Pattern testing the Linda twist neckline top and dress

I love the Sinclair seeing all the things people make and post to the Sinclair patterns Facebook group. It’s exciting when a new pattern comes out and all the testers post what they made over the first few days. There are some sewists who seem to test every pattern, and many of them make several versions when a new pattern comes out. I assume they don’t have the sort of day job that I have, and maybe they sew faster than I do. Or maybe they have a serger? Maybe I should get one? Anyway, I’m enjoying their posts and I feel like I’m starting to get to know some of the regulars.

I’ve been tempted by the last few calls for pattern testers. I’ve now sewn over half a dozen Sinclair patterns, so maybe I could get selected. But generally you have only 3 or 4 days to make the pattern, and that usually doesn’t fit my schedule. But when Sanna Sinclair announced the call for testers for their new Linda twist neckline knit top and dress pattern, I checked my calendar and saw that the timing might work. I filled out the application form and waited to see if I would be selected. Early Friday morning I got the email from Sanna Sinclair with the link to the test pattern, the private tester Facebook group, and a request to finish a garment and post fit pictures by Sunday evening.

By the time I got home from work on Friday, the first testers had already finished their tops and posted photos. I thought about getting right to work on mine, but first I had to finish sewing a pair of black Cleo palazzo pants (to match mine) that I promised my daughter. I got those done Friday night and selected fabric from my stash and decided to sew a top rather than a dress, as I was a little concerned about whether I would have enough time for a dress.

The pattern called for very drapey fabrics, so I selected a medium weight modal-spandex knit in turquoise. This was my first time sewing with this type of fabric. It is soft and stretchy like double-brushed polyester, but more breathable and a little less tightly knit. I think it has less body and a more fluid drape, which makes it a little bit harder to work with, but it is very comfortable to wear and it suited this pattern well.

On Saturday I projected the pattern on my fabric, cut it out, and began to sew. I periodically checked the Facebook group to see what other sewists were working on and their comments on the pattern. One small error on the pattern was caught early on and a clarification posted. There were concerns about a few fit issues, but otherwise people seems to be doing well with this pattern. The completed tops and dresses looked pretty good. I thought about making a dress instead of a top, but decided not to over reach on my first pattern test.

I followed the instructions without too many issues. Doing the twist itself was very easy, in part due to the short video provided with the pattern that demonstrates exactly how to do it. I had some trouble overcasting the flimsy fabric with my sewing machine and contemplated buying a serger. I think I will buy one as soon as I figure out which one. I had some pressing issues, again mostly due to this particular type of fabric, but eventually I got them sorted out. The sleeves were a tad too short and the length was a couple of inches too long. So I used a narrow hem on the sleeves and chopped off some of the length before hemming the bottom. I observed the same problem with the keyhole flopping open as everyone else in the Facebook group, and followed the advice to hand stitch it closed. I posted my feedback and my V1 fit photos. All of these problems have been corrected in the final pattern so you shouldn’t have these any of these problems.

Monday morning Sanna posted her comments on our feedback and her plans for adjusting the pattern. She announced that V2 would soon be available the next day but said it was fine to take final photos of our V1 creations. So I put on my new shirt and asked my husband to snap some photos. When I got home from work I selected my favorite photos and uploaded them. I had a busy week at work and did not have time to make a V2 top, let alone a dress. But I enjoyed watching the Facebook group and seeing the sewists who had time to create several garments from this pattern over the course of the week.

I usually like to wear twistneck tops. I had a couple of ready-to-wear dresses with twistnecks, and found I kept futzing with and repositioning the twist as they never seem to lie perfectly right, and I just can’t leave well enough alone. I have to admit I did my share of futzing with this one as I was sewing it. But once I got it set I let it be and it stayed put. Then my husband washed it and called me over as he pulled it out of the dryer because he thought the twist had gotten messed up. But it happily popped right back into position. I expect with a more substantial fabric it would not have popped out at all. I will probably make more of these some time (maybe in ITY, double-brushed polyester, or cotton lycra). I love some of the results other testers got sewing this pattern with prints. I still love the simplicity and fit of the Bondi top and think that style works better under sweaters and blazers since it is smooth and symmetrical. But Linda is a cute top for wearing on its own that looks more elevated than a basic t-shirt, but is just as comfortable to wear.

This morning was the pattern launch and I was excited to see that the first two photos on the Linda pattern web page were mine!

It was fun to be a pattern tester and if Sinclair does another test at a time when my calendar is relatively clear I will definitely sign up to do it again. Also, this is such a good excuse for keeping more fabric than I really need on hand… these testing opportunities come up quickly and there isn’t time to shop for more fabric on short notice!

More Pylos LiKnit Palazzos

My resident teen daughter liked my Cleo PyLos LiKnit Palazzos so much she requested her own pair. They meet all her criteria for pants: feel like yoga pants, pockets, flowy, and black (she hates wearing jeans). She tried mine on and said she just needed them longer with a higher rise and they would be perfect. So that’s what I did. She put them on so I could take a photo and decided to wear them to her band gig.

And here we are wearing all our me-made clothes. I’m wearing my self-drafted cups dress and my daughter is wearing the muslin top for her vintage sundress with her new palazzo pants.

Serena dress

I saw the Sinclair Serena crossover knit dress pattern a while ago and was a bit intimidated about sewing the crossover part, which is a bit of a jigsaw puzzle. But I recently was looking for a knit dress pattern that would look great in a full length formal gown, and Serena looked like it could be adapted for this purpose. The gown project will be another story for later, but in the mean time I thought it prudent to sew a short version of this dress with inexpensive fabric to make sure this was going to work. So earlier this month I projected, cut, and sewed Serena in one weekend. Serena is an old pattern without projector files, but I was able to create projector files with pdfstitcher. [Correction: There are projector files, I just some how missed them!]

I used the 4 petite pattern and cut the skirt 1 inch below the above-the-knee length, making it sit exactly at the knee on me. I selected a floral double-brushed polyester for this dress. This is a light-weight, stretchy, and inexpensive fabric that’s very comfortable to wear. I looked at photos from others who have made Serena and saw some interesting approaches to color blocking this dress that really highlight the crossover (and/or the bust) and the jigsaw puzzling involved, but my favorites were all made from a single fabric print without any color blocking. Without the color blocking, you an hardly see the crossover, but you still get a lovely fitted top with a skirt that hangs from a point that I think will work really well for a gown.

Of course I made it with the pocket option (and added about an inch to the bottom of the pocket bags to make sure my phone doesn’t fall out of my pockets)! The pockets are great, but I think the openings sit a little low so in the next dress I will probably raise them about 2 inches higher. The pockets flop around when filled since they aren’t attached to anything except the side seams since there is no waistband to attach them too (and even if there was I probably wouldn’t attach them because I don’t like it when pockets distort the waist band), but I think they would flop less if they were attached higher. My favorite dress pockets are still the Alana dress pockets — no flopping or distorting — but that style of pocket only works with princess seams, alas.

The jigsaw puzzle was not actually too difficult to solve, although I do recommend reading the pattern tutorial very carefully and watching that you don’t try to assemble any of the pieces upside down or backwards (I had a couple of close calls). The pattern suggests optionally adding some elastic to the top edge of the v-neck if it doesn’t recover well from a stretch. I tested the recovery as suggested and it seemed fine, so I did not add the elastic. I have a very slight droop in the top layer of the crossover that might have benefited from adding the elastic, or at least a bit of fusible knit interfacing (maybe next time!), but it is subtle. (Later I realized that I actually ended the seam that holds the crossover down too early. Had I brought the same all the way to the center of the crossover it might not have drooped.) There is also optional top stitching that I opted out of, with no regrets. The arm holes are finished with a binding that I didn’t do a great job of attaching, especially on the left side, so the bottom of the armhole flops out a tad. Next time I will need to take more care with positioning and stretching the band. Most of these are issues that probably nobody would notice except me.

Anyway, I’m quite pleased with Serena, and am already planning to make another one soon.

Cleo pants in Pylos LiKnit

I’ve always liked the idea of linen pants, but have never actually liked wearing and maintaining linen pants. They are cool and breathable, until they become a wrinkly mess and you have to iron them. Some have a texture that isn’t that soft against your skin. This spring I ordered several pairs of linen pants online from a popular retailer and ended up returning all of them because I wasn’t crazy about the fit and I could see they were going to need a lot of ironing. So when I saw a new fabric from Surge Fabrics described as a “faux linen knit,” I was intrigued. The fabric is called Pylos LiKnit, which is kind of a weird name that I struggled to pronounce until I realized the K is silent. I’m not sure if other fabric stores offer it under a different name; this one seems to be unique to Surge. It is 55% rayon and 45% nylon, with 50% 2-way stretch (it stretches side-to-side but not up and down). It comes in lots of colors, although some seem to be selling out. This fabric does not contain any linen. It is not a linen knit; it is a rayon/nylon (viscose) knit that looks and feels somewhat similar to a woven linen, but with stretch.

