fossandcrafts-transcriptions/055-free-soft-wear.txt

 [Music]
 Hello, and welcome to Foss & Crafts.
 A podcast about free software, free culture, and making things together.
 With my co-host Morgan.
 And my co-host Christine.
 Well, today, we are talking about free soft wear.
 Wait a minute.
 Free, soft, wear, three words.
 What does this mean?
 So this is maybe one of the more making things together episodes of this podcast we've made so far.
 Free, soft, wear is the term that we've been using in the Greater Foss & Crafts community
 to talk about creative patterns that are created and released under free culture licenses.
 Mm-hmm.
 Who came with that term?
 Well, it was kind of workshopped in the Foss & Crafts channel.
 On irc.libera.chat
 Yes.
 #FossAndCrafts.
 Yes, that's right.
 If you want to join that community.
 So, Elena Valhalla, just Valhalla on IRC, hopped up with the question, "What do you call a sewing pattern that's made with a free culture license?"
 And we had a pretty robust discussion with a bunch of contributions.
 But then...
 Cat Walsh comes in with free space, soft space, wear, W-E-A-R, and says, "I'm going to see myself out."
 But in fact...
 We loved it.
 And we kind of ran with it.
 So Valhalla had already been making and releasing sewing patterns under creative commons licenses
 long before this discussion happened in the Foss and Crafts channel.
 And I had kind of like a mental backlog of patterns but hadn't really released any, but I really liked this idea.
 And it's something you've been building upon, right?
 And like kind of encouraging other people to build upon too.
 But in a certain sense, this is building upon a long social history of sewing, right?
 And like other textile work.
 Yeah.
 I mean, in a certain sense, kind of the proprietisation of clothing is kind of new in some ways?
 Well, yes and no.
 It depends on what you mean by new.
 But there's a long history related to the social history of women in these kind of smaller domestic and social groups
 that are just sharing knowledge on how to create things and sharing patterns and stuff like that.
 We've talked about this other times when we've talked about the social history of women and textiles
 because, you know, as you may recall, this is what my dissertation topic was on.
 But this is one of those things where you have something that's seen kind of as maybe an amateur or domestic thing
 when it's done by women at home.
 But then once it is something that is commercialized, that's when you start getting more kind of like trade secrets
 with patterns or techniques or technologies.
 So what we're talking about here is more on the social side.
 In the modern world, we still have, you know, groups of people getting together and doing stitch and bitches
 or craft circles or whatever. A lot of the way that I learned my craft skills was because of doing crafts
 with my mom and my grandma.
 And to some extent, my sister though, she lost interest in it way sooner than I did.
 But we now have different ways of learning as well.
 So a lot of the craft patterns, if I'm looking at patterns that I use,
 I'm not like going to the store and buying my calls patterns or something like that.
 Like the pre-printed things that you buy at a craft store and you cut out, you know, the size you need and you create it.
 A lot of times if I'm looking at patterns that are other people have made, I'm looking at things that I find on tutorials
 that are mostly on people's blogs and stuff like that.
 So the social circle of craft knowledge has expanded to the internet now that it exists.
 And we're talking a little bit more about that side of things.
 And yet, I think in some ways, fewer techniques are known than ever before by kind of the average person doing crafting
 because like people need to less, right?
 So having resources available, having a common set of patterns that are freely available for people to take use
 in both senses, the term free can be really powerful maybe as a way to be able to kind of bring some of that back.
 Yes. And also that's one of the reasons why having it as kind of maybe more tutorials than patterns is useful too
 because people don't sew as much.
 That most people are not making clothes that they're wearing out into the world on a regular basis these days.
 But being able to find easy tutorials on how to do skills-based learning to do the project you want to do is helpful.
 So you mentioned that Elena of Valhalla had created a set of patterns even before that term existed.
 Has she kind of continued with that work? Have you seen other community members building things?
 Yeah, she has a whole directory on her website of sewing patterns.
 And this podcast episode is partially taken from a short presentation I did recently at the Creative Freedom Summit
 which was a conference put on by the Fedora Design team.
 And actually in that presentation I had a screenshot of one of Elena of Valhalla's patterns
 and it turns out I actually had just used the link that was in my browser history and she had redone her website since then, including the licensing.
 So I will correct something that I said wrong in that presentation.
