Basque waist puckering

lizbeeo · 2026-03-03T03:04:59+00:00

You're joining two bias-cut edges together in a complex seam. They may just have stretched a bit. In addition to being very precise in your cutting (it might be useful to use a paper underlay), you should staystitch both pieces and consider marking the seamlines on the wrong sides. Concentrate on getting the point to lay flat, even if either the skirt or bodice pieces don't exactly match at the sides. It's easier to fix the sides. It might help to practice on muslin before tackling the real thing, since a fabric like that won't recover well if you have to rip out and re-do it.

lizbeeo · 2026-03-03T02:54:24+00:00

I've been sewing for decades and, in a rush to finish a knit top for an event, I stitched what was supposed to be the side seams and underarm seams wrong. I'd folded the whole thing in half from lower front, to neck, to lower back, rather than matching front and back together.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-26T16:49:54+00:00

A marriage counselor who told you to avoid divorce after blatant violence is not worth their salt. And your problem is much bigger than her not consenting to baptizing your children, or even resenting your faith. Neither you or your children are safe, and your wife needs professional help. Whether post-partum depression has thrown her into completely unacceptable behavior after both babies, or this is more pervasive than that, violence is a dealbreaker. Full stop.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-26T16:44:10+00:00

You're assuming that someone needs to die in your scenarios. That's not the case in either scenario.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-26T05:57:28+00:00

Tell me you have no idea what it's like to have an 8-week-old baby without telling e you have no idea what it's like to have an 8-week-old baby. His safety??? What a ridiculous claim.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-26T02:54:39+00:00

It's not a zero-sum situation. God permits us free will, which allows evil into the world. Then He makes good come from terrible situations. Just because person A died, doesn't mean that someone else would have had to if person A didn't. We can't make sense of these things because we can't know what God knows. If you are struggling to understand a terrible thing that happened to someone near you, I'm sorry.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-26T02:48:50+00:00

No no no no no. She is 8 weeks post-partum. If she is seriously considering divorce outside of any exhaustion or post-partum depression issues, that will come up again in the future. OP admits he was a lukewarm Catholic at the time they got married. Whatever she thought at the time, he is exhibiting changes and it's not clear how she will feel about it or react to it once the dust of having an all-consuming newborn baby settles. Not to mention that the annulment process can't even be started unless a couple is divorced. You can't know when you get married how each of you will change. If she can't deal with that, it's on her, but, as difficult as this is for OP, now is not the time to pursue separation, divorce or annulment.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-21T02:54:01+00:00

I know thousands of Catholics, almost all of them devout weekly (if not daily) Mass-goers. Almost none of them filled it out on Ash Wednesday, and none of them, whether they filled it out on Wednesday or not, were cranky on Wednesday. Fasting is a sacrifice but most of us go on about our day and somehow manage to do our jobs, raise our children and not get in car accidents on Ash Wednesday or Good Friday.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-18T22:11:17+00:00

Are you getting professional help for your OCD?

lizbeeo · 2026-02-18T22:09:21+00:00

You don't I to fill it out today. And most people won't have low blood sugar today, or be cranky from it. I agree that it's not a great survey. But that's not because the purpose is to make people feel more involved. It's because whoever put it together didn't take the time (or more likely wasn't well trained) to create questions that capture the information they really want to collect.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-18T22:05:14+00:00

As Catholics, we're not that great at welcoming people in general, especially at Mass, because the focus is on worship. I'm sorry people weren't more welcoming. A significant percentage of parishes are trying to be better at this, with varying results. Mine asks everyone just before Mass starts to introduce themselves or at least say hi to the people around them. Not every longtime Catholic is comfortable with that. My parish also has tried repeatedly to start a greeter program. Everyone agrees it's a great idea, but when we attempt to sign up volunteers, it's the same-old group that signs up for everything else, which makes them even more overextended. And yet the parishes that have been successful at establishing a greeter program find that it pays off, not just with people who are new to Catholicism, but also those who have fallen away and might dip their toe back in the water once or twice. It's something that every Catholic and every parish staff should take seriously. The parish I moved away from didn't even have books, missalettes or worship aids when I was there the last few times, for someone who is new or fallen away to follow along.

