Shape.

Some of these lines apply to me!

I'm taking a break from cutting version 2 of the Crepe dress because I've had a crazy discovery. I knew that my bust measurement was causing me to cut my patterns a few sizes too big, and anticipated having to nip this dress in at the waist, back, and shoulders like last time. However, this time I'm trying to correct the pattern so I don't have to constantly do mathematical jumping jacks every time I make something from it. Because of this I have the other sizes right in front of me, and I realized how many places I need to adjust will line up to an actual size if I just follow the line. Apparently my bust is a size eighteen, and the rest of my torso is a size ten.

TEN. Seriously.

Pictured: interesting
clothes I actually like.

This is messing with me right now. My body image has always been pretty wonky, but this is really screwing with my perception that I'm wicked plus sized and barely on the edge of being able to even buy a proper pattern let alone find clothes in a retail store that will fit me. Part of the reason I never get new clothes anymore is because I can't find any that suit my personal style that come in my size. It feels horrible to have to choose between interesting clothes I actually like that won't fit and boring clothes that will more or less fit. I hate it, and I just avoid the problem by not getting clothes and feeling schlumpy all the time. Other than the occasional Stop Staring dress (which I can't afford anyway), I'm basically screwed when it comes to ready-to-wear clothes.

Pictured: boring tents that
are ordinary and unflattering

So yeah, in my mind I'm this too-big size all over. Now, well, holy crap. I checked my other measurements and it makes sense too - everything else is in the size-ten range, except for my bust and my low hips which are a solid eighteen. The reason nothing ever fits me at all, ever, isn't because I'm an eighteen or more all over, I'm actually just even more hourglass than I thought. That's why the small clothes don't fit, and why the big clothes don't fit either.

I'm not someone who deeply longs to be a tiny, flat-bottomed, basketball-boobed magazine cover lady, so this isn't about that. It's just that I can barely remember a time when I was happy with my body because I've always assumed I was too big to wear nice clothes. I always assumed that the reason nothing ever fit was because I was just too huge. I'd look in the mirror and see myself as one shape, but then I'd try things on and I'd feel bigger, and then when I'd tell clerks in stores what size I was no one would believe me because they said I didn't look that big. I felt like a crazy person because all the evidence in front of me (clothes in stores, math) said my body was impossibly wrong, but people (even my own eyes) would disagree.

Writing that makes it sound so stupid. How can my body be wrong? Still, that's how it felt.

So now that I'm learning how to make clothes that actually fit, I'm learning about how my body really is, and I'm amazed at how different it is than the supposed "evidence" I've collected has been telling me. I had no idea this would happen simply because of learning how to sew.