Burning Text Gif Maker

A lot of people don’t believe me when I say that I’ve only been sewing for a little over 3 years. Previous to that I had only really ever sewn plushies, pajama pants or pillows during Guide Guide workshops aka I could put fabric through a machine and sew in (sort of) straight lines but not much else. I had never used a clothing pattern before, I had never used anything other than a basic straight stitch, and I had never bought fabric. October 2012 was the first time I ever sewed any garments completely from scratch and those were my Fushimi from [K] vest and coat and now this October (2015) I will be competing at the Master’s level for cosplay craftsmanship. So I figured I’d give a short rundown of how I taught myself how to sew and how I improved.

1) I watched a lot of Project Runway (the earlier seasons… Annnndreeee, where is Annnndreee?). While this didn’t help much in actual sewing, it got me familiar with a whole lot of terminology and types of fabric and outfits. Plus it also showed me where people tended to take shortcuts and when those shortcuts tended to fail. 

2) I got a very basic sewing machine and I READ THE ENTIRE USER MANUAL. I started off on a Singer Simple which was a gift from my parents (who actually bought it 2 years earlier but never gave it to me thinking I’d never use it… HA!) and I went through every single English page of that user manual. I became familiar with all the parts of my machine, how to thread it, how to change bobbins, how to clean it, how to fix jams, all the different stitch types, and I practiced sewing a bunch of random stitches on scrap pieces of fabric just to see what they looked like and how they changed when I changed different tension settings.

3) I got a basic sewing book (from like 1965… it’d probably better to get an updated/current book) that acted as a glossary of sewing terms. I had no idea what 50% of the stitches I needed to use were called so this became very useful later when I bought my first pattern.

4) I bought my first patterns and chose something fairly simple to start off with which was a lined vest (followed by an immensely more difficult jacket). I went with Simiplicity patterns after doing a lot of googling for the most new-user-friendly patterns.

5) Then I FOLLOWED THE PATTERN INSTRUCTIONS. It seems like an obvious step but even now I sometimes skip a step and then later regret it. Everything the pattern said I needed, I bought. I bought the specific types of fabric, interfacing, thread, buttons, I did not deviate from their suggestions for the first trial run. Then I read through the pattern instructions, cut out all the corresponding pieces for my size and got to work. The key was to work slowly and re-read things as I went. I also used my sewing book and google to help better explain some of the instructions that were not 100% clear to me just starting out. I also looked up youtube video tutorials on how to iron seams, sew darts, properly clip curved edges, sew button holes, and finish inside seams. Research, research, research!

6) To re-iterate: TAKE YOUR TIME. Slow and steady wins the race. It took me probably a solid 4 days to sew a very simple vest that would probably take me maybe a couple hours now but damn it was one of the cleanest looking vests I had ever sewn. I made sure not to rush anything and gave myself lots of time.

7) I kept practicing. The more I sewed, the more familiar I became with how garments were put together and where I could change things to better fit my size or how to alter things to better fit the garment I was trying to create. I experimented whenever I could on scrap fabric to see what would and would not work for stitching and ironing.

3 years later and I can now draft my own patterns and sew dozens of different types of garments with dozens of fabric types. I would attribute 90% of my learning experience to taking it slow at first and researching as I went. I didn’t allow any guesswork on the first couple of projects I worked on because how would I ever learn if I didn’t look into how something was properly done? Google, youtube, tutorial blogs (wink wink), reference books, and pattern instructions are you friends, do not take them for granted. 

Pictured at the top on the left is the first Kirishiki vest I (rush) sewed in July 2012 without following instructions and trying to do it myself. The vest on the right is from December 2012 after I decided to take my time and follow instructions and actually learn while I was sewing. You can improve 100% just by taking your time, doing some research and following the instructions.

Bonus: What I bought for my sewing starter kit

A green rotary/cutting mat. They can be really expensive but I have been using my large mat for 3 years straight and it works wonders at not only protecting the surface you are working on, but giving you a nice sturdy pinning and cutting surface that is self-healing and doesn’t get destroyed by pins and exacto knives.

1 large and 1 small pair of orange handled sewing scissors.

A 6" x 24" clear sewing ruler.

A pack of white/blue fabric pencils.

A box of standard pins, plus a pin cushion.

A pack of extra bobbins.

A pack of standard sewing needles for hand-sewing.

A pack of standard sewing needles for my machine.

An iron and mini ironing board. 

Happy sewing!