I decided to use black Pylos LiKnit for my second pair of Cleo palazzo pants. I used the same approach as last time to hack the Sinclair Cleo shorts and culottes pattern into palazzo pants with self-drafted slash pockets, with a couple of modifications. First, I wanted to reduce the fullness at the bottom of the legs a bit, so instead of extending the outside seam straight to the bottom of the leg, I curved it in starting at the notch below the hips and the sent it straight down parallel to the inseam. This reduced the circumference of the pants legs from 40 inches to 32 inches. Second, because this fabric is a lot less stretchy than double-brushed polyester, I did not narrow the waistband. I used a stretchy athletic knit (Surge’s black quad performance jersey knit) for the waistband lining. This 300 gsm fabric is 88% polyester and 12% spandex, with 75% 4-way stretch. This gives the pants a waistband that feels just like a pair of leggings or yoga pants, and that doesn’t slip down when I put my phone in my pocket.

The pants were a pretty fast sew. The PyLos is cool and comfortable to wear and the quad performance jersey knit keeps the waistband in place. I love the results of putting performance knit in the waistband lining, and will try that with other patterns too. The reduced leg fullness makes them look more like normal pants. But I wasn’t entirely happy with the drape of the leg.

After finishing the pants one evening, I decided to work on the drape again the next day. I basted a new outside seam, starting the curve on the front pant leg about even with the bottom of the crotch, but ending up at the same place at the bottom. This seemed better so I sewed it in place. You can see on the image below part of the original front piece of the shorts/culottes pattern outlined in red. The green line is the full palazzo extension that I used for my first pair of Cleo pants. The blue line is the final narrower palazzo extension that I ended up with this time after a bit of trial and error (I started with a line that curved in from the notch, but ultimately ended up with the blue line you see here).

Even after getting the side seam the way I wanted it, I still wasn’t completely happy with the drape and realized that it looked a lot better when I hitched the sides of the pants up a bit. It seems in my effort to raise the rise to be more of a high-rise fit, I added too much fabric to the outside of the waist. The adjustment to the center of the rise was good, but the outside of the waist did not need that much adjustment. The right thing to do at this point would probably have been to remove the waistband, cut off the extra fabric, and sew it back together. However, the idea of picking out all those zigzag stitches was not appealing. So I basted a new seam connecting the pants to the waistband, taking the sides up about three-quarters of an inch and grading towards the center. That seemed to do the trick, so I sewed a zigzag along the basting line and pressed it in place. While the inside is not beautiful, the outside of these pants looks much better with this adjustment. I’ve marked my pattern so I can just cut it this way to begin with next time I make this pattern. I’m learning a lot about fitting pants and clearly I have more to learn.

After wearing the pants with the phone in my pocket I realized that the phone tends to tilt outward and cause a bulge to the side. I added a zigzag seam to the pocket bag from the bottom up about 4 inches, placed about an inch in from the outer edge of each pocket. This is completely invisible on the outside of the pants but it keeps my phone more vertical. I went back and added this to my palazo pants too. Here’s the self-drafted pattern I used for the front part of my slash pocket bag with the extra vertical seam (the back part of the pocket bag is cut straight across the top without the slash).

In any case, the final product looks and feels great. I took these pants on a business trip and they were very comfortable and did not wrinkle in my suitcase. I wore them for three days and the waistband did not stretch out. They were comfortable in the outdoor heat and kept my legs warm in the over air-conditioned meeting rooms. Here are the photos, modeled with a Bondi top I made last Fall. At the bottom I have a close up of the waistband, including the slash pockets.

Valley skater dress, three ways

I first found the Sinclair Patterns company because I was looking for a skater dress pattern. I ran across their free valley skater dress pattern, but the skirt wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, so I went down the whole rabbit hole of drafting my own. But I saw their Alana dress pattern and after sewing a couple of Alana dresses, went back to the skater dress and found the add-on skirt pack. I liked the half-circle skirt option and bought the pattern. I’ve since made three valley skater dresses out of three different types of fabric and have a fourth planned.

On all my Valley dresses I’ve used the half-circle option, above-knee length, with pockets (lengthened about an inch to make sure my phone doesn’t fall out), and have replaced the neckline with a screwp neck. All are comfy and fit well. All are size 4P with no size alterations. The add-on skirt pack has lots of other nice skirt options and some day I may make those too… but for now, they are all half-circle skirts.

I made my first Valley Skater dress with a medium-weight, very soft and cozy cotton lycra (CL) fabric. I thought this would be a nice dress for cooler weather. Unfortunately, this lovely, cozy fabric does not have good recovery and I ignored the warning on the pattern about using fabric with good recovery. What does this mean exactly? Well it means the fabric stretches out as you work with it and it does not completely return to its unstretched length. As a result, my long sleeves ended up dangling around my fingertips, the above-knee length hits closer to at-knee length, and no matter how much I press it, I cannot get the waves out of the waistband. The sleeves were easy to address… I just lopped off two inches before I hemmed them. I left the length as-is. I tried futzing with the waistband a bit, and gave up and decided it is a casual dress that I will usually wear with a jacket or sweater, so I would just deal with a wavy waistband. Not my best effort but it is still comfy.

A couple of months later, I used a soft double-brushed polyester (DBP) floral print for my second Valley Skater dress and sewed the short-sleeved version. This time I altered the pockets so that they attach only to the sides and do not connect to the waistband. I’ve found that when I put my phone in my pocket, it pulls down on the waistband if the pocket is connected and the fabric is stretchy (I have this problem in me-made as well as ready-to-wear dresses). So I figured I would give side pockets with no waistband connection a try. Because DPB is so stretchy I decided to line the waistband with a medium-weight cotton lycra (not the green CL with poor recovery!) to give the waistband more stability. I don’t know if the CL lining was necessary, but it doesn’t hurt.

I’m very happy with how this dress turned out. The dress fits perfectly and looks great from the front and the back, even when I fill the pockets! I love the swishy half-circle skirt, which is very flattering and has some nice movement, but is not too prone to Marilyn Monroe moments. I’ve had random people on the street stop me to complement me on this dress. And it looks good with dress shoes or sneakers (admittedly, I will almost always wear it with sneakers).

I made my third Valley Skater dress just a couple of days after finishing the second one. This time I used a smooth polyester interlock twist yarn (ITY) fabric. I decided to omit the waistband and followed the instructions to lengthen the bodice about 1.25 inches. I used the same pocket alterations as I used for the second dress. This time I raised the back of the screwp neck a tad and shrunk the neckband accordingly. I had a bit of an issue with the waist stretching and seams popping when I take the dress off, so I had to reinforce the waist seam with wide zigzag stitches (I normally sew all my knit seams with a very narrow zigzag stitch).

The dress without the waistband is also great and ITY is a nice fabric choice for this pattern as well!

Stay tuned for the fourth dress, currently in planning. I have some heavier-weight fabric in mind for it and am thinking long sleeves and a knee-length full-circle skirt. But it’s 85 degrees outside right now so this may not happen for a little while.

Cleo palazzo pants (and shorts)

In June I decided to try my first knit shorts pattern, Sinclair pattern’s Cleo knit shorts and culottes. These shorts have a comfy yoga-style waistband, optional side-seam pockets, and a full drape. I was intrigued by the comfy lounge shorts people were posting on the Sinclair Facebook group, and even more intrigued by the dressier looking long shorts and culottes. But what convinced me to purchase the pattern was the palazzo pants. This is not actually a pattern for palazzo pants, but I saw multiple sewists (especially Holly Stout and Kristi Käär) who simply took the Cleo culotte pattern, extended the side seams to pants length, and voila, lovely flowy palazzo pants. These sewists also executed and interesting pocket hack to get the pockets off the side seam.

Before cutting into 2 yards of fancy fabric for the pants, I decided to make a basic pair of soft knit shorts first so I could try out the pattern. Eighty percent of the work in making pants is in the top 20% of the pants — once you get past the waist band, pockets and crotch seam, the rest of the pants are a piece of cake.

I cut my size 4 petite shorts from one yard of plain black double brushed polyester (DBP) fabric. The DBP is super soft, so soft that I was concerned about keeping the waist band in place if I put my phone in my pocket. As the pattern advised, I sandwiched a piece of stretch mesh between the two DBP layers of the waistband. The waistband also has 1/4 inch elastic at the top, but that doesn’t provide a lot of support. Shorts construction was fairly straightforward, although as predicted most of the effort was in the pockets and waistband. The results look nice and are super comfy (will be great for PJs), but do sag when I load up my pockets. I also personally prefer shorts and pants with more of a high rise.

Here are my comfy black Cleo shorts. You can see how the side-seam pockets gap open a bit. The waist sits about an inch below my navel, and lower when I put my phone in my pocket.

I decided to alter the pattern a bit before attempting pants from a two yards of a lavender DBP floral print. I thought I might be able to get a higher rise by using the regular size pattern rather than the petite, but I checked and the rise was the same. I checked the tall pattern and saw the rise was about 3/4 inch taller. So I used the size 4 tall as my base and then added about half an inch to the top of the front and back leg pieces (drafting the alterations in Affinity Designer).

After debating a variety of solutions to the waistband sag problem, I narrowed the waistband by half an inch on the left and right side of both the front and back (subtracting 2 inches total from the diameter) in order to tighten it up. Instead of sandwiching stretch mesh in the waistband, I used a medium-weight cotton lycra for the waistband lining, providing more support than you get from DBP. I considered using wider elastic but stuck with the recommended 1/4 inch braided elastic. The result is a much more supportive and less saggy waist band than on the shorts. They still sag a little when my pockets are loaded, but not as much. I’m going to look for a more supportive athletic knit or possibly try wider elastic to see if I can make future pants even better.

