattern that is challenging.  The yarn is so pretty!  The tweedy flecks are so nice, and the color (a bright strawberry red) is lovely.  I don't love how the yarn is spun a bit unevenly, and tends to break with high tension, but I'm trying to be gentle while knitting to avoid that.  

 ~reading~

I finished Why We Drive by Matthew B. Crawford and it was well worth the reading.  I wrote a bit about it here, but have more to say as soon as I organize my thoughts a bit better.  In the meantime, I loved this review of the book.   The main takeaways (at the moment) are that we are meant to live a fully embodied life, in the real world, encountering and solving problems that are not easily solvable, requiring us to dig in when the going gets tough, and to know what is under the hood of our lives.  Simply put, we should understand how to fix things, how to parse problems to find solutions instead of clicking a predetermined menu of options.  (And also, stop letting the tech people produce solutions to problems that they created, for which humans already have the skills to solve).

The State's efforts to produce legibility in the population generally do not benefit humanity, only the bureacucracy, and we should be very wary indeed of handing over our privacy and autonomy to a faceless, technocratic entity that doesn't care about us. (Crawford draws brilliantly on James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State, a fantastic book I read in grad school.  It has survived numerous book purges, it is just that good).  Rather, it is the human byways of life, usually roundabout, somewhat messy, and not in neat straight categorized lines, that we find humans working through the messiness of social interaction and getting along.  That said, I do think one of the main priorities of modern civil governance should be to maintain order and prevent anarchy, and that requires adherence to a legible set of rules and laws, and requires a certain level of corresponding virtue in the population to agree to live by those rules.

~sewing~

 Mostly, I'm altering things I made earlier this year to fit better or suit better, and fixing stuff from the rest of the family or making things for the house.  I'll do a dedicated post on my alterations soon, as I think I've cracked a mystery.  I've also been making underwear and am close to a long laundry cycle's worth.  I'll do a separate post on that as well.  

 I made a linen Rose skirt hack back in June that I was saving for September, and I made a point to wear it for the first time last week.  I had made it with my Mint Emerald in mind, but I think it will be a great transitional skirt for me.  My Spice Cake skirt just didn't fit my palette very well; I think this Nutmeg skirt will be a great strange neutral.  Besides, we all know how I feel about rust.  I took the Spice Cake skirt apart and will probably cut it down for Birdie sometime in the next year.

~watching~

Last month, I forgot to mention a great movie about the Cold War that I watched around the same time as Mr. Jones.  (If you haven't seen Mr. Jones, please do.  It's an important film).  

The other film I forgot to say is called Red Joan, and is the true story of a British spy who gave the Soviets the nuclear research to build their own bomb, and thus usher in the age of mutually assured destruction.  She wasn't caught until she was in her 80s.  In defense of Joan, she did it to prevent another Hiroshima-style disaster, as she felt that no one nation should have proprietary access to such a destructive weapon, and that sharing it with the USSR would level the playing field.  After all, they were Allies of the UK and US in WW2.  Judy Dench plays her as an old woman, but most of the story is set during the 1940s during the race for the bomb and is full of British character actors I enjoyed watching.

The latter half of August was hit-the-wall time for me emotionally, so I am rewatching Person of Interest, because I enjoyed it so much the first time, and it is easy to have on while sewing or knitting.  Michael Emerson is just brilliant in that show, and Jim Caviezel's character is such a treat--so complex.  I also find the issues of privacy and security raised by the show to be more pertinent than ever, and I'm struggling to know what to do with them.  Perhaps there is nothing to do but submit to the Borg of Silicon Valley, but vis-a-vie Crawford, I think there has to be a better way to exist with screens and technology.

~domestic~

I'm on a mission to lighten up the house, and to feel less oppressive to me.  Row houses can be dark since the windows are only on the front and back of the house, and we have a lot of dark woodwork.  I put some sheer valances on the living room windows, which helped that room feel much brighter, and then I decided to swap out hardware throughout the house.  The mission-style stuff I had picked 13 years ago annoyed me because it was noisy.  I went with cast iron (or "soft iron") handles and knobs where I could.  

It turns out that mission style hardware is pretty hard to swap, having non-standard size holes, and me not keen to drill new ones everywhere.  But I'm in the home stretch, finally.  I also did some things to brighten up the 2nd floor bathroom, and swapped out some fixtures that were starting to show their age.  My next project was to paint Piglet's bedroom, since it was one of two rooms that we skipped in 2016 when the rest of the house was repainted.  I went with the pale gray (Behr Silver Polish) that we used in most of the rest of the house and the room feels so bright and airy and fresh now.  I can't wait to put the pictures back on the wall, but it needs to cure for a month first.

 

The painting project was a bit more than I bargained for physically, however, as it was three days of physically intensive work in high heat and humidity, and then a fourth day of putting everything back together and cleaning up.  But it felt really good to move like that, and to get that project done.

I be hot.

Somehow I strained a tendon on the top of my foot, probably crouching for the cut-in at the bottom of the walls, so I spent the rest of the past weekend hobbling around, strapping my foot with k-tape, taking ibuprofen, and putting my foot up when I could.  It does feel better today, but I'm going to try and take a few days of quiet before tackling another big project (painting the bathroom cabinets...send help).  

Finally, we celebrated Dormition on August 28, and I actually remembered to take a photo or two--the bier is so pretty at the church, and I always forget.  (In fairness, I try to leave my phone at home, so I don't always have a camera handy).

 The church also has a plaschinitsa for the Theotokos (which is unusual).

 I made kuleyabaka again, this time making it a bit more "saucy" and it turned out quite well, if I do say so myself.  It was also a brilliant way to use up some fasting odds and ends.

 I picked a few herbs from the garden to bring on Dormition to be blessed.

Whew!  That was a lot for one post--congratulations for making it all the way to the end!

 Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along!