 It has a bunch of patterns that are released under Creative Commons, attribution share like licenses and a whole directory that I will link in the show notes.
 That's great.
 So even before this whole conversation was brought up in the Fostencrafts community, the first time that I really thought about licensing for sewing patterns was at the beginning of the pandemic
 when everyone was making face masks because the supply of personal protective equipment was extremely low given the sudden increase in need for it.
 And one of our friends, Dan Gilbert, made a pattern that was released under a Creative Commons attribution share like license.
 And I started thinking about the idea of iterations for patterns specifically with the face masks because at the beginning of the pandemic no one really knew what was going on like health wise and transmission wise.
 So there were a lot of like health care professionals on social media saying, okay, if you're making your own face masks, here's the things that are going to help.
 So having a mask pattern that you could use the bones of, but also iterate on as you got more accurate information or as better materials became available, that was appealing to me.
 So the pattern that I used as I said was made by our friend Dan who you may remember from the episode on the Tiny NES.
 And since he is pretty active in open hardware, he already kind of had the mental blueprints for creating things that could be released in free culture ways.
 So those are the people within my social circle that I am aware of that have done these kinds of things.
 And what about outside of that social circle? Have you found other blog posts, etc. And are they using Creative Commons licenses or for other free culture licenses?
 Are they all rights reserved? How generally hard is it to find things in such ways?
 So the problem is, and similar ways that this is a problem with lots of things that are released under Creative Commons or other free culture licenses, is that it's hard to find like a good search mechanism for finding them.
 So there are the places that you can go to in general to find free culture images, so places like Wikimedia Commons or just, you know, Google Image Search has the toggle option that you can choose to search under free culture licenses, things like Flickr or Deviant Art where you can search by licenses.
 If it's an image of a sewing pattern, then you can find some on these things.
 But I mean, there's also stuff in the public domain. For example, you get stuff off of Project Gutenberg and there's a bunch of old public domain books because it was very common in, for example, guides for housewives to have like these sets of patterns for like, you need to make your kids some socks.
 You need to make your own suit even, right? You know, your common dress patterns, right? And stuff like that.
 These are just something that you were expected to have on hand.
 And following historical sewing patterns is a unique and interesting skill set because one, as you mentioned earlier, people don't have as solid a skill set for sewing like everyday items anymore as they used to, right?
 Back when it was expected that someone in your household was going to sew your own dresses and suits and stuff like that.
 So a lot of things, they just kind of assume knowledge of what things are.
 There's shorthand in the way things are spelled out or written out that would have been common knowledge then that isn't now.
 Measurements are very hit or miss with historical patterns, but if you're just looking for like, cut this shape out and then sew it to this side, you can usually recreate a more comprehensible pattern.
 And in fact, a lot of Valhalla's patterns are recreated based off of historical patterns.
 And also as a side note, my experience with doing software development is that in software development, like early on, I would get really frustrated when trying to read almost any code that didn't lay out all the concepts with like way dramatic use of comments that I would not use today.
 Now that I have more experience, if I'm like the earliest code doing programming, I would add stuff like array.set and everything like that.
 And I'm like this inserts an item into the array and it's like later on, you're like, why would I have ever added that pattern?
 But it's also because eventually a lot of these things and a lot of these shorthand that I can see in the content, they're familiar.
 And this happens like you enter a new programming domain, everything feels really alien, you feel frustrated, and then things become more familiar.
 And I imagine these types of things are the same with sewing or any other type of textiles stuff that like initially when you enter into a space, you might feel really frustrated.
 But as you spend more time in there, you start using more shorthand too.
 And since it's a different time period, you know, like if you try reading like 1970s code and stuff like that, they'll be saying things that is strange to you today.
 But if you spend more time reading 1970s code, then it's comprehensible.
 And in fact, there have been multiple times when I've been working on craft projects that you asked me what programming language it was when really it was a knitting pattern or weaving pattern or something like that.
 Because this will come up more when we're talking about the origins of computing in a future episode.
 In a future episode that we keep spoiling but have yet.
 So we're like three years? Yes.
 So yeah, the way that these patterns are made, yeah, you have that kind of presumed knowledge of the task that the modern audience may or may not have when they're looking at historical patterns.
 So where else can you find free software patterns?