-Heather

i am not joking we need to force teach cooking in schools. like. it is an essential thing for survival. do you know how easy it is to make things if you know even the bare bones shit about how cooking works. we need to teach teenagers how far you can take an onion and some other veggies it''s sad that people grow up not knowing how to prepare literally anything. and i'm not talking about oh this home ed class taught me how to make chicken nuggets at home i'm talking about learning the balancing of sweetness and acidity and saltiness and bitterness and shit like that and techniques and oil temperatures and how meats cook. it needs to be taught because it's literally not even that difficult and it matters so much

What people think why i became a bookbinder: Oh she wants to explore her artistic horizon with those pretty leather bound books of hers. She even gives them out as gifts to her friends. It most likely helps her with anxiety or maybe she just wanted a more special costume made notebook.

Why I actually became a bookbinder: I just illegally downloaded and printed out several of my favourite fanfics and books and started binding them into books cuz I love reading them but looking at screens for too long gives me headaches.

hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

Los Angeles Times! See me, more patients and the studio!

So you may have wondered why Habersham's story followed so quickly on the heels of Lucky the Bear's, and the reason is, it was a bit of a teaser.

Over the past few months, I have been interviewed for almost 2 hours by a reporter for the LA Times. Then a photographer came out to the hospital and took photos of me and the hospital and the patients I had at the time (for another two hours!). And then a few weeks ago, another photographer came out to take portraits of the patients I had then. Including one of Habersham. Then, yesterday, September 10, this appeared as the cover of the LA Times Calendar section:

That's Habersham before his surgery. And a wonderful play on Tears for Fears for the title of the story. :-) There's a two page spread inside the paper, and you can read it, and see a lot (if not all) of the photos online here. If the link doesn't work, you can also go to the LA Times and search "toy hospital" in the search box on the site and you should find the article that way too.

Anyway, as you may imagine, I've been doing a bit of a happy dance about the story all weekend. And I really wanted to share it with all of you because a) I thought you might enjoy the article and b) the reporter found me in part because of this blog which you all have chosen to read and follow and like over the years, so you all deserve thanks for the article too!

beth

being on tumblr for a long time but never reading homestuck like

Unique and out of the box language learning resources you probably haven’t heard of!

• Lyrics Training - Lyric fill in game

• Radio Garden - Listen to the radio anywhere in the world

• Language Reactor - Browser extension to learn with Netflix, YouTube, etc

• BaBaDum - Fun vocab games

• Linguno - Listening, vocab, and conjugation exercises, plus 10 daily crosswords in each language

• Bilinguis - Read a small selection of classic, older books in a bilingual side-by-side style. Some have audio reading as well!

• Lyrik Line - Read and listen to poetry in your target language!! Huge selection

• Top 40 Charts - Top 40 music hits in countries around the world.

• Kiosko - Daily newspaper covers all over the world. Clicking on one takes you to the news website to read more

• Lexicity - For all of you ancient language obsessed people!! Amazing and thorough resource for many ancient languages

-> Click on the link below to get links to all those sites + more information about them!

Plurilingualism

10 Unique Language Resources You Likely DONT Know⋆ Plurilingualism

These are 10 language learning resources that you have likely never heard of. Covering everything from audio to books to ancient languages.

Summer Horror

I recently hosted a TTRPG game jam with the premise of summer horror.

The games that came out of it were fantastic, and can be found by going to the submissions tab on the jam page.

A couple spotlights, though!

Ritual is a Wicker Man / Midsommar style cult horror game that doesn't use a GM. Instead, players who aren't in a scene switch to playing cultists, and as the PCs get killed off more and more cultists can concentrate on the remaining players.

Letters Home is a game about being at summer camp and gradually realizing something is Terribly Wrong with the place. It's two player, and involves actually exchanging letters, and is a great little device for co-writing a horror story.

Sleepless Seas is a solo fishing game that mirrors stuff like Dredge. The tone is gloomy and liminal, and there's the lingering implication that you might be stuck in some sort of piscine purgatory.

Ash Trapped In Cracked Lips is difficult to describe, but the phrase I would use is "Cormac McCarthy's Dark Souls." It's also big, the biggest game submitted to the jam, and features adventurers wandering through a burned out afterlife where there's little movement beyond the circling of vultures.

Haunt is built on the same engine as Ritual, but focuses instead on Hill House style hauntings. Like Ritual, it's a focused, scary experience where the ghosts multiply as the living players dwindle, and it packs a stellar sense of atmosphere.

There are also several more games in the jam, including some of my own, and again they can all be accessed via the jam page.

Summer is ending, but if you want to get in one last good scare (or prepare for autumn), check some of these out!

itch.io

Cthork Borg Presents: Summer Horror

A game jam from 2023-05-01 to 2023-07-31 hosted by kumada1. The spooky season is upon us. No, not that spooky season. The other spooky seaso