Making Knickerbockers

Taste In Fashion

I have a real soft spot for buttons. And bows. And laces.

I love pants that are high-waisted and blouses that are pirate-y. I like shades of brown and creamy white. Unless, of course, I could be dressed in bright blues or reds or greens. I love hair from the 40’s, hats from the 20’s, corsets from the 1850s, and stockings from the 1600s.

Sometimes I want to wear clothes that match my lazy-day mood and frumpy-girl character. Sweats usually fit the bill. Yet as I get older I often want clothes that project the mood and character I long for; productivity, cleverness, tradition, and nostalgia. I want clothes that make me sit up straighter; clothes that have meaning behind them and reveal my fascination with eras gone by. I want clothes that are beautiful. I want clothes that make me beautiful.

I love seeing people wearing all kinds of clothes. What I personally find most enjoyable to wear, however, follows certain basics: I don’t want to wear a foghorn of indecorous sexuality. This isn’t only for the sake of modesty; I find many of these garments can be tasteless and undeveloped because the clothes are a mere distraction to the shapely figure underneath. Conversely, I don’t like unduly ornate clothes and find deep delight in the warm touch of sunlight on skin.

If my attempts at minimalism make it a pain to go clothes shopping, then my sense of fashion makes it nearly impossible. In general, I go to a thrift store about once a year and buy some strange article which I wear until it is little more than a grubby rag. Instead of wearing clothes that I actually love, I mostly wear clothes that are cheap, practical, or somewhat my style. This is okay, but if it’s all the same to the rest of the world, I would much rather wear clothes that I love.

While I am a good knitter, I am not a skilled seamstress. Making my own wardrobe is a real challenge. I thought that the winter break between school semesters was an opportunity to try sewing some clothes. I have excited visions of corsets and ruffly blouses and those sublime academic-feeling plaid skirts from the mid 40s. My first piece, I decided, should be gloriously quirky knickerbockers.

A Reason For Thrift Flipping

In my household, we share a Bernina 335. Sadly, I would still be the weak link even if I didn’t use a luxurious machine. I’m telling you – I can bomb a test, lose a board game, burn a meal, or forget half my grocery list, but none of these eye-rolling blunders can elicit so much frustration (or so many curse words) as messing up during a sewing project. When I have to un-pick a seam, no one is allowed to talk to me. In fact, no one is allowed to look at me. I speculate that this frustration is due to my extreme naivety. I think sewing should be easy and when it is not disappointment takes me by surprise. The shock turns me into a gremlin.

Embarrassingly, I cannot claim to have found the key to pacifying all sewing-mistake frustrations, but I do believe I have stumbled onto a piece of the solution: thrift flipping. Since there aren’t any instructions, thrift flipping requires a little more creative problem solving than pattern-based sewing. Thrift flipping, however, cranks forward the clock of delayed gratification. The project starts out with the basics covered. Shirts start out with arm holes. Pants start out with zippers or buttons. Seeing the optimistic light at the end of the tunnel gives me motivation and, statistically, a five-hour project simply has fewer opportunities for mistakes and frustrations than a fifty-hour one.

Choosing short projects with the end in sight is what James Clear would call “Environment Priming”. The Law of Least Effort posits that when an individual is presented with similar options, they will generally be inclined to opt for what requires the least amount of energy and work [1, p 151]. Priming an environment is a way of reducing friction to a desired habit [1, p 156]. It applies the principles of the Law of Least Effort by making the desired act the most easily doable action in a given scenario [1, p 156].

I might have hoped that by my mid-twenties I was environment-priming for behaviors like running ten miles a day or reading three novels a week… It makes me laugh to think that I prime my environment so steam doesn’t come out of my ears while stitching clothes befitting grandmothers.

Final Thoughts

I genuinely love these knickerbockers. With stockings, I look something like a newsboy. Without, I look something like a hobbit. I cannot wait to wear these pants everywhere!

Despite how few steps there were in the flip, the whole process was riddled with mistakes. I made two left-leg cuffs. This meant that one cuff was attached to the pant leg with wrong sides together before any top stitching, and the other cuff (which was sewn right sides together and then flipped right sides out like a pillowcase) only received top stitching… which was a thick and bumpy process that I’ll be glad if observers happen to overlook. One of the cuffs was dangerously small, and so the button placement had to be properly adjusted so the cuff wasn’t too tight. There were many, many mistakes.

I say this because it’s honest. I’ve read one too many blogs and watched one too many YouTube videos that whitewash crafts to look simple and peachy when sometimes they’re hard and frustrating. I went full toddler-brain when my second cuff came out bumpy and wriggly. I ate two servings of guacamole, put the knickerbockers on with pins, found my mother, and told her (despite the fact that she was clearly busy on the phone) that I needed her to say “the pants look nice”.

If you’re out there crafting away, and need someone to commiserate with a surprising amount of exasperation over the typical amateur’s learning curve, then I’m your gal. Good thing I get a good laugh at my creation after it’s made! What kind of grad student is willing to suffer work and frustration in order to wear a newsboy-grandma-hobbit getup to quantum class??

I am, apparently.

References:

[1] Clear, J. (2018). Atomic habits an Easy & proven way to build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. New York, NY: Avery, an imprint of the Penguin Random House LLC.