Category Archives: Crafts

Infinity Dress Attempt in 8 hours

dressback

I wanted to replicate a dress I have for Open Hardware Summit (which I’m using as an excuse to start and finish a lot of projects, from heels to dress to earrings), but found it too difficult. Instead, I found this super-easy dress, which consists of just four pieces:

4pieces

http://www.instructables.com/id/Infinity-Dress/

It is called an infinity dress because of all the ways you can wear it

il_fullxfull.302124536

il_fullxfull.403294097_pzws

My attempt came out more like a miniskirt due to some errors I made and lack of additional cloth. It also falls strangely on the front due to the lack of cloth pulling it down. So it goes.

 

dressfront

To remedy it, since I have no more of that cloth and the store that sold it (Sew Low) is now closed (owner retired), I can 1) sew a different color underneath 2) wear a slip underneath 3) wear dark tights.

Additionally, the stretchy orange fabric causes… issues when it’s stretch thin. Ala wet tshirt problems. 🙁

It was all pretty straightforward. I’ll just document my measurements and cloth dimensions here.

  1. height 64.5”
  2. waist 31.5”
  3. chest center to armpit back 10.5”
  4. bottom of ribcage to top of breasts 6”

For the circle, my inner radius was 4.25” and my outer radius was 19.75”. Here is a picture (with the inner circle unfolded to show that the cloth is folded into quarters). I made the waist smaller than intended and it fit fine on my waist without falling down or being too small (although it did get on the smaller end of acceptable after I finished sewing everything to it).

skirtfinaldim

I mark it, I used a piece of chalk and a tape measure, then anchored my right hand at the center of the circle and swung the tape around.

radiusmarking

Unfolded

skirt_unfolded

My rectangular cloth was 10” by 28”.

rectangle

My long straps were 10.5” by 97”. I pinned them extensively down their entire length and the cutting was straightforward, although extremely tedious. The mat actually helped a lot, since I could line up the clean edges on the mat and actually see through the fabric to the white lines on the mat and mark down the entire length.

straps

I used a single stitch, the straight stitch, no zigzag stitch needed (the second row on the machine), because the orange fabric was super stretchy.

sewingmachine

The only part I found tricky* was which side to sew the rectangle (turned into cylinder) on onto the dress. I almost sewed it on the wrong side. It should be sewn with the top part of the right side is facing you and the bottom part of the right side is facing the mat, and the wrong side is facing itself on the inside. That way, when you put on the dress, the right side is facing out. The right side of the cylinder is facing the wrong side of the straps. The right side of the straps is facing the right side of the skirt. The bottom part of the right side of the skirt is facing the mat.

rightsidedown

rightsidedown-closeup

*I messed up on the skirt mostly because I wasn’t really paying attention and was listening to a podcast 🙁 I folded it in half and cut out the quarter circle, instead of folding it into quarters. Unfolded, I got two useless halves of cloth instead of a circular skirt.

All told it took me 8 hours to go from first reading the instructions to wearing the dress.

[the end]

Nails Sept 2015

I played extensively with gradients (ombre) this time around. I think I need to find some China Glaze, a lot of the nail polishes were very dilute, so I had to go back and dab more on to fix the gradient.

I also used a nail polish pen to draw summer / water themed decals on top of the background gradient colors. I’m most proud of the one with the conch shell, though you can’t see the colors too well in this picture.

Left

2015-08-25

Right

20150825_094942-whitebal

telephone hold music: analog generator

Recently a friend recounted to me a visit to a cool museum which had, in one exhibit, a “hold music” generator (you know, elevator muzak… here have some Cisco sound samples).

That is, before there was digital recording and playback, telephone switchboard operators wanted to play soothing music to callers while connecting their calls. To do so, they used little analog electromechanical playback devices — what we now think of as those cute music box toys

440px-Music_box_elements

but which included very serious and complex devices once-upon-a-time.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_box#/media/File:Baud_museum_mg_8548.jpg
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_box#/media/File:Baud_museum_mg_8548.jpg

Anyway, so it turns out it was the Museum Speelklok (“Musical Museum”) in Utrecht, the Netherlands:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_Speelklok
https://www.museumspeelklok.nl/lang/en/

From Zoz comes this photo of the infamous Japanese telephone exchange hold music generator: (original content ahead! whoo)

Electromechanical telephone hold music generator. Photo credit: Zoz at MIT.
Electromechanical telephone hold music generator. Photo credit: Zoz at MIT.

[the end.]

Footnotes

Some wikipedia articles of interest:

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_on_hold
    Which contains this “lolwut” anecdote:

    > For those still uncertain of the difference between “song title” and “mechanical” copyrights, consider the Capitol Records lawsuit for copyright infringement against Nike some 20 years ago. Nike legally obtained permission to use the Beatles song title “Revolution” from the title’s owner, Michael Jackson. They used the Capitol Records owned recording of the Beatles’ performance, but failed to obtain and pay for permission and use. Capitol Records sued and prevailed because Nike ONLY had a license to use the title and did not have a license to use the mechanical recording

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_music
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_recording_and_reproduction
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sound_recording
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_box
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_Speelklok
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_exchange#Sounds

Other interesting links I dug up while hunting for this museum before giving up and emailing Zoz:

  • http://www.telephonetribute.com/pdf/telephone_history_series_rev1.pdf
  • http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/09/history_of_hold_music_how_did_we_end_up_with_handel_tinkling_through_the.html