Lisa Woolfork 0:10

Hello Stitchers! Welcome to Stitch Please, the official podcast of Black Women Stitch, the sewing group where Black lives matter. I'm your host, Lisa Woolfork. I'm a fourth generation sewing enthusiast, with more than 20 years of sewing experience. I am looking forward to today's conversation, so sit back, relax, and get ready to get your stitch together!

Lisa Woolfork 0:35

Hey friends, hey! It's Lisa from Black Women Stitch and the Stitch Please podcast, and I am so happy to be talking with you today! Settle down with me and check out this project that I am working on. It's a sustainability project, it's kind of like a memory project, and it gives me a chance to use one of my favorite vintage resources, the Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Sewing. This is the 1976 edition of this book. This book is a classic! And when you get the chance to get a copy, I highly advise doing so. I have a friend that buys the book whenever she sees it, because you can find them at thrift stores or at shopgoodwill.com, or something like that. And then you can save it and give it to someone who's a beginner. And if you are a beginner yourself, see if your local library has a copy, or check out a used book site online or locally, because you can often find this book. It feels a lot like a textbook, because of, I think, its shape and its format. It's a really great book. So what we're gonna be working on today is a scrap cushion. I came to this scrap cushion idea in a very roundabout way. I had been sorting my fabrics from 2023 because the box that I had stored them in was very full. It was full to overflowing. I had purged it before, but I don't know how it got full again. And when I went through and took out all the scraps that were in that box, some of the things were from the very first thing I had made in 2023. So that gave me the idea to think about this as a type of archive. And if you are a longtime listener to the Stitch Please podcast, you know we've had an episode about this. It was called–– oh, what was it called? Oh, it was called "Sewing Trash: Tales From the Scrap Bin", and it came out April 7, 2021. It is episode 77. So you check that episode out. It's called Sewing Trash: Tales From the Scrap Bin", and it was published in April 7, 2021. It is episode 77 of the podcast. In that episode, I talked about having a–– the importance of having a clean sewing trash bin, a place where nothing but sewing trash goes into. And by sewing trash, I mean fabric, thread, interfacing, pattern paper. And now that I've sorted this out, I'm gonna go back and say, you know, I don't know if I'll actually go back and say, but, you know, #footnoteupdate: do not put pattern paper in the same bin as your fabric trash, because if you want to make something like a cushion, you have to take the paper out because it's crunchy, and it's just a pain in the neck. So, just, note to self: don't mix those two things. I was going to donate the fabric from 2023, but as I started going through it, some memories and warm feelings got activated. And I remembered the first garment that I made for 2023, which ultimately became the garment label for 2023, and that was when I was the emcee for Soup. And I had made this gold LeMay style, like, bolero jacket. It was super cute. And I had scraps leftover, and they were at the very bottom of the box. It made me realize, like, "Oh, look at this piece! I can make gloves with this scrap!" Before, I would have a scrap that was this shape, and it was too small for underwear, and it was too long and skinny to do anything like a collar or a facing. It just wasn't helpful, BUT it'd be perfect for a glove, now that I know how to do it. And so it was kind of neat to look back at these old materials and see new uses for them. And so I thought, "Wow! Well, what if you could just hold on to this? But where are you going to put it?" I use a box right now, an old printer box, and I have measured it and calculated that the cubic footage of the box is about 2.4 cubic feet. And this was jam-packed! And so I can't use that same box; I have to empty that out and make room for the new stuff to come in. You know, I cannot, I'm not going to just keep this box full of scraps. How can I organize it in such a way that it'll be useful to me and accessible? I remember that a friend had made, I think, a yoga bolster, or some type of pillow that she had made, and stuffed it with her scrap fabrics. And I thought that was a really great idea, but I'm not a yoga person, and so I'm like, "I don't think I would really use that." But I would certainly use like an ottoman-style cushion, or something like that, and especially if I added a handle to it, so I could take it from place to place. So if I wanted to take it outside or–– not outside, but on the porch, or move it to the family room, or sit on the floor with it, you know, whatever. And so I thought, "Hmm, if only there was a way that I could open this cushion up, and then take out fabrics as I need them and then put them back or whatever." And that's when I thought, "A cushion with a zipper!" And that's, that's what led me to the Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Sewing. And that's where the soft furnishings idea came in. I have used this book, the Reader's Digest Complete Book of Sewing, to great effect. Owe great success in the past. The Roman shades that I have in my kitchen right now, I made them with their instructions. And oh, they had this outdoor dining blanket-type thing, where you could sit down and put plates and stuff on it, and it came with these napkins. And that was really fun! So that was really a fun thing, so I had that. I think that might have been the last thing I remember, but it has excellent advice. I really enjoy working with the 1976 Reader's Digest Complete Book of Sewing. It's a fun book, because it's a look at the past, but also has some timeless projects with really good skills. For me, one of these projects was the Roman shades that I made from my kitchen. I was really happy that I had followed those instructions and learned how to make something so useful. And so I was, like, very excited about that. And so now, I have this opportunity to do the same and harness my scraps for 2023 and bring them with me to 2024, where I can kind of document and have them mix in and out with the things I'm currently making. There aren't any patterns, per se, in this 1976 Reader's Digest Complete Book of Sewing. Instead, they have instructions that are very well broken down, that you can use the dimensions and transfer those to create your pattern. For the cushion that I'm using, this was part of something that they called foam furniture. It was expected that you would buy a foam slab in a certain dimension. This one I think is about an eight-inch thick slab that's required. And then you create the cover, the slip cover, for the slab, and that's how you get your foam furniture. I wanted to make a cushion. I originally wanted my cushion to be round. I was really invested in it being, like, a cute little hat box-type shape. That was what I thought-- it's gonna be really cute, it's gonna have a zipper, it's gonna have a mesh handle, because I was gonna take a piece of webbing and stitch it really tight on either end, so that I could, you know, lift it up and take it from place to place. That was the plan. However, what had happened was, I discovered that in 1976, American people must have been much better at math than we are today. Or the people who were reading this book then were much better than I am at math right now. Either way, I was thwarted by math. In my defense, I got a lot of things right. I got a lot of things right. The instructions call for creating a semi-circle with a diameter of 36.5 inches. I knew that the radius of a circle was half the diameter. And my plan was to calculate the radius, which, you know, I did. Got that one right. And then to take a string and a pen or a pencil and hold that number down. Like, say, well, I think–– what was it? The number, I think, was 18.25, so 18, and then half of .5 is .25, so I got that right. So 18.25 is the radius, and I put a dot on my sewing table and extended a string 18.25 inches out, and there was a pencil attached to it, so I started to keep the tension of the 8.25–– 18.25 inches. You have to keep that tension of that exact measurement, holding that pin at that distance of the string at 18.25, and then you very gently swing an arc downward on one side, and then on the other. If you can go around the entire circle, that's great, but we only needed a semi-circle. And I think that was because you put the pattern on the fold, and that's how you get the half, right?

