Freestyle swimming
I love sewing. And I love open-source. So when I found out that someone had actually put the two together, I just had to go and investigate; and what I found was quite out of this world.
Freesewing.eu is not like any other pattern site you've ever seen. What you do is to pick one of the designs listed (of which there are quite a lot), give it your measurements, and then in return it will give you a pattern for that design which is made to fit you. Precisely. No alterations needed. Because every single design (even the cuddly shark here, about which more in a moment) is all coded up behind the scenes using free open-source software which will take your measurements as input and do the magical tweaking for you. And, as you can see from the partial design list on the left of the feature photo, quite a few of those designs are body blocks, meaning they're intended to be adapted; in particular, you can use them to alter commercial patterns quickly and easily, without the guesswork. (One of them has princess seams!) You don't have to know anything about the software; you can use this site if you've never coded in your life. I, naturally, am immensely curious about it, and I've now got rather an itch to design something just so I can talk to the people at the website and get them to teach me how to code it up; but one thing at a time. I'm already insanely busy.
Anyway... the shark. It's not the only marine plushie; there's also a rather nice Octoplushy which I may have to make at some point. I wasn't expecting to find it, but I was delighted when I did, because it is in fact a reverse-engineered IKEA Blåhaj; and I like those things, but I've never bought one for two reasons. Mainly, it's because it's too big, but also blue isn't really my colour. So now I can, according to the site, make my own in whatever colour I choose, and any size from 50 cm up to 5 m... really? 5 metres? That must surely be a misprint. What on earth would anyone want with a five-metre-long cuddly shark? I mean, I suppose if you had a large enough living room you could use it as a sofa... anyway, I'm going for 50 cm. That's about the right size for me. (This shark, by the way, is called Hi. I think that's because "Blåhaj" is pronounced something like "Bla-hi"; I'm no expert in Swedish.)
I am extremely impressed with the level of inclusion on the site. It's not just about sizing, although obviously that's a major thing; if you have software that can adapt a basic pattern to any size, you're not going to be like some of these pattern manufacturers who have never heard of a bust measurement above about 100 cm. There are also things like the Umbra Undies, which can be sewn so that no seam allowance touches the skin, because some people with autism have unusual sensory perception parameters and can find things like seams against the skin really uncomfortable. And there's the fact that most of the patterns (not quite so much the body blocks, which tend to be specifically designed for either male or female bodies) are either gender-neutral or very easily adaptable. I like the Wahid Waistcoat; granted, I've already got the Cashmerette one for myself and the Thread Theory Belvedere for d'Artagnan, but I'm impressed to find that there is a waistcoat that would work equally well for either of us.
Also, while most of the patterns are what you might call standard modern (for instance, there's a good range of basic trousers on the site, and it's definitely where I'll be going next time I need to make a pair, because I am a blighter to fit round the seat), quite a few of them aren't. So, for instance, you have the Cornelius Cycling Breeches, somewhat old-fashioned but still immensely practical (and of course they instantly made me think of d'Artagnan, and then, surprisingly, also of Porthos; Porthos rather emphatically does not cycle, but he has been known to wear knee breeches to go with that rather piratical frock coat I made him). There are also things like the Lunetius Lacerna. If you're not currently thinking "the what now?", congratulations - you're doing better than I did; but in fact it's a historical Roman-style cloak, and it has a couple of other patterns that work with it. And there are patterns for small children too, such as Bob the Bib (what else would they call it?) and the Otis romper. Given that most of the pattern names are alliterative, I'm surprised it wasn't the Rodney Romper or something of the sort, but there you go.
You may be wondering about the measurements they use. The answer is that there are 38 of them in total, though obviously there is no one design that needs all 38! Each measurement in the list links to its own page, where you can see exactly where to take the measurement on either a female or a male body. You can also save sets of measurements, so you can have a set of measurements on the site not only for yourself but for every member of the family (and the site adheres to the strictest privacy standards in the world). Every design that uses body measurements (so basically everything bar the plush toys) has a list showing exactly which measurements it requires; occasionally one or two may be optional.
Anyway, I had a go at resizing and saving the cuddly shark pattern. I was actually able to size it down to less than 50 cm; mine is going to be about 33 cm. I couldn't work out how to do it at first, but you need the button labelled "Hi Options" to resize (it also allows you to do a few other things, like determine how aggressive or hungry you want him!):
Word of warning: by default, seam allowances are not included. You need to change that under "Core Settings". I've set mine to 1.5 cm, which is the usual default (and, after all, there's nothing to stop you printing it out twice so you have one piece with the seam allowances and one without, so you know exactly where to put the indentations).
I am not, needless to say, planning to make Hi the Shark in the very near future; in fact, the main reason I took the trouble to work out how to tweak him to my exact requirements was so I could show you how the site works using a very simple example. But I do hope to make him eventually, and possibly also Octoplushy.
In conclusion: come on in. The water's fine!
