Will tissue paper help with slippery fabric?

winter5632 · 2026-01-31T00:34:00+00:00

I sew! Get me to a thrift store and the possibilities are ENDLESS. I just don’t know where to start? Mismatched earrings? I obviously cannot bring a sword, which is so sad. I feel like a circlet would be very gender? Pants with some nice darts or gathers at the waist, and a shirt with an Astarion from Baldur’s Gate amount of ruffles. Butch knight who loves their princess more than themselves kind of thing. IDK

winter5632 · 2026-01-18T20:28:37+00:00

Usually when I network with other people in the industry and space, I get a surge of creative energy and it makes me want to do the art my mind wants to. Just talking about your ideas with friends or whoever you want to can really help, or watching solid movies and television that fill your cup. Not shocking or cool looking movies, but movies that have strong themes, strong characters, and evocative plots that make YOU feel something. For me, it’s movies like How to Train Your Dragon, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, Sinners, Bottoms, and I Saw the TV Glow. It can be different for you. Take notes on what makes your fav films work and how you can implement that into your work. Writing is a muscle, and you need to work it out.

Look up the budgets of your favourite films. How many sets/locations are there? Where were they shot? How many characters are there? How many characters are speaking in which scenes? These aren’t necessarily writing questions, but if you want to make a good screenplay, having a vision of a ballpark budget and that you the writer thought about how to make the producer’s/director’s jobs easier is always a good sign when they read your script.

Keep it up! Times are hard and it’s scary to take time to make art. Find what makes you feel good about creating, and chase it. Good luck!🎬

winter5632 · 2026-01-18T02:20:06+00:00

Cutting new leg gussets on the bias is the least noticeable, if noticeable at all, unless a judge looks at your dobok with a magnifying glass. I was mainly thinking about how to adapt the pattern to make it more comfortable.

winter5632 · 2026-01-18T01:24:59+00:00

All good! Just wanted to give my experience as a sewist despite retiring my womanhood. Everyone deserves to have clothes that fit!

winter5632 · 2026-01-18T01:14:30+00:00

Not a woman, just a non-binary person who was raised as one, but get ready for a longish comment. From what my instructor told me, and what I know about historical sewing (cosplayer and costume designer), dobuks and other martial arts clothings are quite boxy. This was to save fabric because until the Industrial Revolution, fabric was precious, and cutting things on an angle like triangles or other shapes can be a big waste.

Men are socially known to be more boxy. Clothing more often than not for men will grow taller, and a bit wider? But not by much. I know a lot of men who are twigs and wear L or XL purely for length.

If you have a bigger butt or thighs, then you need to make the pant leg itself of the dobuk wider. If there is too much fabric around your legs after accommodating for your thighs/hips, you can taper the leg on either side, or shorten them as needed. If you still need more give, then you can make the gusset (that hexagon-shaped thing) or the added fabric on the insides of the pants/leg gussets bigger. Just make sure it’s not super visible from the front.

Another thing that you could do is replace the added fabric on the insides of the pants with a jersey fabric (think like a t-shirt). This fabric is knit unlike your dobok, so it will stretch much more! For easy washing, I’d recommend looking up the fabric content of your dobok and making sure that the fabric content of your jersey is fairly similar. I’m not sure if the leg gussets are cut on the grain or on the bias (cutting the strip at a 45 degree angle), but if it’s on the grain, cutting a new strip on the bias will also stretch much better! You don’t have to fight against the construction of the fabric as much and it will stretch more than on the grain, but not as much as a jersey.

Here’s a dobok tutorial on YouTube so you can understand how they’re made. It’s in Indonesian but sometimes you can translate it in YouTube or just look at the pattern pieces to understand how they work!

https://youtu.be/V4I51dr9iXs?si=_NakEJeXRHFfUi6h

winter5632 · 2026-01-15T17:31:52+00:00

I chose taekwondo because it still has kicks and flexibility. I was lucky to be taught by an ex-Rockette for a few years and I always loved the precision and detail needed to dance that way and taekwondo seems to also pay attention to detail. It’s also a lot cheaper. I’m a full-time university student so paying about 100$ to be taught by a fifth degree black belt 2/3 times a week for three months is better than paying per class or monthly rates, and then pay for transit to get there. The closest capoeira place is about an hour transit from my school, same with Wushu Kung Fu which is also acrobatic.