While Holly and Kristi borrowed their pocket design from other Sinclair patterns that I don’t have (yet), I found an online tutorial on making slash pockets and just drafted my own, with a very slightly sloping slash. I found the slash pockets actually easier to construct than the side-seam pockets because you don’t have to deal with the awkward part where you sew the side seam just up to the pocket opening and stop.

Finally, I extended the inseam and outside seam on the legs to full pants length, keeping the same angles. The width at the bottom hem is about 26″. (I used HeatNBond Soft Stretch on the hem and zigzagged over the edge.) At 5’2″, I can just barely get full length wide-leg pants out of two yards of fabric.

The finished results (see pants modeled blow with my Cachet top and Laura cardigan) are fantastic light-weight swishy pants for summer. They are quite comfortable with pockets that easily accommodate a cell phone and small wallet. I’m eager to make more in other knit fabrics, and also try curving the outside seam at the hips so that the legs are straight and not quite so wide for another look.

Laura + Cachet cardigan twinset

After my success with the relatively simple Harper cardigan, I decided to try the fancier Sinclair Laura relaxed-fit shawl-collar cardigan. Except I don’t like shawl-collar cardigans because I don’t like how they feel on my neck, so I decided to make a shawless shawl-collar cardigan. The reason I selected the Laura cardigan despite the fact that I obviously don’t like its primary feature, is that it has a really cool peplum in the back. Besides looking cool, the peplum is created by cutting the fabric on a tight curve and attaching the inner curve to the bottom of the bodice, creating a sort of flounce effect with no need to gather or pleat. Cool!

I hacked the size 4P Laura cardigan by reducing the shawl color to a 1-inch band. That would have made the front pieces too narrow to meet in the middle, so I used the Harper pattern as a template to draft wider front pieces, except I left the Laura shoulders and blended it together. I also wasn’t a fan of the handkerchief hem, so I rounded the square corners. In hindsight I should have just lopped off the front dangling part completely (which I saw another sewist do in the Sinclair Facebook group), which would also have made for a smoother front line as it avoids the 45 degree turn in the front binding. The cardigan is supposed to be made with a closure at the point that the 45 degree turn in the binding occurs. The closure helps straighten everything out. But I didn’t want a closure so left that out.

The Laura pockets are very cool — they form cute little pocket bags that are big enough for my iPhone, although depending on the fabric you use they may sag if you put an iPhone in them.

I used a poly-rayon impressionist double sweater knit fabric from Surge Fabric shop in the tea leaf color way. This fabric is a loose, fairly light-weight but still somewhat substantial — good for a summer sweater. What is really unique about it is that the reverse side is smooth. So I used the revers for the bands and had smooth, perfectly color matched bands. I was inspired to use the impressionist knit for my cardigan after seeing another sewist used it to for a Harper cardigan hack in the eucalyptus color. I have some of that color as well and may try that hack too.

Since I bought more of the impressionist fabric than I needed, I decided to make a short-sleeve sweater to match my cardigan and turn it into a twinset. I used the Sinclair Cachet t-shirt pattern in size 4P, but used my Bondi screwp neckline hack instead of the Cashet crew neck. I used the reverse side of the impressionist fabric for the neck band. The Cachet is only two pieces plus the neckband, so it is very fast to cut (especially with a projector) and sew. I like the high-low hem that is longer in the back than the front.

The impressionist knit was pretty easy to work with, but almost impossible to remove stitches from if you mess up (well most knits are difficult to unsew, especially if you sew with stretch or zigzag stitches). I used HeatNBond Soft Stretch for all my hems on the top and cardigan and it worked great, producing crisp edges on the curves. The impressionist knit also washes well and goes in the dryer. Since it is a fairly loose knit on the front it does sometimes catch on things and I expect over time to see some loose threads and pilling. I’ve been wearing the twinset to work a lot and the cardigan is a good weight to wear when it is 69 degrees and air conditioned inside and much warmer outside.

Harper cardigan

Sinclair patterns has a free cardigan pattern called Harper that is very nice. I decided to make it in the classic length, size 4P with pockets (of course!) using a glen plaid polyester spandex double knit. I started out very keen on matching my plaids, until I discovered, after much fiddling, that the plaids on the bands and pockets were not going to line up due to the evil plaid having no horizontal repeat plus the fact that you have to stretch the band. I don’t understand why the plaid has no horizontal repeat and it was completely non-obvious to me until I spent a lot of time desperately trying to figure out where the repeat was.

Once I threw in the towel on the plaid matching, I still had to figure out how to turn under the pocket edges and attach the patch pockets to the front of the cardigan. Again, much fiddling ensued as I tried to pin the pockets in place, but it was difficult to get the thick double knit aligned and pinned properly. Then I remembered that I had bought a package of Wonder Tape after having read that it was nothing short of the seventh wonder of the world. I dug out the Wonder Tape and then wondered how to use it for a while as I couldn’t get the tape unstuck from its backing. More fiddling, and I got it and applied the tape to hold the pockets in place. It was indeed wonderful and my non-matched plaid pockets actually look pretty good.

I’m pretty pleased with the jacket and I wear it a lot. It is more comfortable than a blazer but more polished than a sweater, and I can dress it up or wear it with jeans. (OK, usually I wear it with jeans.) Here it is with jeans and my black Bondi t-shirt.

Sinclair Harper jacket in a glen plaid poly spandex stretch designer double knit, worn over a Sinclair Bondi shirt in black cotton lycra

I plan to try it in other lengths and fabrics. I may try it without the cuffs and bottom band, and may try a narrower front/neck band.

Crew-, scoop-, and screwp-neck Bondi tops

For years I have been buying scoop-neck long-sleeve t-shirts in a light-weight cotton blend from Landsend.com. I’m not a big fan of woven button-down blouses. These t-shirts are dressy enough to wear under blazers, the scoop is not too low, and they come in petite sizes so the sleeves aren’t too long. I have bought them in all the colors they come in that I like. But over time they get stained or worn out. This was not a problem until a few years ago when Landsend stopped making them. So when I discovered the Sinclair Bondi classic fitted t-shirt pattern, I decided to try making my own long-sleeve t-shirts.

I made my first Bondi in size 4 petite using a black cotton lycra fabric with a scoop neck and elbow sleeves (because I had only 1 yard of fabric, which isn’t enough for long sleeves). I liked the fit but found the waist a tad shorter than my preference and the scoop a bit narrow. I made my next Bondi with a yellow cotton lycra print, the wide scoop neck, long sleeves, and an extra inch in length and graded in a bit from the waist down. I don’t seem to have taken photos of these two shirts, maybe I’ll do that later.

For my third Bondi, I used a fabric pattern I designed and printed on modern jersey at Spoonflower.com. (The pattern is based on my interleave quilts.) Once again I went with the wide scoop neck, long sleeves, added inch and slight grading. I really like how this one fits but wish the neckline wasn’t quite so low.

Next I collaborated with my 16-year-old daughter to make a crew-neck Bondi for my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday. My daughter designed the fabric and we printed it on modern jersey at spoonflower.com. We used coordinating turquoise DBP for the neck band and sleeves.

I made my next Bondi in red and white polka dot DBP to wear to my daughter’s robotics tournament and cheer on her team, the Girls of Steel, who have a Rosie the Riveter theme.

I wanted to try a neckline in between the crew and the scoop — I call it a screwp. I used the neckline and band for a size 26P crew on a size 4P bodice. If you were starting with a larger size I think you could achieve the same thing by using the scoop neck and band from a much smaller size. The Bondi pattern has nice notches on the neck band with matching notches on the bodice so that you can easily line things up and get the right stretch in your neck band, so it’s nice to have this and not have to guess.

Showing the screwp side-by side with a regular Bondi crew neck and scoop neck.

Having now achieved t-shirt perfection, I have no choice but to make more.

July 2023 update: Ok, not quite perfection. The back of the screwp is a little bit lower than a normal neck in my size due to using the larger size template. I’ve been grafting this neckline onto other tops and dresses and have decided to raise the back about half an inch and shorten the neck band by about an inch. Now we have perfection!

Joanne dress

In October 2022 I ordered some funky paisley ITY fabric I found on Amazon and used it to make a Sinclair Joanne dress. I sewed it according to the pattern as written in size 4p with the knee length option and used clear elastic to stabilize the waist. I used my go-to HeatNBond Soft Stretch for hemming and zigzagged over the edge. I was planning to make it three-quarter sleeves but after looking at some lovely examples of the flounce sleeve on other sewist’s dresses I decided to give flounces a try. I was worried that the flounces would be difficult to implement and would get in the way when wearing. However, the flounces were very straightforward to sew, and I was able to omit hemming the ITY. Positioned at the elbow they don’t tend to get in the way either. And they look awesome with this particular fabric design.

This was my first time sewing ITY and I was worried that it would be slippery and hard to sew, but it actually wasn’t bad at all. I also wondered whether I would need to line it as it has a lot of white areas that are not 100% opaque. It seems fine without linking. Sewing the bodice with the faux wrap looks tricky as it relies on proper stretch for it all to work out. But I found if you follow the instructions it all comes together pretty easily.