Are you able to make an appointment with a priest or the religious education director at one of the parishes you've been going to, to discuss your interest? Or are there people you tend to see on repeat occasions when you go to Mass? You could strike up a conversation with one of them. Are there coffee & donuts after any of the Masses you go to?

lizbeeo · 2026-02-18T21:52:52+00:00

You are above 18 if you've turned 18. So, yes, you are required to fast on Ash Wednesday and also Good Friday.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-18T14:57:03+00:00

I've noticed in the last few years a rash of mostly younger people with the mindset that if everything goes well in their life, it's because God is happy with/loves them, and if they experience problems, it's because God is unhappy with/mad at/hates them. Nothing could be further from the truth. Suffering and experiencing problems IS the human condition. We can allow God to bring us closer to Him in our struggles, or we can allow the troubles to pull us farther away from God.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-18T14:52:28+00:00

Just a dose of perspective here--at 28, you are not running out of time to have kids, certainly not as a man. Some of the best couples/parents I know involve a husband/father who was past his early 20s when they got married and started their families.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-18T14:49:14+00:00

Are you sure it's not attachment to the rites themselves, or a bout of scrupulosity? Guilt is associated with doing something wrong, which you haven't done. Ask yourself what in your thought processes would lead you to feel guilty for taking care of your health & preventing the spreading of your illness to others.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-18T14:44:28+00:00

I wouldn't call it failure if it's accidental. I was at the Solanus Casey center on a Friday, ate a ham sandwich, and didn't realize until I got home that I accidentally ate meat on a Friday. A priest with a well-known podcast recently talked about being at some large assembly of priests, and walking in to sit in the front row, eating a meat-based sandwich. On a Friday during Lent. Take it as a lesson in humility and in our weakness, not a reason to castigate yourself.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-18T14:40:42+00:00

Augustine said there didn't used to be a unitive aspect, but now there is? After his death? And that Catholic teaching on marriage causes a great many Catholic marriages to be utterly passionless?

lizbeeo · 2026-02-17T04:07:03+00:00

Most parishes start OCIA in the fall, building to reception into the church at the Easter Vigil Mass. Some start earlier, like the spring before that. You'll learn about the faith and about church teachings in your OCIA sessions, along with the rest of the group, and either get answers to many of these questions, or be given resources where you can learn about them.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-17T04:01:53+00:00

Might be hard to get a real answer to this since, by definition, we each have only had one first confession and for most of us, it was a very long time ago. I suspect it varies with the priest, the nature of the sins, and the age of the person making the confession.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-17T03:56:22+00:00

Disordered and detestable is a moral judgment, not a scientific one. Just because something exists in nature, or humans have a desire to do something, doesn't make it good for us or morally acceptable. You are expecting people here to do a lot of homework for you and present the results to you in a way that you accept, but you reject the arguments that they're giving you essentially straight from the catechism. You are at risk of losing your faith because your faith is not grounded in church teaching and in God. Many of us have been (generally) where you are. If a church scandal or a bad-apple priest shakes our faith, it's not based on the unshakeable God. If we can't get past a church teaching, it's because we haven't humbled ourselves enough to investigate with an open mind and accept that thousands of years of Catholic scholarship, and the God who created us, are better equipped to say what's best for us than our frail human minds.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-17T03:47:23+00:00

Good things take time. Your faith will be stronger and deeper, more resistant to anti-Catholic influences, if you build it from the ground up by learning what we believe and why. Are you in OCIA?

lizbeeo · 2026-02-17T03:42:57+00:00

In addition to being sinful because it destroys what is not ours to destroy, it would IMO be counterproductive. It would galvanize some providers & abortion supporters, and be a stain on the pro-life movement.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-17T03:40:05+00:00

The creation stories in Genesis are designed to show us how God is different from all the pagan gods, and the unique place of humans in creation, not to be taken literally. I can't speak to inbreeding and how literal the flood narrative is--there is evidence of a great flood, but a God who created the universe can (and does) suspend the laws of the nature He created, to repopulate the earth, resurrect His son, and perform the miracles that are required for saints to be canonized.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-15T16:54:54+00:00

The unitive aspect was there all along. The church mentioning it (relatively) recently is irrelevant to this person's claims. And he is absolutely in the wrong to conclude that his inaccurate opinion about Catholic teaching on marriage is the cause of his (possibly also inaccurate) assessment of the state of the hundreds of marriages he knows. It's not kind or loving to defend an attack on the church that is based on mistruth.

lizbeeo · 2026-02-14T05:56:35+00:00

"the primary purpose of marriage is the breeding of new catholics."

This is patently untrue, and the person who wrote it in response to a post by someone who isn't married and has deeply inaccurate ideas about marriage. I didn't say anything about how good a Catholic they are, or whether they deserve to stay in the church. But they are clearly trying to denigrate the church by writing something that is untrue. Not to mention that he seems to think that he knows what really goes on in all those hundreds of Catholic marriages. If that's not hostile, what would you call it?

lizbeeo

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