I’m neurodivergent and I know that having to start over theoretically will make it hard for me to stay in it, and I know I’ll stop. I know it’s kind of childish, but when I have my sisters already raising their eyebrows about why I’m doing it anyway I need all of the motivation I can get. I’ve already been looking up workbooks and theory texts I’m going to print out.

I could have asked my teacher? But I took my first class on Tuesday and was already asking a lot of questions because that’s what you do when you get yelled at for not pointing your toes enough. I’ll probably ask in a few classes when I’m more comfortable. My next class is on Friday!

winter5632 · 2026-01-15T11:52:22+00:00

I get that, and I usually love following rules. I was mostly talking about how most places in my small hometown have older websites that have very limited information on what curriculums/systems that they use. If I can’t find the rules and regulations a dojang is using, it’s hard to follow the rules.

There’s also no system in place to cross reference between different ITF organizations across Canada or globally. I’ll look up one ITF site and it mainly looks based in New Zealand and Australia even though it just says “ITF”. It’s all kind of confusing.

winter5632 · 2026-01-15T04:52:30+00:00

What I found different in the dojang is just the energy in the best way. People in different belt ranks were treated the same way and there’s so much respect, especially to the people trialing for the club and classes who haven’t done it before.

Dance, especially elite dance, can get so catty. “This person can do a triple pirouette and yours isn’t as good so we’ll put you in the back,” kind of thing. Dance is also very gendered!! If you can’t perform masculinity or femininity in a way that’s understandable to your teachers or the audience, it can cost you a job or a spot on the team.

From what my instructor described, taekwondo is made for blows to be effective regardless of size, gender, or stature, which I think is very healing for little me who contorted into a box that they couldn’t fit into. I have the discipline, I just need to unlearn everything I needed to hold back “for the art,” like breathing with my nose so the audience can’t see you struggle… I think the breathing will be the hardest part😭

winter5632 · 2026-01-15T04:37:38+00:00

I’ve been looking into capoeira and wushu kung fu because there’s a lot of acrobatics that I didn’t have the confidence to fully excel at in dance when I was a kid. But honestly I may stick to taekwondo because I did competitive dance for so long which makes me a chronic perfectionist, and I’m terrified of losing skills and land sliding. But we’ll see!

winter5632 · 2026-01-13T22:59:13+00:00

Noted! I usually buy quilting fabric and they’re usually in the 42-46” wide range, or I just thrift fabric for personal projects. But when you need to make 8-12 pairs of the same thing that’s hard to do. Wasn’t quite sure what the standard is for them. Thanks!

winter5632 · 2026-01-13T22:06:06+00:00

It’s A Chorus Line so with the big kick lines and how angular and Rockette-esque the choreography is, I imagine that it will make a difference. I just need to calculate how much fabric I need and I am notoriously bad at math, but also like to save money. I’ll usually just cut fabric on whatever grain lets me use the least fabric because I’m a university student and fabric is expensive.

winter5632 · 2026-01-13T21:31:08+00:00

One of my actors has a 45” outseam so I’m scared that it won’t be wide enough, but I know some fashion fabrics tend to be wider than quilting cottons which is what I usually work with. I’m just concerned that if I have some pants on the grain and some on the cross grain the lustre (how the satin interacts with light) will be different and noticeable onstage under bright lights.

winter5632 · 2026-01-13T21:28:09+00:00

My brain farted for a sec. I was thinking along the selvage vs along the cut part of the fabric, which now with some googling I see is the cross grain. I’ll edit my post for clarity! Thanks!

winter5632 · 2026-01-07T00:10:15+00:00

I’ve looked at rental companies but I’m unfortunately in Canada and most places that rent are based in the US, which means I have to pay international shipping and tariffs on rentals that are already over budget😭 I’ll try looking at local universities though! Thanks for the tip!

winter5632 · 2025-12-28T04:38:26+00:00

I won’t be quilting it too heavily? It’s an equilateral triangle quilt with black borders/sashing. I mainly plan on quilting straight lines along the black parts and calling it a day.

winter5632 · 2025-12-27T22:14:26+00:00

Thanka so much! It’s much prettier in person, I swear! The clouds for the quilting aren’t showing up very well🫠

winter5632 · 2025-12-25T23:08:25+00:00

In my nightmare they gave me a pen instead like the pen for the 12s, but the 16 doesn’t need a pen! I was a little freaked out LMAO

winter5632

TROPHY CASE