One minor complaint is that the clear elastic at the waist can sometimes be uncomfortable since you can end up with plastic elastic rubbing against your skin. I think I might use braided elastic or forgo the elastic in the future.

My biggest complaint was that my phone kept falling out of the pockets, which aren’t deep enough, especially with slippery ITY fabric. I ended up grafting another two inches to the bottom of the pockets after the fact to solve the problem. If I make this dress again (I’m sure I will!) I will definitely make the pockets deeper.

This dress has been great to wear in fall and spring weather, and with a sweater or jacket on chilly days. The print I used is fairly eye catching and regularly brings complements.

Alana dresses

Last September I bought my first Sinclair pattern and sewed an Alana dress. I have since sewn two more (and there will probably be more) and several other Sinclair patterns. I’ve found the Sinclair patterns to be well drafted and pretty straightforward to understand. They can be downloaded as PDFs and printed on a home printer, printed in large format at a copy shop, or projected.

I chose Alana as my first pattern mostly because I liked the pockets. I continue to love the pocket style, where the pockets are anchored by two princess seams. I also liked the neckline that used a facing instead of a binding or band.

I obsessed over what fabric to use, and continuing with my privacy research related theme, I selected fabric with eyes on it — evil eye blue by Laura May. I got the same fabric in the small size for the sleeves. I had both printed on Spooflower modern jersey.

Then I printed out the PDF layer for the size 4 petite pattern on the laser printer at work and spent about an hour taping it together and cutting out all the paper pattern pieces. Then I laid all my cutting mats out on the hallway floor and laid out the fabric as shown in the pattern instructions. I quickly realized that I didn’t have enough fabric for that sort of layout. Puzzled, I looked on the Sinclair website for where to ask questions, and discovered the Sinclair Patterns Group on Facebook. This FB group is a great resource for sewing Sinclair patterns. I found you can easily search for the name of a pattern and find lots of photos of garments other people have made with that pattern, including tips on fabric selection and alterations. You can also post questions or show off your own makes. In any case I soon learned that the layout in the instructions is just a suggestion and may not work depending on the fabric width, garment size, etc. I figured out how to fold the fabric to cut it and get it all in. I also learned from the FB group about a YouTube video tutorial for making the Alana dress.

I used large washers as fabric weights and used my rotary cutter to cut out the fabric. Then I followed the instructions to sew the dress. I selected the regular neckline, long sleeves, and knee-length options. On the advice of the video tutorial I extended the length of the front facing so that it would fall below the bust line. I used a very narrow zigzag stitch for all of the seams and a medium zigzag to finish the seam edges. I finished the sleeve and bottom hems with HeatNBond Soft Stretch and zigzagged over the edges.

When I tried on the dress it looked OK, but the waist is not designed to be fitted, and it looked a little baggy on me. Indeed, the pattern explains that there is about three inches of ease at the waist. So I decided to take the dress in at the sides and the back princess seams to remove most of that ease. The dress looked much better on me without the ease.

I made my second Alana dress in December using a rich purple scuba suede fabric. The fabric is soft, stretchy, washable, and pretty easy to sew. I used a lighter ITY fabric for the front and back facings and extended both of them below the bust. I thought about using a lighter fabric for the inside of the pockets but decided to try the pockets entirely in scuba suede, and they worked out fine. A line of top stitching across the top of the pockets might have been helpful, but it is ok without. I did not bother stitching over the seam edges. Once again I ended up removing the ease. Months later the fabric is holding up pretty well after many wearings and washings, although it is showing some slight signs of pilling.

My third Alana dress was another dress in Spoonflower modern jersey. This time I removed the ease in the pattern when I cut it. Cutting out this one took a while because I obsessed over the fabric placement. This was the third version of my bad passwords dress (there’s a whole story behind it), and this time I wanted to have long sleeves and pockets.

New password dress with sleeves and pockets

And see the original passwords dress below

Lorrie wearing password dress at Privacy@Scale, photo by Adam Mason

CUPS of SOUPS

After sewing mostly quilts for a while, I was inspired to sew a dress again last summer (2022) because I wanted a dress to wear to the Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS) 2022, a conference that I started in 2005 and is still going strong. I thought it would be fun to have a dress that had soup on it. I thought about a soup-can dress channeling Andy Warhol, but eventually settled on a bright noodle soup pattern called grandma’s recipe, designed by Daniela Friedenthal and available at spooflower.com. I had the fabric printed on modern jersey, and then tried to figure out how to sew it.

Sidebar 1: I love Spoonflower modern jersey! It is one of the best polyester jersey’s I have found with a feel similar to cotton, but brighter colors. It is similar to double-brushed polyester (DBP) but has a little bit more body than most of the DPBs I’ve used. The main downside is it is about 4 or 5 times more expensive than DBP and only available for custom printing, not colored solids.

My previous me-made dresses were very simple, sewn from two pieces of fabric with no pockets. This time I wanted a half-circle skater dress with pockets and some better finishing details. I started reading sewing blogs and learned how to sew side-seam pockets and create neck bands and bindings and make smooth knit hems with Soft Stretch hem tape. I reverse engineered some dresses from my closet and drafted a pattern, trying to include enough ease so I wouldn’t need a zipper.

Sidebar 2: I also love Heatnbond Softstretch for knit hems of all sorts. I fuse the tape to the edge of the hem, turn under the hem and press using the paper backing edge as a guide, then peel back the paper and fuse the hem in place, then zigzag over the edge. I’ve used this on dress, shirt, sleeve, and cardigan hems with great results. It even works on curves — you just have to nudge the paper backing around the curve as you press it. I now keep a couple of rolls around at all times so I don’t run out in the middle of a project!

The finished dress worked pretty well. The waist ended up a bit looser than I wanted and the pockets pulled the waist down a bit when I put stuff in them. But a sweater easily hides the imperfections. It is a fairly striking looking dress because of the unique fabric, and I have had total strangers comment on it.

While I wasn’t 100% satisfied with the SOUPS dress, I decided it was good enough that I wasn’t going to remake it. But I wanted to improve my pattern and give it another go. So adjusted the fit of the waist and the pockets a bit and sewed the dress again, this time in soft blue vintage tea cups fabric designed by Cecilia Mok on spoonflower.com. I chose cups because the name of my lab at CMU is the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security (CUPS) Laboratory. I also went on a quest to find a spoon pendant I could wear with both dresses. Most of the spoons I could find online were either too tiny or too big, or were designed for functional use as drug paraphernalia. I eventually bought a 25 pack of spoon charms for less than $10.

The CUPS dress came out considerably better, but in my further reading about sewing skater dresses, I discovered a free PDF skater dress pattern from Sinclair Patterns. Then I discovered Sinclair’s other patterns and one thing led to another. Watch for future blog posts….

Projector sewing – this is a game changer!

When I started sewing clothes again last summer I read lots of sewing blogs and joined some sewing-related Facebook groups. I bought some PDF patterns (and downloaded some free ones) and printed them out and taped them together. It took a while to tape them all together and get ready to sew, but it was still more convenient than having to go to a store to buy a physical pattern or wait to have it shipped. But I noticed that some of these patterns came with “projector files” and people in the Facebook groups were talking about projecting their patterns. Intrigued, I started reading up on projector sewing and found a great projector sewing website with lots of good information about how choosing a projector, mounting it, calibrating it, etc.

For my birthday last February, I decided to get an inexpensive projector and asked my husband to figure out how to mount it. I selected an inexpensive Alvar mini-projector, which weighs less than 4 pounds, and has wifi and bluetooth. It was on sale for $87. My husband didn’t want to drill holes in the ceiling, so he bought me a 15-pound microphone boom stand to mount the projector on. It was difficult to level the projector that way. So we added a tripod ball head so we could easily adjust the projector to be level with the tabletop. With this setup, my projector is suspended about 61 inches above my tabletop.

I put my cutting mat on the table, connected my laptop to the projector via bluetooth, and projected a pattern and started cutting it out with a rotary cutter. I discovered that the projected image kept freezing periodically, which got kind of annoying. After some trial and error and reading advice on the Projectors for Sewing Facebook group, I switched to projecting from my iPad instead, which solved the freezing problem. I bought Affinity Designer (AD) for my iPad to use for editing and projecting patterns. Calibration was a bit tricky, but I used the calibration tool and followed the instructions on the projector sewing website. It has been three months since I calibrated and the calibration seems to be holding fine. Another problem I ran into was my table wobbled a bit, especially when I leaned on it while cutting. I tightened up all the bolts in the table legs and now my table doesn’t wobble.

sewing projector setup

Initially I used a set of large washers I bought at a hardware store to hold my fabric in place while cutting. But I noticed some of the projector sewing folks talking about magnets. It had never occurred to me that you could put metal under a cutting mat and magnets would stick to it. I went to Home Depot and bought two of the least expensive 24×36 galvanized steel sheets I could find (about $15 each). I duct taped them together and added tape around the sharp edges so I wouldn’t cut myself. Then I slid them under my cutting mat. I bought a box of 25-lb rare earth magnetic hooks to hold down fabric. The magnets are strong enough to hold multiple layers of fabric. And the hooks are nice for easily grabbing and lifting the magnets.

galvanized steel for sewing table
galvanized steel for sewing table duct taped together

I use Crayola washable markers or white pencil (for dark fabric) to mark notches, darts, etc. on fabric, traced off the projected image.

