I’ll admit, I got a little cocky. I thought, with two years of sewing under my belt, that I could handle a quilt. Not just a quilt, a queen size quilt. Why such a crazy idea? What could drive me to such a thing? A wedding, for which I would need a gift. I love making stuff by hand, and I’d been wanting to try quilting something — it runs in the family! My grandmother (whose sewing machine I use) was BIG into quilting. She even had a longarm machine in her basement. So I’ve had quilting in my blood since day one. Not to mention my other, living family members who are quilting as well. Quilting is my destiny.
Before I had started sewing in 2020, I was caught by a small dorky movement on the internet, the Cape Revolution, whose goal was to bring back capes as a valid fashion item in 2020 and beyond. I wanted to be a part of that — who wouldn’t??
Capes of the styles I desire are either too expensive or hard to find, so making one myself was a perfect solution. Yet, similarly to the clothing market, the sewing pattern market appears to be dominated by women’s clothing. Most in-depth and fancy cape sewing patterns typically come in small sizes and more feminine styles and shapes. It was discouraging to realize at the time, having few options as a man. But I knew, with practice, I could be altering and designing my own cape sewing patterns.
For my first cape, I went with Simplicity 8263 – it can be lined (which can help make it warming, which in turn makes it practical) and it was simple! I bought some dark navy wool coating online, expecting it to be a bit thicker than it turned out being… For the lining, I had a good amount of some synthetic fabric I got from my local sewing store’s scrap bin.
It went smoothly — except the armholes. I was lazy. I didn’t bother doing a hidden slip stitch by hand. I should have, it makes a significantly nicer finished product.
Quite proud of myself, albeit disappointed at the lack of weight to the wool, I offered or was asked by a friend if I could make one for them (they supply the fabric). I happily obliged! But that cape will be in another post!
When I started sewing in 2020, I had great aspirations for what I would be able to create. However, as a tall man, there aren’t a lot of options for me in terms of sewing patterns or manufactured dress forms. Luckily, I came across the Bootstrap Fashion custom dress forms, where you put in your measurements and get a printable PDF pattern. It looked challenging, but I knew would pay off if it came out well.
base
I named him Crognor. He is not perfect be he is mine. The main fabric is a floral upholstery fabric with fusible interfacing, the internal structure is some basic denim or canvas, the neck part is stuffed with a thick sponge cut to fit, and he is stuffed with 10 lbs of Polyfill.
The design of these dress forms uses an internal structure to allow for PVC pipes of various diameters to be inserted and used as a base. I went out and bought a length of PVC pipe of whatever diameter and had it cut to length so that, when standing upright with Crognor on it, his shoulders would line up with mine.
But I still had no stand for the pipe! This was easily the hardest part. The original solution was pretty creative in my opinion. I got a large umbrella stand compatible with the diameter of the pipe and a heavy base (this is what the black part on the existing stand is from). Unfortunately, this based proved to have too large a footprint and also scratched up the wood floors of my apartment at the time.
The alternative is what you see now: two 16″ lengths of 4″x4″, cut to fit into each other as shown. It has a much smaller footprint, is more lightweight, and is much cleaner than the umbrella stand.
Overall, Crognor does have some mistakes. The internal canvas structure is a little too low (I didn’t have it aligned correctly when I sewed it in place). This makes the upper chest area a little wonky, but it doesn’t show up very well in photos. The shoulders are also quite wide. The intent for the flat armscye parts is to be vertical, but you can see clearly that they are angled outwards at the top (this is likely because I made an inaccurate shoulder measurement). The red horizontal zigzagging lines marks the chest, waist, and hips. Though there’s no issue in their placement, the length of the stitches is inconsistent, only because I hadn’t learned how to use my machine properly or make good consistent stitches.
Overall, I’m still proud of this! I now wish I had waited until I had some more sewing experience under my belt, but that’s just not how I work when it comes to my creative endeavors – go big or go home. I’d love to redo this at some point so the shoulders and chest wouldn’t be so goofy. But I have plenty of other stuff to make until then!
When I first started 3D printing, I had a few ideas for projects that I could not just let go. For some reason, decorative artistic lamps was one of those things. The result is what is, as of the time this is posted, my most technically challenging print so far (which isn’t saying much).
It started with a 3D model, a scan of the Venus de Milo statue. I first saw it and knew this would be the base for my lamp. Before I could start actually printing, I needed to understand the hardware involved in lamps — an old table lamp would do the trick. From this lamp I had the wire, light bulb, bulb socket and switch. The socket used a stand floor lamp threaded pipe. As someone who has no mechanical engineering training, or any experience with threading, it was surprisingly hard to figure out what kind of pipe this was, and where I could get a short length for my project. I was able to get the pipe I needed (1/8 IP?) at an online store like antiquelampsupply.com.
But that wasn’t the end of it. Now I needed to make the altered 3D model with a path for the wire and threaded hole for the pipe. This was done using Autodesk Meshmixer and a 3D model of the same kind of pipe, retrieved as a CAD model from another online store like mcmaster.com.
After a few test prints to ensure the threaded hole was a good fit for the pipe, I put it all together: Pipe in the hole; thread the wire up through the base and out the pipe; screw the socket base onto the pipe; connect the wire to the socket contacts; screw on socket top; insert bulb.
But this setup, without a shade, was far too bright to be useful at all. I decided to turn to some gray filament to print a two-part lamp shade/diffuser. I gave it a vaguely human shape, and printed using Cura’s spiralize mode. It doesn’t make it any easier to look at, but it does diffuse the bulb’s light somewhat.
The final result is… less than spectacular. Many spurs and nicks are obvious in the print from the support material that was needed to print properly (especially at the base the statue stands on). Overall, this is not my greatest artistic achievement. But as a proof of concept, this hit the mark – I proved it is possible for me to make a custom lamp via 3D printing.