 So most of the places that you can find like aggregated information on patterns, places like Ravelry or maybe even Etsy, where the creator has the option to choose their own licensing, you can choose free culture licenses.
 The problem is those sites aren't necessarily designed to search for that.
 The way that I actually found specific patterns on Ravelry that were released under Creative Commons licenses was by doing a web search that had, you know, in quotes CC by and then in a second pair of quotes, Ravelry patterns or something like that.
 And I was able to find quite a few, but if you're just looking in the search features of Ravelry and please correct me if you know a way to do this within the website that I couldn't find, but it doesn't have a convenient way of searching for that.
 Right. So like Google images was a tool made specifically searching for images and also you've got the same thing with like DuckTek Go's images which has like the same design.
 And they're reading some metadata that's being put on various, you know, images are uploaded.
 The positive output of the more obscure Creative Commons, like machine readable stuff is that some of these engines let you search.
 But there isn't really a specific search engine made for sewing patterns. It's kind of crawling them.
 And it's kind of not aggregating. It's basically just there's no way to basically do this combination of like, I want sewing patterns and I want this license thing specifically.
 So yeah, there are all of these blogs and video tutorials and stuff like that that if you specifically go out looking for it, you can find them in random places.
 But when I was doing this search of places you can find free culture sewing patterns and, you know, textile patterns, I was not able to find any of my free software patterns that showed up in those search results.
 I didn't find any of Valhalla's and I didn't find Dan so I didn't find any of the ones that I already knew about, which obviously means that there's not like a failsafe search web for this thing.
 Yep, so there's an interesting aspect here though, which is that textile patterns are not actually copyrightable in the United States at least.
 I mean, there's only so many types of stitching. There's only so many ways that you can put together fabric and it's really difficult to copyright things like that.
 Well, let's actually be clear. The techniques are not copyrightable. However, so this is a lot like recipes. So in cooking, you obviously lots of people make things from recipes. Sometimes they have something memorized and they just make something, you know, from their personal memory, but you can't actually copyright a specific dish, right, you know, the end result in or even the method of preparation.
 But you can copyright a specific text describing how to make the dish, which means you can take a recipe from a famous cookbook and you can rewrite the recipe, you know, from scratch, or maybe you've made it a number of times and you've kind of memorized it and then you can write it back down.
 No problem. There's no such restrictions on copyright for recipes. And the same thing applies to textile stuff, right? The actual like jpeg or SVG that you might download, the actual text saying do this and that those are copyrightable, but the particular technique and pattern is not. Is that right?
 Yeah, which is one of the reasons why if you go back to that list of ways that you can find things, most of the places that you can concretely find things under creative comments or other free cultural licenses are places that you search for images, right?
 Because you can find the image of the actual like components of the pattern, which may or may not have the text with it. In fact, the things on Wikimedia Commons, for example, are mostly just the pictures of the patterns without any text explaining it, which is again kind of incomprehensible unless you already know what's happening.
 So let me ask you a question that is not on this sheet. So I'm throwing you a curveball here. But I think it's a pretty important question because I've thought about it a lot with recipes. And so I wonder about what you think about with textiles.
 Does it matter as much as with say code or artwork where the end result is copyrightable if the actual technique is not copyrightable and it is legal to reverse engineer it, which is not with code right thanks to the DMC a is it somehow less urgent.
 And on the other hand, is it useful to have to have three software patterns.
 In my opinion, there's benefit to explicitly putting it out into the comments saying, I created this thing. You might have skills that I don't have. So if you can improve on this thing, do it. Please let me know because I would like to improve on this thing.
 Sure. It's much easier to improve on a thing. If you don't have to rewrite the entire text of things and figure out how to make it original, not infringe somebody's copyright.
 You can say, here's this this thing. And also I added a button over here. Yeah. So for example, on the face mask pattern that our friend Dan made, I showed him how to improve on the way that the elastic was connected so that it was connected between the two pieces of fabric as opposed to just being sewn on the back of the mask.
 And that's because I had other experience making clothing that Dan didn't necessarily have. So it was a minor modification, but you were able to reuse the entire, the entire source text basically.
 Yeah. And then make that smaller that smaller change. Yeah. So now one of the things that programming in, you know, free software or open source has that we haven't quite gotten to with free software is waste attractant.
 So is waste attract those changes into Raythens. Could have a Git repository with a bunch of markdown files. Exactly. Which would be great. You just need someone to manage that Git repository.