Some of the PDF patterns I wanted to use were not designed for projecting. But I discovered PDFStitcher, which is free software, developed by a sewist, that stitches the pages of PDF files together. It also has some extra features such as allowing you to thicken and change the colors of lines, or select only the size layers you need. It works great!

Projector sewing is definitely a game changer! Now that I have this setup I don’t want to go back to paper patterns. For patterns that don’t require any alterations, I can quickly project, cut, and sew. For those that I want to modify, I’ve gotten fairly proficient at adding annotations to patterns on my iPad with AD and can use this approach to quickly lengthen, shorten, grade, change the neckline, etc. without having to cut and tape pattern pieces. I can even create pattern mashups, cutting and pasting elements from one pattern to another. This works even with dark fabric. The projector is usually bright enough, even without covering the window in my sewing room, although I do usually turn off the overhead light when using it. For cutting pieces that are larger than the projection area, I cut part of the pattern and then slide the image and cut the rest of it. You can add an alignment mark to the PDF and mark it on the fabric to make this easier.

Another projector trick is to draw or alter pattern pieces by placing a physical object (e.g. a pocket) on the table where the image is projected and drawing it on the iPad. You can see the projected drawing on top of the real object and adjust the lines of the drawing until they align with the real object. This is a good way to copy elements of exiting clothes or to add adjustments previously made on paper patterns to the PDF patterns.

October 2024 Update: I realized I was leaving pixels literally on the table, which was annoying when it meant that I couldn’t cut a whole pants leg without shifting the fabric. My table and cutting mat are big enough (especially since I’m short and my pants are not that long), but the projected image was not. I started by adjusting my tripod and raising my projector a few inches until it hovered just below the ceiling. That got me a couple more inches in my projected image, but still not enough. I noticed that when I turned my projector on it projected a 16:9 image but when I connected my iPad to it the image was only 4:3. Thus I was not using the full length of the image. I had switched to my iPad rather than my laptop because when I first started projector sewing my laptop caused the projector to freeze. However,16 months later I have a new laptop and am using Affinity Designer on my laptop too so I decided to try the laptop again. This time no freezing, and I was able to project a 16:9 image and use the full length of my cutting mat and cut each pants leg in one go!

Modern approach to sewing a vintage sundress

I asked my 17-year-old daughter what she would like me to sew for her. After perusing some patterns I suggested she told me what she really wanted was a vintage sundress in a woven fabric with a full-circle poofy, twirly skirt, perhaps like the one she had recently seen worn as a costume in Carnegie Mellon’s student production of Godspell. (See photo below of said costume on display at the CMU carnival.)

So I visited all my favorite PDF pattern websites and found some candidate patterns, but none were quite what she was looking for. I searched the Internet for vintage sundress patters with circle skirts and found a number of patterns from the 1950s that were available from resellers as classic paper patterns. And then I stumbled upon McCall’s M7599, which has been reissued as a PDF pattern. I found some reviews of the pattern, and even a how-to video (and I found another video after I finished sewing that might have been useful to watch too). My daughter examined M7599 and decided that view A was almost perfect. Except she wanted it without the contrast band, above knee length, and, of course, with pockets. These seemed like doable modifications, so I bought the pattern and downloaded the PDF.

The PDF pattern came with a fairly terse set of instructions and was basically a scan of the original pattern with all the layers on one sheet, tiled into 8.5×11 pages, not a convenient modern PDF layered pattern. I was able to assemble the pages into one giant PDF using PDFStitcher, an awesome free tool developed by a sewist. Then I loaded the resulting PDF into Affinity Designer (AD) on my iPad and traced the pattern pieces I was going to use in the correct sizes with a nice thick red line that would show up well when projected onto fabric (see photo below of skirt gores projected on fabric, held in place with magnets, ready for cutting with rotary cutter).

The sizing of vintage patterns is strange. My daughter normally wears a 2 or 4 dress size but according to the size chart she needed a 12. Ultimately after making a muslin and futzing with the pattern I ended up making a size 10 with parts graded to a size 8.

Inspired by the Godspell costume, my daughter searched online for fabric with pages of text, and ultimately settled on the Filigree Zen Chic Newsprint Text and Words fabric from Moda Fabrics in the white colorway. It is a lovely quilter’s cotton fabric, but it occurred to me that it is quite directional and the circle skirt would result in some of the design being upside down. To compensate I divided the full circle into six gores so that I could cut them each right-side up. I drafted the gores directly on the PDF pattern in AD. Of course, this increased the amount of fabric I would need — I ended up using six yards!

Removing the band from the bodice was straightforward — I basically just sewed the pattern as written but without attaching a band. I decided to also leave off the petticoat so that my daughter would have the option of wearing the dress either with or without a petticoat (she can wear a separate petticoat). Since I wasn’t attaching a petticoat I decided the yoke under the petticoat wasn’t needed either so I left that out as well.

I made a muslin of just the bodice so I could adjust the fit. I reduced the size of the bust darts, and brought the straps in a bit. It was also a good opportunity to practice using my zipper foot, which I haven’t used in many years (and zippers kind of scare me). It turned out to be a nice enough crop top that my daughter decided to wear the muslin outside in public. In fact she even wore it to perform with her rock band. She requested thinner straps for the dress and I decided to continue futzing with the bust darts, and ultimately just removed them altogether for the dress.

Figuring out how to implement side-seam pockets was another challenge, as the pattern includes a side zipper, which means the zipper has to attach to the pocket. Fortunately I have a RTW dress with pockets sewn this way so I used it as a model. I drafted pockets in AD and then reverse engineered how to sew it all together. (There are actually instructions online for sewing a pocket in a zipper and a nice video that I will probably watch if I ever attempt something like this again.) This isn’t the most beautiful invisible zipper job, but it doesn’t look terrible, and both the zipper and the pockets are fully functional so I consider it a win.

The penultimate step in the pattern involved slip stitching the bodice lining to the zipper and then to the skirt. Until I reached that step I didn’t fully comprehend how that final finishing would be done or realize how much hand sewing was involved, but I got through it and it turned out fine. The final step was the hem. I knew my daughter wanted the skirt quite a bit shorter than the pattern called for so I had cut it shorter in anticipation. But I hadn’t cut it short enough and it would have required a 2.5 inch hem, which was going to be hard to sew on a circle. So I folded the skirt into quarters and carefully lopped off 1.5 inches with my rotary cutter. Then I sewed a line .5 inch from the edge of the circle all the way round. This allowed me to easily fold the skirt on the stitch line and then fold it again and press to form a 1-inch hem. I stitched the hem down with a straight stitch about 1/8 inch from the edge of the hem. All this was reasonably straight forward but I would like to point out that the circumference of this skirt was about 12 feet, which means that each step (stitching, folding, folding, pressing, stitching again) has to be done over a distance of 12 feet, so it takes a while.

Other than figuring out the bodice fit adjustments, sewing the zipper pocket, and all that hemming, the dress actually came together pretty quickly and wasn’t that difficult to make. And the results are pretty nice. Here it is modeled without a petticoat. (And below that, while performing at her music recital.)

And here it is with petticoat, in full 1950s glory!

Go low! A comparison of 5 bass flutes

I had never seen a bass flute before I joined the Pittsburgh Flute Academy flute choir about 5 years ago. The director, Wendy Webb Kumer, loves low flutes and wants every member to have the opportunity to play them, so she makes sure that everyone gets assigned a low flute part every now and then. The flute choir owns several alto and bass flutes, along with an enormous contrabass flute, so there are low flutes available for those who don’t own a low flute to play. The bass flute was a little intimidating at first. It was big and heavy! And the first time I tried it I had only recently picked up my C flute again after a two-decade hiatus. But as my C flute skills improved, I grew excited about trying the low flutes again. After everyone else in my house (husband and 3 kids) started playing electric bass guitar, I decided I needed a bass flute.

The bass flute is an octave lower than the C flute, but the music is generally printed an octave higher than it sounds so you can read it on a treble clef. You play a bass flute exactly the same way you play a C flute, although the embouchure (mouth) position takes some practice and getting used to. And bass flutes are heavy so can be tiring to hold up for long periods of time.

Flute playing is a hobby for me, and one I don’t actually have much time for with my real job as a computer science professor. So shopping for a bass flute was also something I didn’t have much time for either. But several months into the pandemic, with no vacation travel plans for the foreseeable future, I took some time out to shop online for a bass flute.

Shopping for a bass flute online is actually fairly difficult because there is very little information available about the different bass flute models and almost no reviews. I have shopped for cameras and lenses online and there is a ton of information, with lots of reviews and detailed comparisons between models. People say you really need to just try playing flutes yourself and even try the specific instance of the model you want to buy as they aren’t all identical. Nonetheless, reviews and comparisons would be helpful for narrowing down the options and deciding which flutes to trial. Thus, I am going to go into some detail about the differences I observed in the flutes I trialed and my experience playing them (as a non-professional flutist and very amateur bass flutist). Obviously, your mileage may vary.