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All was going well. But as I was tracing it, I was like, "This feels humongous! Does the circle really have to be a diameter of 36.5 inches? That feels like a gigantic circle! It just feels, like, really big!" And so, I mean, I understand that that's almost a yard across. So yes, that's, you know, like a foot-long circle. But I don't know what I was doing, but it felt much bigger. And so I said, "You know what? Let me calculate how long the piece of fabric I would need to cut, to stitch between the two circles", because the way you created the circle cushion was you had a circle at the top, you have a band of fabric at the middle, and then another circle at the bottom. The fabric in the middle connects the two circles, creating this three-dimensional sphere. It will fit, it will work, if you calculate the circumference of the circle accurately and add your seam allowances. This is something I believe to be true. If this is not true, tell me. Please write to me and tell me. You can find me on socials at blackwomenstitch on Insta, and write me at lisa@blackwomenstitch.org and say, "Oh girl, no. That is not at all wro–– you got that all wrong!" Right? But I think I got it right. I looked at some YouTubes and, you know, did my best. So I thought I was pretty–– doing pretty good. The circle looked good. It felt like it was ginormous, but I said, "Let me just confirm what the circumference is. Surely, I did such a great job calculating the radius of this circle, the circumference will be no big deal." And that is where my circle became a square. When I confronted, when I discovered or uncovered–– when I Googled the formula for the circumference of a circle. I said, "Lisa, you did a good job. You tried. You did your best. And sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you, or whatever that metaphor is. Sometimes you get the math, and sometimes the math gets you and today the math has gotten you," because the formula–– oof, child! So the formula for the circumference of a circle is two times pi times the radius. That is how it works. I must confess, I do not understand the order of operations for this equation. I often get this confused if there's no parentheses there. So is it two times pi then times the radius, or is it the radius and the pi multiplied, then duplicate–– then doubled? I think that's what one of the Googles said. They said, "The circumference of a circle is equal to pi times the diameter; the diameter is two times the radius." So the equation for the circumference of a circle, using the radius, is two times pi times the radius. That seems clear enough, right? However, comma, at the time, when I was working on my cushion, it did not seem clear at all. It actually felt like the meanest set of instructions I had ever read in a pattern. It felt like a personal attack, it felt like I felt like my self-esteem deserved a little bit better. And that is how I chose my mental well-being and decided to make square cushions instead. The square cushions seemed much more straightforward, and in a way they are. They have a very simple structure. It's two pieces; the top piece is larger than the bottom piece. And the top piece is made to fit the bottom or the perimeter of the bottom, by being folded at the mitered edge of every corner. So the way that the pattern, or the way of the instructions work, is that you take your square, your large, top square, and you mark it 8.5 inches, or eight, or whatever your seam allowance will be, from the edge. And it'll look kind of like a tic-tac-toe grid, but with a gigantic square in the middle. That square in the middle is where that square for the cushion for this, you know modular or foam furniture, instruction comes from. I really appreciated how the pattern used so much folding to make its point. Essentially, when you mark off the tic-tac-toe-type grid, you then fold those corner boxes in such a way that the two angles that touch the one at the bottom and the one at the left, are folded upon each other. And so it's essentially making a triangle out of that box, which is how you get the standing miter corner. They talk about this in the books, and if you have it, it's on page 449. And it's perhaps a little bit difficult to describe, but imagine you are making a–– asked to make, like, a tray, a standing tray, or a tray that has a rim, like a jelly roll cookie sheet, out of a flat sheet of paper. What you would do is to take those corners and to miter them so that they stand up. And that's how you would make that, and this is very similar, because when you miter the four corners, it shrinks the perimeter in such a way that it makes this box from something that was flat. I's making it stand up. Then you add your zipper, and you stitch that perimeter, that you just folded, right on top of that piece where the zipper is. So it is almost as if you're taking two pieces of fabric, folding one to fit on top of the other.

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