About Me

If you've clicked the tab to this page, I am guessing that you've done so because you're wondering how I got started sewing, how long I've been sewing, or other things of that nature. (At least, that's what I'm often wondering when I click another blogger's "About Me" tab.) In any case, I will try to answer those questions for you!

Me, a Moneta, and Tulips

Why I sew

I've been interested in sewing for as long as I can remember. If sewing can run in a person's blood, it runs in mine: my mom and aunt sew, both of my grandmothers sewed, and one of my cousins even has a degree in fashion design. When my aunt did genealogy research a while back, we found that one of my ancestral relatives even made fine leather goods for the Danish royal family. The funny thing, though, is that every time that I asked my mom to teach me how to sew when I was younger, I'd get freaked out over how complicated it appeared to be to thread the machine.

Fast-forward to 2007. I had just hit the 70 lb weight loss mark from over the past year and a half. My now-husband and I stopped by Ann Taylor Loft so that I could buy some new clothes to celebrate being down another 10 lbs. I fit perfectly into their size 10 pants, but I couldn't get their size 14 button-down blouse to button without gaping and pulling. In tears, I remember telling my husband that there was no way that I was going back to shop at The Fat Woman Store after all I'd accomplished. Dammit, I'd sew my own clothes, if I had to! Within a few days, I'd signed up for a beginner sewing class at the local community college and had taken my grandmother's 1970's-era Kenmore to local shop to have it serviced. I made a set of chili pepper print pajama pants in the class and then a wavy-hemmed t-shirt (knowing nothing about sewing knits yet) to go with it:

My first project

From that point on, I was completely hooked on sewing, fabric, and patterns.

Why I blog

Over the past few years, I've regained much of the weight that I'd lost, but this time around, I am trying to learn to accept my body and not put things off "until I'm thinner" unlike how I dealt with my weight and body image issues when I was younger. As I continued to both sew and gain weight, I noticed that there weren't many other curvy or plus sized sewists blogging or posting on Pattern Review. When I did post something, I'd usually get a response along the lines of, "Oh, you have to deal with X, too? I thought that I was the only one!" When I re-started my blog in the fall of 2013, I did it with the thought of both documenting my own projects for myself and letting other curvy or plus sized sewists know how I deal with certain issues. Now, granted, how I deal with something might not be the "right" way, but I figure that if it helps someone, it's worth putting out there. Even if I post pictures of a total disaster wadder project, I figure it might help someone with a similar figure avoid wasting time and fabric on a project that might not work for her.

In addition to wanting to hopefully help other sewists with their fitting and styling issues, I want to be a good role model to my young daughter. I grew up in a household where I witnessed my beloved mother's self-hatred of her own body and always felt that I wouldn't be "good enough" unless I was thin. As a result, I let my "not good enough" weight hold me back in countless areas of my life. I don't EVER want my daughter to feel the way about herself that I did. As I work to build my own self confidence, I hope that I will be able to be the positive influence in my daughter's life that she deserves.

I don't claim to be authority on fitting or capable of producing couture-quality work. I do claim to love fabric and patterns and the process of using those things to create clothing that better reflects my personality and lifestyle than anything I could buy at The Fat Woman Store.

You can contact me at happilycaffeinated.blog at gmail.com.