There are not a huge number of bass flutes to choose from, and especially if you want to stick to a budget, there are only so many types of bass flutes to try. Nonetheless, I did not get to try all the options in my price range. I set my budget at $4,000. I ruled out the plastic flutes (which some swear by, but mostly due to their lighter weight). And I ruled out those that didn’t have any trill keys (a flute without trill keys seems somewhat limiting). Then I asked around for recommendations. A member of my flute choir raved about his Pearl bass (check out this cool video featuring a Pearl bass). My flute teacher Sarah Steranka loves her Gemeinhardt bass. Joan Sparks at Flute Pro Shop told me that her store was having bass flutes made just for them, including horizontal and vertical bass flutes. I found a video about Trevor James bass flutes. I ruled out the Jupiter bass flute (despite a nice video) because the current model doesn’t have trill keys. I thought about trying the Di Zhao bass, since my C flute is a Di Zhao, but a couple of people told me they didn’t like it as much as the Pearl. The Di Zhao vertical bass is intriguing as well, but exceeded my budget.

I ordered C-foot Gemeinhardt and Trevor James bass flutes to trial from Flute Specialists. Flute Pro Shop sent me a B-foot Pearl, a C-foot Flute Pro Shop, and a B-foot vertical Flute Pro Shop bass flute. Over the course of a week they all arrived at my house, which was very exciting! I played them all, discussed with the two flute stores, and even had a socially distanced meetup with Sarah and Wendy before deciding which one to purchase.

5 bass flute cases
The 5 bass flutes I trialed, in their cases. From left to right: Vertical Flute Pro Shop, horizontal flute pro shop, Pearl, Trevor James, Gemeinhardt.

I’ll start with the Gemeinhardt ($3,199) and Trevor James ($3,895) bass flutes. These two flutes were amazingly similar, except for the price tag. As you can see in the photo above, they both come with the same kind of case cover — except the Trevor James has a brown leather handle, a pocket, and nice fleecy lining.

When the Trevor James arrived I initially had some trouble with it. I noticed right away that I could not play a B flat (with either fingering). I called Flute Specialists and in about 5 minutes on the phone they walked me through diagnosing the problem (a spring that had slipped out of place) and fixing it myself.

The photos below show the flutes themselves (click on a photo to enlarge). They look really similar, except the Trevor James has really pretty mother-of-pearl inlaid keys. They both have the same construction and similar shapes, sizes, and positions of most keys. They both have B flat rollers and shaped wooden hand crutches. The most important differences I found are the shape of the left first-finger key and the shape of the trill keys. I liked the Trevor James oval shaped first-finger key which is less of a stretch to reach. However, the Trevor James trill keys are small and pointy, and harder to hit than the wider and rounder trill keys on the Gemeinhardt. The shape of the head joint, lip plate and embouchure hole are very similar, and the feel and sound are also very similar. I found them both fairly easy and comfortable to play in all octaves, despite my lack of bass flute experience. With only minor fiddling with the head joint positioning I was able to quickly get a decent sound on both instruments. The middle and low octave of both have a nice full resonant sound, and I found all octaves pretty responsive and I was able to maintain fairly consistent intonation. On both flutes I found the upper octave responsive, but the sound was thinner. While the Trevor James is pretty and I wish the Gemeinhardt case was fuzzy and had an exterior pocket, these differences were not enough to make me want to pay $700 more for the Trevor James.

This is the Gemeinhardt bass flute with C-foot. It has a nice slim case with a storage box on the bottom right (where you see the hand crutches).
Here is the Trevor James bass flute with C-foot. It has the same case except a different color on the inside. Note the nice fleece lining on the inside of the case cover. Even the wood cleaning rods are the same except the TJ is stamped with the brand name.
Trevor James (top) and Gemeinhardt (bottom) head joints – almost identical except for the connecting bar. They both have cork where the straight part of the head joint slides into the curved part.
Trevor James (top) and Gemeinhardt (bottom) flute bodies – very similar in most respects, including hand crutch. The TJ has inlaid mother-of-pearl keys. Note the differences in the left hand first finger key and the trill keys.
Trevor James (top) and Gemeinhardt (bottom) flute bodies – very similar in most respects. Here you can see the B flat rollers on both. I like the B flat rollers but some people do not.
The Trevor James inlaid keys are lovely. I also like the shape of the left hand first finger key, which allows more options as to where you place your finger.
Trevor James (top) and Gemeinhardt (bottom) foot joint — almost identical.
Trevor James (top) and Gemeinhardt (bottom) foot joint — almost identical when you look at them upside down too.
Trevor James (top) and Gemeinhardt (bottom) foot joint — almost identical front or back. If you look carefully the TJ is engraved with the brand name at the far end.

You can tell the Pearl flute ($3,999 with a B foot, there is a C-foot model that is less expensive) is a bit different from the Trevor James and Gemeinhardt even before you open the case. The look is much more square and industrial, especially once you open the case. There’s no velvet, but instead more utilitarian egg crate foam. The case does come with a lock and key.

The flute itself is also different from the Trevor James and Gemeinhardt in some significant ways. The Pearl flute bend has a noticeably wider diameter. It also has a larger lip plate and embouchure hole. I had been told that the wider bend allowed for better weight distribution (with more weight on the left side of the flute), but I did not find that to be the case. However, I was comparing a B-foot Pearl to other C-foot flutes, so I couldn’t do a direct apples-to-apples comparison (I wanted to try a C-foot Pearl but couldn’t find one immediately available to trial). Overall, I found that the Pearl wasn’t all that comfortable to play. I found the metal hand crutch to be so uncomfortable that I had to wrap a sock around my hand for added cushioning (this lead me to invent the “bass flute glove” — more on that below). The crutch attaches to the flute by screwing into a cylinder lined with a plastic sleeve. On the flute I tested, the plastic sleeve had come loose and kept coming out when the crutch was removed. I also found the right pinky key to be quite a stretch for my smallish hands.

When I picked up the Pearl I had a hard time playing the lowest notes, and had difficulty with the D, E, and F in both the first and second octave. However, the highest register sounded full and fabulous (my 16-hear-old flute-playing daughter picked it up and just wanted to play all the high notes repeatedly). After trying different head joint positions I was able to eventually get all the octaves to sound good, but any minor change in head joint position threw everything out of wack. I suspect the larger embouchure hole just doesn’t work as well for me as the smaller hole. Perhaps it is something I would get used to with practice. When I played the Pearl for Wendy and Sarah they noticed how much I had to fiddle with it and commented that it had a less resonant sound than the others when I played it. It is possible that the particular Pearl I played had a problem, and the difficulty I had with D, E, and F suggests maybe a leaky key on the right hand. The Pearl didn’t work well for me, but it seems to have many fans.

Pearl flute case.
The Pearl flute has a more industrial looking case (with a lock and key) and a more angular style than the Gemeinhardt and Trevor James. The case cover has a fleece lining and a pocket. There is no box for accessories in the case. This Pearl has a B foot.
The Pearl (top) headcount has a much wider angle than the Gemeinhardt (bottom). The lip plate and embouchure hole are also much bigger. You can’t see it in this picture, but the Pearl does not have a cork where the straight part of the head joint connects to the curved piece.
Pearl (top) and Gemeinhardt (bottom) flute bodies with a number of notable differences. You can see the different style hand crutches. The Pearl does not have B flat roller. If you look carefully you can see that some of the bars are a bit different on the Pearl.
Another view of the Pearl (top) and Gemeinhardt (bottom) flute bodies. You can see that the Pearl has smokey grey key inlays, that are also very pretty. The left-hand first finger key is more to the right, making it a bit more accessible for those of us with smallish hands.
Pearl (top) and Gemeinhardt (bottom) foot joint. The Pearl is a B-foot so obviously longer. You can see the Pearl’s more angular style here when you look at the right-hand pinky keys.
Gemeinhardt (left) and Pearl (right) foot joints. I took this photo at this funny angle so you can see how hight the right pinky keys are. No matter how I rotated the foot joint, I still had to stretch my pinky to reach them.

To add more cushioning where the hand crutch rests between my left thumb and first finger, I sewed a bass flute glove out of a piece of fabric cut from a soft old t-shirt that had a bit of stretch to it. It is just a rectangle of t-shirt fabric sewn into a tube with a slit for the thumb and a cushion made from layers of cotton/polyester quilt batting. The photo below shows the second one I made, with six layers of padding and a tighter fit than the first one. I may try some more variations, but this general concept seems to effectively cushion the weight of the flute on my left hand without restricting finger and thumb movement.

My bass flute glove made from a rectangle cut from a soft, stretchy t-shirt and six layers of cotton/polyester quilt batting. The padding is sewn between the thumb and first finger.

I found the Flute Pro Shop horizontal flute ($2,878) to be somewhat similar to the Pearl flute, with the wider bend and large lip plate and embouchure hole. Like the Pearl, I found this flute somewhat hard to play and had to fiddle with the headjoint position quite a bit to get a good sound. I found some of the notes a bit easier to play than the Pearl, but it did not have the Pearl’s strong upper register.

This flute is somewhat of a budget version of the Pearl — no inlaid keys and no fancy details. The flute looks a little rougher around the edges than the Pearl — some of the weld joins are not as smooth as you might like and there are some odd angular connections with thin metal strips. The hand crutch is the same shape as the Pearl, but made of wood and I found it just as uncomfortable as the Pearl. The case is an all-in-one case (rather than a separate case and cover).

