Blog

yo

it's been a while since my last post, huh? truth be told, i do actually have another synth module to blog about, but i've been too burnt out from work (again) to actually commit to writing about it. but i took a week off and im starting to recover so im back on my bullshit.

but today's post is about somethin a bit different than usual. back before i got into the modular synth stuff my big thing was sewing, but it's not something i really have had much time to do in a way that's interesting for a few years on account of being so busy with stuff. recently tho, i did a couple repairs that i couldn't find much info on so i thought fuck it, i'll record my findings for anyone else who's lookin. and here we are. blog post about sewing, i guess.

resuscitating a dying bra

so a couple months back the underwire on my only black bra snapped clean in half. i'm not really sure how but i'm choosing to blame it on a combination of years of wear plus the machine girl mosh pit i was in a week before it broke¹. it's an old as fuck bra and i really should've just replaced it but unfortunately the only store i can get bras that fit well at a reasonable price is, not somewhere i particularly wanna shop at anymore². so i looked into how to repair it and, after digging thru slop for like 20 mins, i finally found an article on how to do a full replacement³.

i didn't really want to have to buy a new underwire and was hoping i could just repair the old one somehow, but given how long it took to find info on even how to replace it i figured i was totally on my own as far as a repair goes. but then i remembered i had a couple old bras lying around that were almost the same size (a cup size down and a band size up) so i figured i'd check and to my surprise, despire the size difference, the underwire seemed like it was identical? so i chose the most fucked of the old bras as my donor and got to work

step one is getting the underwire outta the two bras. ur gonna wanna try and find a seam on the armpit side and open it up, then feed the underwire thru. i couldn't actually find the seam tho so i kinda ended up just tearing holes in the vague area i thought the seam should've been in.... however u get it open, u should be able to just wiggle the underwire out thru the hole.

next, slide the new (or at least, not broken) underwire into the bra. it took a lot of careful wiggling to get it all the way in,

now just sew it back up! bra saved.... for now. its been holding up well for almost 2 months now tho so i reckon the surgery was successful. i really should buy a new one tho.....

hemming a towel, suffering for perfection

we have this towel that was straight up falling apart.. the hem was totally missing on 2 sides and there was a big hole on a third side, so i thought i'd cut it down and re-hem it. hemming is usually simple enough, just fold the edge twice and stitch it down, but with towels being made of terry cloth as they are i wondered if i could remove the pile from the edge so it'd look a little better and be easier to work with. as before though, i couldn't find any info on doing that. so i just had to fuck around and find out,

turns out u can! it's just a massive pain in the ass. the pile seems to be a separate thread woven into the fabric, so u can kinda just cut thru the threads and pull it out. obviously cutting it a thread at a time would be hell, so i resorted to scraping with a knife blade, which seemed to work pretty well? after several days worth of scraping, followed by picking out the remnants by hand til my fingers hurt, this was the result:

given how labour-intensive this was idk if i can really recommend trying it urself, but i think it looks a lot better than it would've if i'd left the pile in, and it was definitely a lot easier to stitch down without all that extra mass in the way. i'm also not sure if all terry cloth is constructed in the same way, so maybe test it on an offcut or somethin first if u do try it. and be aware it will make a fucking mess. look at this shit:

and that's not even including all the fine dust of towel residue that ended up covering every surface in the surrounding area.... i'm still finding bits of it stuck to my clothes lmao

anyway, that's all i had for today. the next one will be about that synth module i mentioned. maybe i'll have enough energy to get it done this week too? or maybe i'll accidentally burn thru it all attempting to re-rip my cd collection since i realised i'd had my drive offset set wrong for like, a decade now. who can say.... keep an eye out i guess?

til the next one,

– freya