Erika Moen

Have you ever been putting on an item of clothing and heard it go RRRRRRRRRRIPPPPPPP like a freaking cartoon sound effect? That happened to me recently with my (I guess very old??) jean jacket. Fortunately, I am a sewer!! ...No, not the very important infrastructure that conveys sewage >:c I AM A BI

It's Saturday night and I'm all out of sorts. I lost the last week of my life to a stupid cold and I'm really pretty grumpy about it. I had plans! I had stuff to work on! And instead of that, I spent the week rubbing my nostrils raw from blowing my nose into toilet paper. On the evening before I bec

Here's a few things I've mended recently! My shoe that I got at Goodwill and only wore a handful of times before it started to do this: Those little strappy-bandy bits were coming off, so I glued 'em the fuck down! About once a month I do volunteer mending over at Repair PDX, which is where people j

It is slow, but I do continue to make incremental progress on my 18th century stays project! And by "slow", I mean that it has taken me about two years to get to this point in production. My new milestone is adding the boning to my garment! Much like the corsets that would follow in the next century

Our windshield sun shade-thing is broken. We've been using these two window covers for, like, a decade? Um, do I need to explain this design? Here, I don't think this is the same brand or model that we have, but this is basically the same thing as ours. It's these two panels that each fill up half t

After an unintentional three month break, Sewcial Studies (my historical costuming group) reconvened and I've begun the next phase of my stays! (Refresh your memory on this project and what, exactly, "stays" are here) Here is my artistic interpretation of what mine should look like upon completion:

Over the last two-ish years I've been chipping away at my very first stays with my sewing group (Sewcial Studies). "Stays" are boned laced bodices worn under clothes from the late 16th or early 17th century, before corsets came along in the 18th century. Here's the exact pattern (1780s front-lacing

Halloween was upon us and I didn't really have a costume. But I did have a hand-me-down technicolor swimsuit, black tights, a weird kind of mini-top with long sleeves, and stretchy gold fabric. My destiny was obvious: I am... a background character in a cheap sci-fi movie! I had used a leftover scra

As a comic artist-- one who specializes in sex education and autobiographical stories- I was honestly confused when two scientists approached me to design functional clothing for pregnant people to wear on Mars. What? Never one to let my lack of experience or knowledge hold me back from getting invo

My friend Ben Coleman has a jacket that he wore daily for ten years. It served him well! But you wear something that much for a decade and it's just a matter of time before it accrues some battle damage. You guys already know where this is going. Yeah. I mended the fuck outta this coat. Coleman is a

Sometime around 2010ish, Matt and I bought our most expensive piece of furniture- a brand new couch from Ikea. This noble steed has served us well. In addition to normal couch duties, she's also served as a guest bed to many a visitor over the years, as well as an impenetrable fortress when cats nee

Tonight I have the immense honor of chatting with Lindsay Ellis about her newest book, Apostles of Mercy-- and I'd love to see you there! Book + event info, 7pm Powell’s Cedar Hills Crossing 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton, OR 97005 Facebook RSVP This is a delight for me not only because I've en

Once a week, my French Mother-in-Law (Ma belle-mere) helps me practice my second language over a video call. She's offered for years- the entire 19 years I've been with her son!- but I was always too embarrassed of my caveman-level language skills. I love French. I love the way it sounds. I love the

Oh jeez, you guys! I did volunteer work today??? These are photos from last month, though, they have extremely little to do with what I did today, except that both involve sewing. Ok, so to explain the photos: These are from my last Sewcial Studies historical costuming group meet-up, wherein I worke

I wear my clothing till it literally falls apart. Case in point, my bee socks that I've had for easily over a decade. I think they may have actually been a gift from someone? Maybe I bought them? Whoever paid, I definitely squeezed every last drop of dollar value out of 'em before retiring them to t

For the last ten years, I've been saving our worn out clothing in a basket under my home studio desk. Tig likes to shove her little paws in it up to her armpits and methodically pull out the top layer of clothes to make herself a little nest, exactly where my feet should be, and then nestle herself

Remember that time I decided to make a simple six panel comic explaining how to replace your boot zipper and then I was like "Let's make this take one million times longer by illustrating it with collage'd paper and fabric"? There's no need to remember it like it's in the past because, baby, IT'S ST

My favorite shorts have a hole in the left butt cheek zone, BUT- -I have leftover shiny gold fabric from a previous project, THEREFORE- -I no longer have a hole in my shorts. As the old proverb goes: When life gives you holes in your favorite shorts, turn the other cheek.

Some years ago I bought some cheap boots on sale at my grocery store. They were either $40 or $20, I can't remember. They served me well but they were not made to last, so inevitably the interiors began disintegrating- which was fine, I could still wear them! Nobody but me knew that the insides look

Matt gave me a glass with a faint yellow-y tinged transparent drink and a straw so of course I took a big ol' slurp from it, assuming it was a fruity-flavored water, but NO. NO. IT WAS NOT. It was a canned mojito? I actually shrieked when my taste buds spiked on that weirdo fermented off-taste. I me

Slowly but surely I am making progress on my 18th century outfit with my Historical Costuming sewing group! Having wrapped up my strap-on pockets, I now commenced on my very first set of stays. Commonly confused for a corset, stays actually pre-date them and are their own distinct form of underwear.

You wear your favorite jeans until they are shreds. Your body rubs away denim, fiber by fiber, until the light shines through them. It takes years, but all through the power of your body moving and living in these jeans, rubbing against them every day, grinding them away from the inside, you wear ri

"You're the only person I know who would bring an entire CURTAIN to a hot springs." -Matt, after asking me what entertainment I was going to bring on our weekend retreat two hours away in the woods. When we moved in to our house ten years ago, the previous tenants left two long brown curtains up in

Well, I finished them! My 18th century pockets, I mean. They’re ‘sposed to be worn like this ⬆️ underneath all the skirts and whatnot, with a slit in the outer layers to allow access to the pocket. (Above photo from the Thistle Thistle pattern) My sewing group advised me to use bias tape to cover up

Matt is an avid climber (indoor bouldering, specifically). Even though he's invested in pants specially made for the activity, he climbs so zealously that he regularly reduces them into scraps. After some small mending jobs, his pants were getting so threadbare that just attaching new patches would

UPDATE 2/3/23: Submissions CLOSED. --------------------------------------------------- I went to bed with this Patreon still needing three more sign-ups before I could start the big collaboration project I had proposed, and this morning I woke up to that goal number not only having been met but actu

Appliqué is the practice of sewing one smaller piece of fabric onto a larger piece of fabric to create a decoration, pattern, or image. It’s super fun!! I love it! I wanna appliqué everything! I wanna appliqué! With you! When? When this account reaches 450 patrons (we’re currently at 412 as of Jan 4

My previous post summarized the first six months of the art I made in 2022, and now I present to you the second half! July Ok, so I found a buncha sketches from July that I could post but this (PARTIAL) batch of my potato harvest is way more impressive so I'd rather show that off. LOOK WHAT I MADE A

What did I make in 2022? More than can fit in one post, that's for sure. January During one of my routine visits to Goodwill (secondhand shop), I found this giant photo canvas print of the Flat Iron Building in New York City and I thought "I bet I could fill that up with tiny naked people cut out of

These are the sashes that came with the curtains that came with the house we bought nine years ago. They’ve been disintegrating for years and for years I keep telling myself I will (hand) sew replacements and for years I have not done it. This is the sewing machine that an incredibly generous reader