On the plus side, the Flute Pro Shop horizontal bass has a nice wide left first-finger key and I didn’t have any problem reaching the right pinky key. It does not have a B flat roller.

Overall, this is a solid bass flute for the price, and if you like the Pearl but want something less expensive, this one may be worth checking out. But this style of bass flute doesn’t seem to work well for me.

Flute Pro Shop horizontal bass flute comes with an all-in-one flute case with built-in-cover. It has a nice zippered exterior pocket.
Flute Pro Shop horizontal bass flute in its all-in-one case. There is no box for accessories inside the case.
The Pearl head joint (top) is fairly similar to the Flute Pro Shop head joint (bottom) — both have a wide curve and a large lip plate and embouchure hole. You can see the bar is less decorative on the Flute Pro Shop had joint and the embouchure hole is more squared off.
Pearl (top) and Flute Pro Shop (bottom) flute bodies. You can see the Flute Pro Shop’s nice large oval left first-finger key. The bars on the Flute Pro Shop are the more typical style.
Pearl (top) and Flute Pro Shop (bottom) foot joint. The Pearl is a B-foot so obviously longer. The Flute Pro Shop has a similar style, but note the weird angle bracket to the left of the pinky keys.
The Flute Pro Shop right-hand first-finger and ring-finger keys are attached to the keys with strange metal brackets. All the other flutes I tried have them attached to the bar. Functionally, these seem to work just fine and this approach arguably makes more sense since the keys you press are directly connected to the keys that actually cover the tone holes, but they really are strange looking.
The Flute Pro Shop horizontal bass does not have a B flat roller.
The Pearl (top) and Flute Pro Shop (bottom) hand crutches. I didn’t find either of them to be comfortable.

The most unique bass flute I trialed was the Flute Pro Shop vertical bass flute ($4,288) — slightly above my budget but it was listed on sale on the website for $3,998 and I really wanted to try a vertical flute. There aren’t very many vertical bass flutes available, and this was the only one I could find that fit within my budget. I was eager to try a vertical bass flute, as it seemed like it would be much less tiring to play. I also play saxophone (again as an amateur), so I’m comfortable with the vertical hand positioning.

The Flute Pro Shop vertical bass comes in a pretty hefty all-in-one case. It’s well padded but has no pockets. The bass comes with a very long peg that you screw into the flute. You can adjust it to play either sitting or standing. I’m 5’2″ and when I played it standing there was still a lot more peg left to let out, so I suspect even someone about 5’10” tall could probably play it standing up, but taller than that you might need to put a block under the peg to play while standing.

Like the Flute Pro Shop horizontal bass, the vertical bass has a large lip plate and embouchure hole. However, it doesn’t have the wide bend in the head joint. It comes with a B foot, but I didn’t have a problem reaching the right pinky key on this one. It has a nicely-placed left first-finger key that is easy to reach. The right-hand first and ring-finger keys are attached to their respective key covers as with the horizontal bass, but they are closer together and don’t have the strange-looking brackets. It is also a basic, low frills style — a little rough around the edges, but only if you look closely.

I put the vertical bass together and had to figure out how to adjust it. A horizontal bass flute can be adjusted in 2 dimensions — the angle of the entire head joint as well as the angle of just the mouth piece. The vertical bass flute has more variables — how far in front and how far to the side you place the peg on the floor. I had the best sound when I kept the peg fairly close to me so the flute was more vertical. However, I also found that when I put my chin up to the mouthpieces, the whole head joint acted like a lever, causing the flute to rotate. I tried to brace the flute with my hands to stop the rotation, but found this fairly difficult. I could barely lean my right thumb against the bottom hand rest and the top hand rest was way to far away for my hand to reach. I tried attaching my tenor sax neck strap, but it didn’t really help. I also tried playing with only the neck strap and not the peg. The flute still rotated and I found myself trying to play it like a saxophone, with side keys that it doesn’t actually have. Eventually, I was able to get the head joint adjusted and everything balanced on the peg just so, minimizing the rotation and getting a pretty good sound. But it was still fairly difficult and required a bit of fiddling every time I picked it up. When I played for Sarah and Wendy they also noted that I was holding my wrists at an awkward angle. We concluded that the vertical flute was probably too big for me.

I still think the vertical bass is a really nice concept, and if it fits you well could be a great instrument that puts a lot less strain on your hands (no need for a bass flute glove), arms, and shoulder than a horizontal bass. I imagine it might also be easier to play in a flute choir without knocking into the person or music stand to your right. Vertical bass flutes are significantly more expensive than their horizontal cousins, but if you have trouble with the weight of a horizontal bass it could be worth the extra cost. Since the end of the flute is aimed directly at the floor I was concerned about how well it would project. However, I thought this one projected just fine (for a a bass flute… they are generally quiet instruments). Standing and holding the flute felt really good and practically effortless, but it was not effortless to play. This flute just didn’t fit me well and was actually harder for me to play than some of the horizontal flutes. Maybe with more practice I would have gotten used to it and found workarounds. Since this is the only vertical bass I tried, I don’t know if the problems I had with this one are unique to this instrument.

The Flute Pro Shop vertical bass comes in a hefty padded all-in-one case with no pockets.
The Flute Pro Shop vertical bass in its case with cleaning rod. You can see the peg at the back of the case.
The Flute Pro Shop vertical bass (top) has a more typical diameter in its bend than the Pearl (bottom), but it has the large lip plate and embouchure hole.
The Flute Pro Shop vertical bass (top) has a foot joint similar to the Pearl (bottom), but it is longer and has a knob to attach and adjust the peg. Like the Flute Pro Shop horizontal bass it has an angle bracket.
The Flute Pro Shop vertical bass has no B flat roller. It has a bracket near the top with a loop to attach a neck strap and an adjustable left-hand rest.
The Flute Pro Shop vertical bass has a second place to attach the strap lower down and an adjustable right-hand rest.
The Flute Pro Shop vertical bass has a nicely-placed left first-finger key that is easy to reach. The right-hand first and ring-finger keys are attached to their respective key covers as with the horizontal bass, but they are closer together and don’t have the strange-looking brackets.
The Flute Pro Shop vertical bass has a bend in the tube connecting to the main flute body. Notice that it is wider than a 90 degree angle, so that the flute will end up being played at a bit of a diagonal rather than completely upright (which is also how saxophones are usually plaid).
This is how the peg connects to the Flute Pro Shop vertical bass.
Here I am trying out the Flute Pro Shop vertical bass standing up with the peg out in front of me a little bit. You can see the diagonal positioning.
Here is a close up of my hands while playing the Flute Pro Shop vertical bass. I had trouble positioning my hands so that my wrists weren’t at a funny angle. Also my right thumb just barely reaches the lower hand rest but my left hand doesn’t come anywhere near the upper hand rest (I assume that’s what that is… maybe it is for another purpose?).

Travel points for domestic peace

A former graduate student who will soon be a first-time parent emailed me this week to ask about that system he had heard me talk about for keeping track of travel. I’ve mentioned this system to a few people, and they’ve told others, and every now and then someone sends me an email to ask how exactly it works. So, I’m finally writing it all down so that those who find it useful can read more about it.

I used to travel a fair bit for work, but cut back significantly when my first child was born. By the time I had three kids, I wasn’t traveling much. Once the kids were all in elementary school, my work travel increased. There always were more conferences I wanted to attend, and more speaking engagements I wanted to accept. However, realizing the stress it put on my family when I was out of town, I tried to choose my travel carefully and said, “no” to a lot of it. (As a side point, most academics I know believe they must travel a lot or their careers will suffer. I believe that some travel is required, but that most of us could probably do quite well with significantly less travel. Perhaps I will blog on that some time….)

While I felt that I had settled on a reasonable amount of travel, my husband and kids did not see it that way. Every time I prepared for another out-of-town trip, they complained that I was traveling too much. I should note that my husband does not enjoy travel as much as I do, his job requires less travel, and he usually is able to keep his business travel to 2-4 days per year. On the other hand, I was typically traveling 2-4 days per month, even when trying to travel less.

Somewhere that I no longer recall, I had read about the idea of keeping a budget for travel — not a monetary budget, but a time budget. So I decided to give it a try and devised a “travel points” system. My first thought was to simply to negotiate with my husband and decide on a maximum number of days I would travel each year. But when I suggested this idea to him he told me it was too simplistic. He explained that when I travelled during the week, the kids were in school most of the day and it wasn’t too difficult for him to handle the morning and evening routines himself, with an after school babysitter to help out with transportation to afternoon activities. However, when I travelled on weekends, he had to single-handedly get three kids to all of their weekend activities and make sure they ate three meals per day. After further discussion, I realized that when I arrived and departed also made a difference. Ideally, I would make it home for dinner, but getting back later in the evening was still better than coming home the next day.

Based on my husband’s feedback I came up with the following points system. Each week day away from home costs 3 points. One point for being away for breakfast, one point for being away for dinner, and one point for being away over night. Weekends work the same way except they count double. I applied this formula to past trips to see how much they would have cost, and negotiated a total budget for the year of 84 points.

