By Mark Peters
Word blends are the bunnies of language: they breed like motherfathers.
During the recent American Dialect Society meeting in Portland, plenty of blends were singled out. Assholocracy is an apt description of America, especially in an election year. Botoxionist refers to a doctor specializing in the forehead region of vain people. A brony is a bro who loves My Little Pony. That word was voted Least Likely to Succeed, but you can bet similar words will keep sprouting, particularly in the world of fashion.
Jeggings. Photo by Funkdooby. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
These atrocities aren’t going to stop. I predict the following items will be on sale soon.
(FYI, if any of these are plausible ideas, please call my agent, because I’d gladly sell my soul to the denim industry).
jear muffs
They’re not warm, but fashionistas are warmed by style, not warmth. For the elderly, how about jearing aids?
jonocle
Could be a little itchy for you Mr. Peanut types, but it can’t be worse than peanut allergies. So that evens out.
jape
Maybe Christopher Nolan can work this in to the new Batman movie.
jevlar vest
It doesn’t block bullets, which could be a problem given the recent rise in fashion police brutality.
jinnamon rolls
These will be less fattening than cinnamon rolls because they are inedible.
joon
If we can put a man on the moon, we can put a team of fashion scientists on the moon to change its chemical composition.
jipple
Some say nipples can’t be improved. They’re probably right, but it’s worth a shot.
joodle
The designer dog world, which pumps out teacup malti-poos, toy pitdoodles, and more word blends than a denim-only catalog, could easily mix some denim DNA into one of their hellish kennels of canine copulation.
jystal meth
Jeans and meth are both blue, so this seems like a natural idea that could be the plot of a future Smurfs movie.
jaby
A beautiful, intelligent, precious denim baby. It will look so good with the rest of your jamily.
Mark Peters is a lexicographer, humorist, rabid tweeter, language columnist for Visual Thesaurus, and the blogger behind The Rosa Parks of Blogs and The Pancake Proverbs.
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By: jen,
on 6/30/2011
Blog: the fabled needle | an art, craft and sewing blog! (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Sewing, pattern, blue, feedsack, denim, wrap skirt, Add a tag
Good afternoon, all! I’ve been sewing up a storm. My creative spark has returned, at least to help liven up my summer wardrobe. Just when I think I’ve got the sewing bug out of my system, I’m onto another project. Today I’m just going to share this latest one, a super easy wrap skirt, because it’s on theme for our 4th of July weekend that’s just around the corner.
The pattern I used is the Audrey Wrap Skirt by Fig Tree & Co.:
Like I said before, this was super easy to make. But as always I made some modifications to suit me better.
Instead of commenting about how much I need a tan, and that I’m 2 minutes away from getting up from my chair to drive to the nearest Rite Aid to buy some self-tanner, let’s just get into the skirt details, OK?
This skirt pattern needs to be traced which my lazy self usually does not like to do but since modifications were imminent it worked out for the best.
Fabric: The main fabric is a lightweight dark denim that I used, inside out. I think the wrong side has a nice, summery linen-like look to it. The homemade bias tape is red, white and blue feedsack-inspired fabric from DS Quilts (available at Joann’s) that I got on sale. This skirt is intended to be reversible but since I was using denim, albeit a thin one, I didn’t want the skirt to be too heavy or stick out too much. (This is where the idea of using bias tape on the edges came in.)
Size: the pattern is one size fits all, sizes 8-14. As a petite person I knew this didn’t apply to me even though I usually wear an 8 (or maybe even a 6) in modern patterns. With mods of course. I had to take out a few inches in order for me to wrap this skirt around my waist without too much overlap (a wrap skirt that is too big would not allow me to wrap the waist snugly enough). In addition to that, I decreased the flare of the skirt panels (quite a bit actually) so that the finished piece would be in proportion to my petite frame. (Since petite-ifying patterns is not just about making them smaller!)
Length: The knee-length version was way long, more like mid-calf on me. And according to this calculator (via Extra Petite), the ideal skirt length for me is 2″ above the knee. So there you go.
Bias tape: I trimmed the 1/2″ seam allowances I added from the waist, 2 outer skirt edges and the hem. I also rounded the edges of the lower corners to avoid mitering the bias tape (which so happens to look cute as well). I didn’t calculate how much bias tape I needed even though this calculator is very handy…so I have a bunch leftover! The tape starts off 2″ wide and is dou