 And I mean, like that's something that I could do, but I haven't had the time to set it up. Hey, if somebody wants to start a new project of a free software like compendium of patterns, that might be pretty awesome. Yeah.
 The only Git repository that my patterns exist in would be the Git repository for my website, my blog, which doesn't necessarily have a good way for other, I don't even know if that's public.
 So it doesn't really have a way for other people to, you know, do a pull request to, you know, iterate on it, which, I mean, I think that there's definitely ways that we could improve upon this and make it more useful.
 If somebody creates a wiki, should they call it wiki weave? That would be great. I mean, not that we think it's the only thing, but you know, it sounds like a wiki weave. It does sound nice.
 So speaking of which, now we're going to talk about a project that is legitimately an open source project and has free culture sewing patterns. And that is free sewing, which is a site that makes like made to measure.
 Parametric sewing patterns so that basically anyone can design a pattern and work within their framework to make it so that it is accessible to more people in whatever size and shape they need.
 Hmm, that's interesting. I'd be interested more on how that works, actually. We didn't talk about this ahead of time. Is it like using vectors in an interesting way or is it so parametric means that it is using parameters, right?
 Yeah, sure. So basically, you go to this website. There are many, many patterns that are made by many, many community members. And you click on the pattern that you want, and it'll say at the beginning, you know, these are the measurements required to get your pattern.
 So it'll have, you know, your bust size, the length between your shoulders and all of these different measurements. And if you can take those measurements and input them into the website, then it'll spit out a pattern that should fit you perfectly.
 So it's basically doing code generation. Right? And it's like you've got a function. I'm going to get very lispy here. Right? It's like you've got a function. This is basically how Lismacros work, where you've got a function that constructs code.
 Right? So your, your outer function is has this template of the kind of code that's going to be inside of it. And it's going to take some sort of parameters that it spits out another function that is then something a human can execute. Right? Step by step.
 But of course, you know, if we had things like there are things like computerized, like weaving machines and stuff like that, and computerized knitting machines and stuff, one thing we haven't talked about is how you could really bridge between free software and free software by making like free culture patterns for those machines, which that's maybe that's like a separate episode.
 Maybe we should get some of the people who work on those things out there. I'm definitely distracting because this is not a thing that I'm just saying. I feel like that is a separate episode. And it's something also at the Creative Freedom Summit that we talked about. We did a Hackingcraft event there. And one of the things we talked about was relevant to this. It was specifically with.
 Were you talking about Cricut and how it's not free? Not quite Cricut, but similarly, computerized sewing machines that do like you enter an SVG file and it does embroidery patterns. And these programs, so Cricut, which is a kind of hardware that will cut out patterns out of basically paper products.
 Can't it also like draw to a little bit? A little bit, I think. I don't know. But I don't know anything about it. I don't have one. I've used one, but not recently. And I think it's probably several generations of hardware since I've used one. So it probably is not.
 Well, I'm not relevant, but the person who invited you to the summit, Maureen Duffy, we had a conversation at one point where she was like, well, I really want to use one of these machines. But it's extremely frustrating because it's proprietary
 and I can't fix just how incredibly broken their crap is. Exactly. And same thing for the sewing machines that do embroidery and things like that. You can't use them without using their proprietary software, which is a whole thing.
 Now, a previous podcast episode we did was on eek, which is a project that generates cross-stitch patterns based off of images. And that is a free software project.
 But the overlap between free software and the hobby textile industry could use a lot more work. So people out there, if you have ideas on how we could bridge these gaps, let's get on that because that sounds like a lot of fun.
 Yeah. So you've made some sewing tutorials. And in fact, one of them, wait, two of them have been featured on the show, right? We did an episode about the learning the sewing machine.
 And you are literally wearing one of the skirts right now. I'm literally wearing the only skirt that I have made, the one that I made for that episode. I keep meaning to make more skirts.
 I keep not making more skirts because I'm a very busy lady. But yeah, there's that. But there's also the RSI gloves for the repetitive strain injury episode that we did, right? And then also dice bags. You like to talk about, let's talk about each one of those in detail, but especially let's start with the dice bags because you like
 that's where I start. That's where you get people to start. And anyone who has asked me to teach them how to sew, I start with dice bags because it's a really good intro tutorial. And it is the first tutorial that I released as free software.
