More Winning, and Some Thoughts About Underwear

William the cat has completely lost interest in naturally selecting winners for my sewing book giveaway so I've had to devise another method. Tradition has it that law professors grade final exams by throwing them down the stairs, awarding the top grade to the one that travels the farthest, etc. (This belief persists because students are otherwise unable to figure out why they got the grade they got and the exams are seldom returned with useful comments.) Let me make clear that I have never graded exams by this method, but it seemed like it might work for picking giveaway winners so I gave it a try. Here are the 7 remaining entries tossed down my front steps. (It's the San Fernando Valley so there aren't a lot of stairs around.)


And the A+ goes to:


Carole Mellin! Who neither chose a book nor left an email address or link, but wisely and wittily blogs at Mia's Sewing Room.

Meanwhile, Amity and I are going to meet on Tuesday July 31 at Michael Levine's Loft (where, I confess, I have never ventured) so I can deliver her grand prize in person and we can shop and talk and eat. We are meeting at 10:30 a.m. so any reader in Los Angeles is welcome to show up and join us. Let me know you are coming and we'll even wait for you.

Don't get any ideas, Carole. I'm not delivering your prize in person to Atlanta (right?), much as I might like to.

And now for something completely different: underwear. I admit it. I get chub rub when I wear a dress. The solution to chub rub (if you aren't wearing slacks, leggings or tights) is underwear extending down one's thighs. Unless one is willing to lose 50 or 60 pounds which, frankly, I'm not and it's rude of you to even mention it. There are lots of ladies' undergarments for sale that extend down the wearer's thighs, but they are almost all what is euphemistically called "shapewear". As if anyone substantial enough to want a lining between her legs is the wrong shape and wants--or, at least, should want--to be squeezed into a smaller, smoother one. The only alternatives I can find are bicycle shorts and pettipants. Pettipants seem to come in two fabrics: nylon and cotton. If I'm going to wear nylon in hot weather I might as well wrap my legs in plastic and leave puddles of sweat wherever I sit, while many dress fabrics cling to cotton.

I have no problem with anyone who wants to wear shapewear. Barbara of Sewing on the Edge wrote a thoughtful (all Barbara's posts are thoughtful) post on Spanx and I agree with pretty much everything she said. (Barbara is too tasteful to mention chub rub, which she probably doesn't have anyway.) I wear shapewear when I want to (almost never) but I don't want to feel like I owe it to anyone who has to look at me and I resent it being the only option for chub rub. Anyway I'd need shapewear to extend from my neck to below my knees or there would be a roll of fat wherever it ended.

This one might do, but does it come in my size? And can I get it with 3/4 length sleeves?


So when FabricMart offered silk cotton batiste for a good price (you know FabricMart is selling everything on the site for 35% off don't you? That sale might even still be going on if this post ever ends) I made myself some silk/cotton pettipants. Well, pajama bottoms, really.

I started with the Butterick 6837 pajama pattern because they are almost the only pants I've ever made, and reduced the width a lot. Then I cut off the elastic waistband I had just put on badly and tried another, wider one. That had the effect of raising the crotch which had been too low but is now too high, I think. Not comfortable. But the fabric is better than nylon or cotton knit so it's a start. I may try Evange's bloomer tutorial on YouTube next, but I am open to desperate for other suggestions. I just have this possibly small time between Kotex and Depends to wear something comfortable and I'd like to take advantage of it.

Punitive Plus Sizing

I believe I have already confessed that I typically take an oxymoronic Petite-Large or Petite X-L in RTW. And I'm OK with that. I ride my bicycle. I'm healthy. If I can find my size in a store I don't really care what it's called. Or I try not to anyway. But my recent decision to switch to skirts and dresses rather than jeans as my wardrobe basics has mired me in the real undisguised cruelty of RTW sizing.

Bare plus-sized legs in skirts mean thighs that chafe. Every woman over a size 14 knows this. There is an easy solution: just wear pettipants, cutotte slips, whatever you want to call them. (Unpadded bicycle shorts under skirts also work, I'm told, and there are powders and creams, of which I am highly sceptical.) All you need is a layer or two of thin fabric between the thighs and presto! No more chub rub.


But try to find pettipants in a store in the RL. Or save yourself the humiliation and don't. The mercantile logic seems to be that anyone who suffers from chafing thighs must (or should be required to) wish she was much thinner, so the only readily available intimate apparel with fabric between the legs is "shapewear," which you can find everywhere. Granted, sometimes I like a little help in smoothing the ripples of me as they cascade toward my feet, but on other occasions I just want to eat, or laugh, or breathe without being ensausaged in lycra.

Even if I do want to encase myself in shapewear, why am I not allowed to retain some dignity while I do so? Why am I a 16 or 18 in dresses and pants, while I can't cram my blobby bulk into a size XXL Miraclethis or Flexithat in the same store? Is body dysmorphia such a pandemic that profits can be made selling Size XS girdles to sylphs and sprites?

/rant