Hanbok Skirt

I have been back at work for a month now, and I have not had much time or energy (more so the energy) to work on anything outside of work. But I took some PTO the past three days and used half of it to sew the Sewing Therapy hanbok skirt.

I had assembled the pattern and started the ties over the past few weeks, but the rest required some dedicated time. I have yet to wear it outside. I planned to wear it out when I went to SJMade ILLO Mart this weekend, but after wearing it in the morning the day of, I didn't think I would be comfortable walking around in the venue for two hours. I'm not sure if it's due to my fabric choice and not using proper interfacing for the waistband (I just used another layer of the same fabric as interfacing) that my stomach felt quite uncomfortable. Or maybe I was too bloated that day. Or the style just doesn't work well with my body.

I will wear it out some time this week and see how it feels.

For reference, I made this in size M.

The fabric I used is the same as the tie dress, just with a different print. At least I knew ahead of time it would be difficult to work with. I didn't try too hard to make my cuts precisely match the pattern, since it would move and stretch anyway. I also avoided pressing the fabric too hard so it would stay close to the "true size" with the crinkly texture after washing and drying. The pattern was all rectangles, but I still managed to make very differently cut rectangles... but we'll just make do.

Here we have all the pieces cut out (with one tie already done because I forgot to take a picture before) and then both ties done.

Next was the waistbands, which is what halted my progress for a week or so. The instructions recommended adding interfacing. So I did buy some. But it turns out interfacing doesn't work well on the type of textured fabric I was using. The fabric itself isn't actually stretchy, but due to the texture, it does "stretch". So when I ironed on the interfacing and pulled the fabric a little, the interfacing tore. Even when I was just testing the interfacing by itself to see which direction I should iron it on, it tore so easily.

After some research, I decided the easiest thing to do was just use the same fabric as interfacing. Which I did not muster the energy or courage to do until my PTO started.

The pattern has two large rectangles for the skirt, but my fabric wasn't wide enough, so I made three rectangles instead. I followed the same instructions to join all three pieces with flat-felled seams.

Then, I made and pinned down the pleats, and sewed them to one of the waistband pieces.

I attached the other waistband piece and pinned it down.

In theory, making the pleats should have been the most time consuming part. But sewing the two waistband pieces together took sooooo much time because I kept messing up. I was not pinning the layers together well. As a result, I was not catching all the layers in the topstitch/edgestitch (ideally it was supposed to be an edgestitch, but I had trouble keeping the stitch close to the edge). This meant that the edge of the waistband was not straight and there were exposed raw edges.

I thought I could fix it by adding a second row of edgestitching to catch those loose edges. This did not work because there was very little space for the folded fabric to go, so it would squish out even more, and I was still not catching all the layers.

So I ended up taking out a lot of the stitches and redoing them, and re-redoing them, until it was good enough. It was during this painstaking process that I realized I should insert the pins down at an angle and up at an angle, not straight down and straight up and trying to press the layers flat. My bad pinning method was causing the layers to warp/twist so they weren't actually in the position I wanted to sew them together. (Maybe for fewer layers, this pinning method would be fine, but I was going through like six layers.)

I mean, from a distance, most people would not notice the horrible stitching, but I want to become a good sewist, which means I need to do it right.

Here's the fixed waistband topstitching, and some details from the backside of the skirt. No one will see these details, but they do matter!

And finally, here is the skirt on me! In different tops to see how I might wear it in an outfit.

Then I spent the rest of my PTO doing pretty much nothing. I did remember to write this post, so at least I did that.

Return to the IRON series

I am still working out consistently, 3x a week now, and I've gone back to Caroline Girvan's IRON series mainly because I wanted to do separate upper and lower body days.

I'm finding that it's easier to get my sets done when following along with the IRON videos compared to Lift with Cee videos. In Lift with Cee, the combination of not having a timer, not having consistent music that helps gauge the passing of time, and doing exercises in supersets gives me anxiety and makes me feel rushed to finish. I think with the supersets, since there was no rest between exercises, it was more awkward to finish my set while she's already saying "getting set up" for the next exercise. It was reminisicent of conditioning in high school sports where I was always a little slower than everyone, so when everyone "finished" the set number of push-ups following the captain's down/up cues, I would still be going because I'm a perfectionist and had to finish the set.

I started pausing the video entirely after the first set to avoid feeling rushed. But not following along with the video also made me feel less motivated. And I would have to fast-forward the video to get to the next exercise. Then I would run into weird streaming/buffering issues with YouTube. (I actually downloaded all the videos from both series to my media server now, so that shouldn't be an issue anymore.)

Don't get me wrong; I still like her videos, especially the forced warmup, but I needed a break from them.

I am enjoying the adjustable dumbbells I bought. (And may have convinced a friend to also buy them hehe.)

I also started logging all my workouts using FitNotes, so during the 30 second rests in the IRON videos, I'll finish the last few reps if I need to, pause, log the set, change weights if needed, then unpause and actually rest. No need to rewind or fast-forward the video.

I am not doing all the IRON videos this time. I am skipping the full body days, and I'm keeping track of which ones I want to repeat and adding them to a separate playlist. (I do not need to repeat the bulgarian lunge workout where I couldn't walk properly for half a week after.)

Regarding FitNotes, it almost does everything I want it to. But for logging the IRON workouts, it's a little tricky because sometimes exercises are repeated, but not in a superset. Or there are sequences of variations, which is also hard to log. It would also be nice to easily see my max weight for different variations of the same exercise, like single-arm, alternating, 1/2 rep, etc. In general, I feel like it takes a lot of clicks and going through unintuitive menus to get things done. So I may one day make my own app.