Waistcoat reduction

[alex_beecroft]

I don’t know if anyone remembers me blogging about my morris dancing waistcoat back in the day when I had only just started dancing, and I had to make my first one?  I was a size 18, so I naturally bought a size 18 pattern, only to be told (when the waistcoat didn’t fit) that a size 18 pattern makes a size 14 garment.  Goodness knows why!

Anyway, I solved the problem briefly by giving the waistcoat two sets of buttonholes and making a stomacher to button between the two sides.  As you can see in action here:

http://alexbeecroftblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/19/april-was-in-march-and-so-was-i/

After that, I made a second, yellow, waistcoat which actually was big enough.  But the second waistcoat, and the third (apple green) were not as well made as the first one, because the first one got all my waistcoat-making enthusiasm, whereas the others were just knocked together in a rush.

I’ve been having a couple of disheartening weeks on the diet recently, where I’ve stopped losing weight despite sticking to the regime.  So it cheered me up no end on our recent morris-taster-and-recruitment day (when we danced for four hours almost non stop, with numerous suspecting members of the public dragged in) to discover that I can finally do it up!

I’ve had to narrow the stomacher to a single strip of buttons and fasten the same buttons through both sides, but you can’t tell that once it’s done up.  I also had to find a new skirt at the charity shop because I’d been having to hold the old one up by safety-pinning it to my shirt.  So the diet may have hit a bit of a plateau at the moment, but the results over all are still fairly dramatic.  As is the fact that I could dance for 4 hours on end!  I couldn’t have done that when I started.

The taster day was brilliant fun, run jointly by the Riot and Coton Morris Men.  The members of the public who joined in seemed to enjoy it, and we got to try out each others’ dances.  Coton are a Cotswold side, the Riot are a Border side, and the two traditions are quite different.  It was nice that both sides came away from the day going “I don’t know how you do that!  That was really difficult!”

Apropos of nothing, Coton have a dance called Willow Tree in which they call for a female ‘sacrifice’ from the audience for them all to dance around.  They always pick someone young and pretty, and I have always had ambivalent feelings about the dance.  However, Sompting Ladies’ Morris have shown me what the correct response should be:

(Probably only amusing if you’ve seen its opposite:)

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Comments

[ithilwen]

I'm currently stuck on a weight-loss plateau, so I know how frustrating that is. Hang in there! You'll probably start losing again, just not as quickly as before. Besides, you are currently looking GREAT!

[alex_beecroft]

Thank you! I know you're right, and I dare say that we will both start shifting downwards again soon :) I've only got about another stone to lose, so I suppose I'm not surprised that things have slowed a bit. I wouldn't even mind too much if I stayed at this weight for good. I like size 14 because I feel fine and look (to my mind) sturdy and strong. I chose my target only because it was the upper limit of the Doctor's BMI chart band for 'healthy', but if it turns out to be impossible to shift down from here, I don't think I'll be too upset.

Good luck with yours!

[ithilwen]

Thanks! Like you, I figure fitness trumps looks, so I'll just do the best I can, keep working out, and not fret too much over what the scale shows.

[darkemeralds]

Speaking as one whose first major weight plateau has lasted nearly a month (and is only slowly and tentatively giving way to further reductions on the bathroom scale), may I just say that your reminder of how far you've come is very useful to me?

Congratulations on the waistcoat reduction. And it's nice to see you. Gorgeous red hair! You look like you're having a wonderful time in that second shot, and the greater ease you mention in dancing for four hours is evident on your face in comparison to the first shot.

Sewing patterns, by the way, still cleave to the old sizing system (Wikipedia has a fairly good article on the subject which I was just reading yesterday as I looked over old knitting patterns) while off the rack garments today have succumbed to "vanity sizing."

By these measures, the US size 14 that I wore (and deplored!) in high school is today a US size 8. It's crazy. But it's reflective of the obesity epidemic.

[alex_beecroft]

Oh, tentative congratulations on finally getting off the plateau on the right side :) But yes, I think I was getting all discouraged unnecessarily. I have felt that I haven't got anywhere since Christmas, since my weight loss has been much less regular every week since then, but when I look back over the big picture I may have had three weeks when I put on half a pound, but in the same time I had several other weeks where I lost. The net change is still 5.5lb down. Just because it's not going as fast as it used to doesn't mean that it's stopped working. I guess that the fact that there's less left to lose is a factor too!

*g* Thanks! Part of the reason I don't look as though I'm so fiercely concentrating in the later picture is that I now know the dances that much better and don't have to think about where I ought to be next quite so hard. But not having that "will I be able to get to the end of this dance before I either faint or have to stop?" question hanging over my head is a definite improvement too.

Fancy that, about the vanity sizing! In that case my respect for the sewing patterns has gone back up. I approve of them sticking to their guns and not bowing to fashion, even if it does result in inconvenience to all :)

[darkemeralds]

Another thought on the vanity sizing: it has aided and abetted the massive obesity denial problem, too. I know I'm not alone in having allowed myself to be lulled by the fact that there were "still some size 14s" (or 16s or 18s or 20s...) that I could fit into, even though I knew I was getting fatter and fatter.

I'm not blaming the garment industry for my problems, but there's little doubt in my mind that if I'd faced size numbers that were relevant to the sizing structure I grew up with (and learned to sew in), I might have been shocked into action quite a bit sooner.

[alex_beecroft]

Yes, in both cases where I've gone on a long diet down to size 12, it's been prompted by the fact that I was about to be unable to fit into a particular dress size. It's a kind of "thus far and no further" barrier.