 So I've only released these three patterns so far. I have probably about 10 patterns that are in progress and I have pictures for and I've made my own versions of the things that you really choose skirt patterns.
 Bye bye. Yeah, you released the one that was the circle tube one that you thought was incredibly basic, which is the one I made wearing and the multi layered one. No, I didn't release that yet because we didn't use it for the other episodes. I haven't actually released it.
 This is one of the 10 patterns that I have. Get out of it, girl. Mostly done. That one is actually, I think, almost done except for editing. So I could probably release that one maybe even before we release this episode. Maybe.
 Let's see how you did. I didn't actually push it live on the website yet. Oh, okay. All right. Well, anyway. So dice bags. Very simple pattern. You basically only need to make, you know, two straight seams and then a hem and then string through some ribbon for a drawstring and then you're done.
 So it's a really good way to learn the basics. There's all sorts of ways to make skirts. You've listed, made, shown one of them. But the RSI gloves. This one's really cool because like that's something that really benefits people in our community.
 Yeah. So we've done a whole episode on repetitive strain injuries and that is a very common type of injury for both programmers and for crafters. So you can find press eye gloves mutually at craft stores by the knitting supplies because any activity where you're basically making the same repetitive muffins with your hands and wrists.
 It was once called washer woven hands. Because it was a common, yeah, like because if you were watching clothes or other forms of washing, really, you would like that like it's just like murder on the wrists, right? If you're doing that all day long.
 The modern version of that, if you are making your own socks and then having to hand wash things for the first time, like, whatever. Oh geez, you know anybody who has done that.
 Oh, you if we haven't even talked about that, you've been making your own socks, right? Yes. I have not released any patterns for them because so far I am experimenting. Right. But why are you making your own socks?
 Well, and it's related to why I made the RSI glove patterns too. So I have a skin allergy to basically all synthetic fabrics and most things in my life, most things in my wardrobe, I've been able to find commercially available things that I can wear that have
 either no or very low amounts of synthetic fabrics. So I kind of leaned into the lesbian look because jeans, t-shirts and flannel shirts are like three of the most easy things to find in 100% cotton.
 But one thing that I have not been able to find that's a daily thing that I need that doesn't have a significant amount of synthetic fabric in it is socks.
 So I have started making my own socks, which I'm trying to just replace all of my socks that make me HE and break out, which means that I've started having to now do hand wash loads of things more frequently.
 So the combination of actually knitting socks and washing those socks is not great for my wrists. And the reason that I made the RSI gloves initially was actually to accommodate both of us.
 For me, because RSI gloves that you can find commercially are pretty much 100% made out of spandex or some other type of lycra or synthetic fabric because the whole idea is to have compression, right?
 So I wasn't able to find any RSI gloves that wouldn't have synthetic fabric touching my skin, which meant that during a crunch period and I had to do a lot of typing, I had to choose between having RSI pain, which could, you know, accumulate and cause permanent damage if I didn't treat it properly, or having my skin break out because the compression gloves that I could find were things that I was allergic to.
 And for you, you have one style of RSI gloves that you found like a decade ago that you loved and you haven't found any other types of RSI gloves that you liked at all.
 And you wore the ones that you had out.
 We talked about this in the RSI episode, but yes, it's been great having the RSI gloves. It's been incredibly helpful.
 Yeah, so I made a pattern based off of the style of gloves that Christine liked, but also with an option to have a cotton liner with the still synthetic fabric on the outside so that I could still get the compression so that I could wear them without breaking out.
 So that shows off how being able to highly parameterize your own and customize your own locally hack, a pattern for your own needs and use means that you don't have to rely on like the crap that like Walgreens gives or, you know, in this case, it's like very much so like software
 is not being available, right? You know, I was not able to get those gloves anymore. You're able to continue something that otherwise has also previously disappeared.
 Yeah, I made legacy RSI gloves. That's right. Well, and also one thing that both the socks and the RSI gloves have in common is that if you buy them commercially, you've really only got a couple of size options, right? You've basically got small, medium, large.
 Also, if you're trying to fix a defect and a piece of free software, you might patch it.
 I've got a couple more of those. We'll wait till the end. Well, at least one more.
 So, so if you're making, let me finish the thought that you just interrupted to make that fun.
