Garment 8: Authorship

This angel top was inspired by a 1967 Stretch & Sew pattern I've made up for myself in 3 different cheap-ola abandoned knits . There are plans for more to come.

I loved the shape and fit so much I started to wondering how much an existing design would need to be changed before it could be considered one's own. More a musing than anything, I still haven't bothered to find out for sure. This lead me to drape the angel top, based on the way the neck edge of the raglan sleeves and bodice pieces fold back to form the square neck facing. It got my brain doing contortions trying to work it out, which says more about my brain than the complexity of the pattern. Sewed it up from more abandoned, cheap-ola, t-shirt knit and even more cheap-ola rib-knit fabric, both of which came from Addie's stash, and there you have it.

The pinwheel is made from stitch samples found in a number of manila envelopes - along with an instruction disk each - that had accompanied brand-new, but now obsolete, computerised embroidery machines. Not old, and no doubt still use-able, but obsolete - like my cellphone. The volunteers at the OSF sorting bee had a good laugh when I asked if anyone might want the disks. We dumped them, and two of us took some of the stitch samples home to percolate. I especially like the pencilled-in stitch type, width and tension notes. Wonder whose job that was, and how much she was paid to do it: endlessly stitching samples to accompany shiny new machines, after the kids went to bed, no doubt. What a job.

The yellow fabric is a snippet from a very large, cheerful, stained, polyester double-knit book dust-cover. It was donated by a woman who told me it was made by her elderly grandmother, a tailor, and had been used to protect a "holy book" in a Vancouver temple. Not sure the exact type of temple... I didn't ask enough questions when the donation came in.

The Delta Airlines pin, "Good Going", was found in a cookie tin of junk discovered on a rummage through the dregs of the Prophouse restaurant when it closed for business.

Creepy '70s ad

I know the design is mine now, because it makes me think of Charlie's Angels, Farrah Fawcett's feathered hair, Love's Baby Soft perfume. To be worn with your best bra, unless you plan on keeping your hands in your lap all evening.

Size S-M. For sale by appointment. 
Enquiries at enoughstuffblog@gmail.com

Photography by Jeff Minuk www.lostinkits.com