Candice's LJ

They say that whatever it is you're doing on New Years Eve you'll be doing for the rest of the year. I was in downtown Los Angeles on New Years Eve, taking photos.

This photo was the Photo of the Day for January 2 on discoverlosangeles.com.

I spend so much time taking photos, it's easy to forget I have other hobbies. I have several sewing projects I need to catch up on, including a shirt for Brett, who found some fabric with Golden Age Captain America images on it. I have everything I need to make the shirt except I don't know where my men's shirt pattern is in the half dozen bins of patterns I have lying around the house. Is it in the one in the day room, the ones under the bed, or the ones in the closet? I'm looking, but I haven't found it yet.


First project I tackled was a pair of denim cargo pants. It took forever to find a decent pattern for the pants, only to find out the pattern wasn't as decent as I thought. It's from an independent company, and they have lots of nice patterns, but I don't think this particular one was sized correctly, because I had to make a ton of adjustments to get a proper fit. Now, it's not unusual that I have to make adjustments, I'm used to that and usually make them before I start cutting, but these adjustments were a little more unusual.


First adjustment, the back yoke was too small, I had to reshape the piece or else the back would have been way too low rise. Also, the waist was way huge, I mean way huge, I ended up taking about 4 inches off the pattern at the waist, which is crazy. One, maybe 2 inches, okay, but 4? And, the crotch was a little high, I had to lower it, cuz camel toe is so not cool. All those adjustments made, plus adding length to the legs and a slight mod on the cargo pockets, and after three days, I had a nice, new pair of cargo pants to wear. I like the new pants, so I may just make this pattern again. The legs are wide and flowy, the pockets are deep and roomy, they're perfect for when I go out to take photos, since I can store a lot of stuff in the pockets so I don't have to keep them in my camera bag.


But, as annoying as the problems were with the pattern, I wasn't too happy about the problems with the fabric. I prewashed the denim twice, to bleed off any excess dye, and still got a bunch of blue on my hands while I was making the pants. Washed them twice after I finished them, and they're still bleeding a lot of blue. Even putting vinager in the water didn't help control the color bleeding. Not fun, but at least I was washing them by hand and not with any other clothes. I know this is something that will lessen over time, but it's still frustrating. I have honestly never used fabric that bled this much.


I have fabric for another pair of jeans (which doesn't bleed as much as the other denim did), and two jeans patterns to choose from, not sure which one I want to make. One is a regular pair of jeans, the other is a cargo style, though not the practical style the pattern I made is, it has just one smallish cargo pocket, some creative stitching, even a pattern for embroidery on the leg, though I don't do embroidery, so if I want to add decoration on the leg, I might buy something premade. I'm inclined to make the second pattern, since I already have a closet full of regular jeans.


Another project I need to do is replace a sleeve on a wool crepe jacket, cuz the damn moths got to it. All the wool clothes are now in a garment bag to keep that from happening again, but it probably won't be easy finding the right color match for the jacket.


Speaking of the bins of patterns, I have a bunch of old and vintage patterns I should go through, see if there are any I want to get rid of, maybe sell them on eBay or Etsy. I used to work in a fabric store in college, the employee discount was ridiculous, and they would just give us the discontinued patterns, so it was easy to end up with mass quantities of patterns at the end of the day, and I still have most of them. Plus, I sometimes get a little too happy going to second hand stores and picking up old patterns for $1. I don't need a lot of those vintage patterns anymore, since I copy them onto sturdier paper so the original pattern doesn't get damaged, or further damaged if it isn't in the best condition, then copy the envelope and instructions.



There's a pattern I want to get for men's jeans. I don't spend much time making man's clothes. The only time I do so is when Brett sees something he wants made into a shirt, and I would like to try my hand at other things, and I can experiment with Brett. I get practice making something other than men's shirts, he gets clothes.

Riding the subway presents a lot of opportunities for some great candid shots. The MTA has a somewhat contradictory policy on photography, you can take pictures in the stations, but, for some reason, not on the trains for "privacy reasons," to which I have to ask "why?" The entire MTA system is public, so there isn't any expectation of privacy. If the policy said for safety reasons, I could almost buy that.

Not that it really matters to me, it's never stopped me from taking pictures on the trains.

Saturday was International Pillow Fight Day. I headed out to the pillow fight at Pershing Square cuz how could I pass that up?

See all my photos from the pillow fight: 2011 international Pillow Fight Day-Los Angeles