 So if you're making your own socks or RSI gloves and you have wrists or feet or ankles that are in between those three commercially available sizes, then you can, you know, make things that actually fit you instead of having to just deal with the best of the not great options.
 So, what do you see as the future? Do you see yourself as now a free, soft wear activist?
 I mean, I have been out evangelizing free software software. I think you do. Oh, you are. So, so tell us. What do you see as the future of free software?
 So we talked about how finding free software things out there can be difficult, but it's the same kind of problems you have when you're looking for free culture licensed anything, right?
 So we, in the past, have had conversations about like, oh, well, there's just not much out there for free culture licensed fiction, which is not necessarily true.
 We were speaking with someone once who said that they couldn't find any, which we knew was false because I have written fanfictions that are released under Creative Commons licenses.
 It's just the search parameters don't really exist to find it in the way that they exist to find images necessarily.
 So what we need is better ways of searching and collecting or collating these things so that we can explicitly go out and look for patterns of, you know, whatever textile are you're interested in that are specifically in the Commons.
 And we need people to believe that this is a worthwhile pursuit enough to start taking it on as a collective activity for to become a free software movement.
 Yes.
 All right, finally, I have one more thing. It's not on this card. Okay.
 But it's an important one.
 There are other things you can wear, right? You know, that that might be made of various types of materials.
 For example, you can make armor that's made out of metal or ceramic plates. But in that case, would that be free hardware?
 I have already made this pun about what about your necklace that you made.
 Okay, I guess so.
 I've made this pun on the podcast.
 Well, yes. Okay. Anyway, well, now we now it's been made again by your wife, who does not remember things.
 Why not make it twice? Yes.
 For twice the price or twice the price of free is still free.
 I'm just referencing a movie that's maybe somebody listening to this will get and it's not important.
 Anyway, free software advocacy. Get out there. So some stuff, weave some stuff, whatever, share with the world.
 And I think that like, you know, the best way to make this usable would be if we had some sort of, you know, directory or way of both searching and also tracking iterations, which is not going to happen without volunteers.
 And I don't necessarily have the time to make it happen right now.
 Community pick up free software activism. I think that's it. We're at the end of the episode.
 Free software.
 You're not wearing it right now.
 I'm wearing socks that I made and you're wearing a skirt.
 I love wearing a free software.
 You can have free software on the thing. Oh, yeah, that's another thing we didn't talk about.
 So right after we had the initial conversation on the Fossek Crafts IRC channel, Valhalla ordered some clothing tags for herself to use that said free software.
 And then I got jealous and I ordered some clothing tags for myself to use the said free software.
 And did you release the image or like SVG for those under a free software license? No, because it was just text.
 Okay. In a font.
 In a font.
 I mean, I could if I made an SVG, but I don't have an SVG because it was just text you typed into a thing.
 Yeah.
 All right, whatever. That free hardware thing was supposed to be the end of this podcast episode.
 So now we've gone too far anyway. So goodbye, everybody.
 Christine's getting cranky, apparently.
 I'm not getting cranky. I'm just trying to end on a punchy note.
 All right. Thanks, everybody.
 Bye.
 Fosse and Crafts is released under the Creative Commons attribution chair alike 4.0 international license.
 It's hosted by Morgan Lemmerweber and Christine Lemmerweber.
 The intro music is composed by Christine Lemmerweber, meaning myself, in Milky Tracker, and is released under the same license as the show.
 The outro music is Enchanted Teakee 86, composed by Alex Smith of the Cinec Project, and is waved into the public domain under CC01.0.
 See CinecMusic.com for more information.
 You can get in contact with us on the Fediverse, Fosse and Crafts at Octadon.Social, on Twitter as @Fosse and Crafts, or you can email us, podcast@fosse and Crafts.org.
 We also have a chat room. Join our community on #Fosse and Crafts on IRC.libara.chat.
 If you'd like to support the show, you can donate at patreon.com/fosse and Crafts.
 That's it for this week.
 Until next time, stay free.
 And stay crafty.
 [Music]
 Or do you want to add that, because that was your idea.
 Sure, why don't I add the one contribution I have to this?
 The places that you can find RSI gloves, um, like...
 And also this cat is staring at us.
 Dude, there were two times that she jumped up and potted my hands.
 hands while recording.