As we’ve used the system over the past six years we’ve made a few additional adjustments. I get a discount for bringing one of my kids with me on a trip (I’m not able to do that very often because they usually have school, but every now and then it works out). I get a discount for working in a visit to a family member while on a business trip. I also get a discount for travel associated with paid consulting, since my husband appreciates the extra income that brings in. One year I signed up for a training course with three out-of-town sessions that used up 70 of my 84 points. Before I signed up for the course I made sure my husband was on board with the increased level of travel and we negotiated a higher points budget for that year. Last year, when I was traveling to Washington, DC from Pittsburgh for three days every week we suspended the points system completely rather than add up the 400+ points. We all knew that I would be away a lot and the whole family (even my kids) bought into the plan. Now that I’m back, we have reinstated the points system.

The travel points system works pretty well for us. I typically get a handful of out-of-town speaking invitations every month, so calculating the points cost of each potential trip is helpful as I choose which invitations to accept. I try to pace myself, and reserve points for the conferences I like to attend. I also try to shorten trips to shave off a point or two if I can. When possible I leave early in the morning rather than going the night before. I sometimes leave a conference early to make it home for dinner. Whenever possible, I avoid traveling on weekends. While my husband still thinks I travel too much, he is much less grumpy about it when he knows that the amount of travel will be bounded.

The travel points system is a simple application of basic budgeting principles that helps me put limits on my travel and practice moderation. People use similar systems to limit their financial spending or their caloric intake. You can apply this time budgeting concept to other activities besides travel. For example, if you have a time-consuming hobby not enjoyed but other members of your household, allocate points for the hours you spend on that hobby. If it makes sense in your household, you might develop a system that allows you to trade points with other family members, for time, money, or other activities — e.g. if I can travel two extra days, when I get back you can go on a two-day yoga retreat.

What’s most important (and probably most difficult) is negotiating the rules of the system so that the points provide appropriate incentives and all involved are satisfied with the total points budget. Once I agreed to significantly penalize weekend travel, my husband was much more agreeable about the whole system, since weekend travel was what he most wanted reduced. I also would prefer to be home and spend time with my family on weekends, so the weekend penalty adds an extra nudge for me to do what I would like to do anyway. Every family is different and you will have to find the incentives and budget that work best for your family, and be prepared to renegotiate over time as you gain experience with the system or your situation changes.

BSides, Black Hat, and DEFCON

I spent 4 days in Las Vegas this past week attending the back-to-back BSides LV, Black Hat, and DEFCON 24 hacker conferences.  This was my first trip to Vegas and my first time at these events (although I have attended local hacker events, such as ArchC0n in St. Louis last September). Here are some thoughts on my experience and some photos from my trip.

You know you are in Vegas when you get off the plane, because who wants to wait until you leave the airport to start gambling?

Slot machines at Las Vegas airport

Usually I try to stay at a conference hotel, but I had been prohibited from using any of my  government devices in the conference hotels (too much of a security risk), so I opted for the Westin, where I could also get a government rate. BSides was a short walk down the street at the Tuscany. It was nearly 100 degrees in the mid-day sun, but without all the humidity we’ve been having on the East Coast. (And the hotels were heavily air conditioned so I was glad to have a cardigan for inside the hotels!)

Westin hotel in Las VegasTuscany Suites

I gave the Gave opening keynote at BSides LV Tuesday morning in a noisy room with about 1000 people…. a few hundred people were sitting at tables, standing, or sitting on the floor paying attention to my talk. The rest were collecting swag from vendors, talking to each other, learning how to pick locks in the back of the room, or getting a drink at the bar (at 10 am!). Nonetheless, I had good audience participation when I quizzed them on password strength, and an artist captured the key points of my talk pretty well. And my talk got some nice press coverage. I wore my password dress (as requested) and many people asked me to pose for selfies with them throughout the day. After my keynote I spoke on a career panel and attended some of the Passwords talks (kudos to Per Thorsheim for organizing a great event). I also enjoyed Andrea Matwyshyn‘s talk on hacker kids.

Besides LV chill out roomvisual summary of BSides LV keynotes

BSides is the scrappy conference of the week. It doesn’t have many bells and whistles, but it is also the least overwhelming. Volunteer staff (known as “goons”) are mostly polite, but I did have a run-in with one who refused to let me back into a session for the end of the Q&A because I had stepped out into the hall.  The hotel is not so classy and the whole thing smells like cigarettes, but the event is free to attend and not nearly as crowded as the other two events. And bonus points for the visual notes, speaker lunch, and providing a nice women’s cut v-neck speaker t-shirt.

I spent most of Wednesday and Thursday at Black Hat at Mandalay Bay, a 15-minute taxi-ride down the Strip from BSides. This is the classiest, most corporate, and most expensive of the three events. It was also the most traditional conference, the only one that did not require walking through a casino, and the conference badges actually had peoples’ names on them. Some people even wore button down shirts and suit jackets, although black t-shirts, jeans, and hoodies were still totally ok. Everything about Black Hat is big and polished. The breakfast/lunch room (this is the only event that includes meals) was an enormous matrix of banquet tables and professional staff who greeted everyone with a smile and directed people to the open buffet lines politely and efficiently. The plenary room was full of flashing lights and a glass cracking theme for the opening session (I assume the idea is glass cracking as in breaking things, not cracking the glass ceiling, since there wasn’t a whole lot of evidence of glass ceiling cracking here). I got to see Jeff Moss and Dan Kaminsky. Among other things, Dan urged hackers to “break things faster,” encouraged companies to publish their code so that it would be indexed by Google and easier for their own employees to find, and suggested outsourcing more security functions to the cloud.

Black Hat breakfast and lunch roomBlack Hat opening keynoteBlack Hat opening keynote Black Hat opening keynote - Jeff MossBlack Hat opening keynote - Dan Kaminsky

The Black Hat business hall was also enormous, and many vendors were handing out swag. I collected enough t-shirts to clothe my kids for quite a while, plus bags, pens, and light-up balls. I would not come home empty handed. I was excited to visit the Wombat booth. Down the hall from Blackhat, in the same hotel, was the Superzoo show for pet retailers. The carts stacked with dog beds and cat food were an amusing contrast to Black Hat.

Black Hat business hall Black Hat business hall - Wombat boothSuperZoo at Mondalay Bay

I attended several really interesting talks at Black Hat, mostly on the human factors track (including a talk by my former PhD student, Patrick Kelley). There was a fun talk about dropping USB sticks in the parking lot. I was mostly interested in the data about how often they got picked up, although I think many in the audience enjoyed learning about how to make a fake USB stick that would automatically deploy malware when someone sticks it in their computer. One of my favorite talks was on using forensic linguistics to identify signs that a phone call is from a scammer. And of course no hacker conference is complete if you don’t see someone who has brought their own ATM machine.

As with the other hacker conferences, the crowd was not particularly diverse, although I did not find the climate uncomfortable at Black Hat and I was glad to see that all the staff in the business hall booths seemed to be dressed appropriately for the event. The Black Hat organizers had posted their code of conduct all over the place, and there were a couple of sessions focussed on getting more women into the security field (thanks EWF and Equal Respect!). When asked what they could do to attract more women to apply to be speakers I suggested personal invitations (which is the main reason I was at BSides, thanks Per!) and childcare and/or kids track (my kids were not available this week, but had they been I could have brought them to BSides and DEFCON but Black Hat would have been prohibitively expensive).

Patrick presenting at Black Hat ATM machine for Black Hat demo Black Hat code of conduct

I didn’t have much time to sight-see, but did check out some of the other hotels and casinos. I visited Ancient Egypt, where I discovered you can eat sushi. Then on to New York, which was an adorable scaled-down replica of the real thing, but so much more peaceful without honking horns and huge crowds. The Excalibur castle looked like something out of Disneyland.

Inside the Pyramid in Las Vegas New York New York New York New York Excalibar at night

I had to taxi over to DEFCON and back on Thursday mid-day to pick up my speaker badge and was back there in the evening and then all day on Friday. DEFCON is the largest of the three events and uses space in both the Bally’s and Paris hotels. The Paris has a casino at the base of the Eiffel tower and cute Parisian streets lined with over-priced cafes where they require you to show ID when you buy a $3 yogurt with a credit card.

Las Vegas stripParis hotel Paris hotel

DEFCON has something like 15,000 attendees, but you can’t register in advance and you have to pay cash at the door. Badge distribution and crowd control in general is quite a challenge, and there is a lot of waiting in line at DEFCON. Nonetheless, the DEFCON goons were friendly and managed the crowd well. And they looked stylish with their red t-shirts and police-style goon badges. I walked by the DEFCON kids track which looked like it would be fun to check out if I had brought my kids.

Bally's to Paris connection at DEFCONDEFCON at Paris HotelDEFCON at Paris Hotel

I checked out the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge and saw the Mayhem team with CMU colleagues being interviewed after their victory. I met up with some of my fellow “feds” to prepare for our Meet the Feds panel.

Cyber Grand Challenge Cyber Grand Challenge Cyber Grand Challenge Allan and Jonathan at Cyber Grand Challenge at DEFCON Allan, Jonathan, and Lorrie at Cyber Grand Challenge at DEFCON

We reported to the speakers room 45 minutes before our talk and our goon escorted us to the room we were speaking in, a long walk through the casino and into Bally’s. We had about 800 people for the Meet the Feds panel and it was standing room only. We had some good questions, including from a high school student who wanted to know about careers in government.

DEFCON speaker ready room, with Eric Mill and goonDEFCON, Meet the Feds Allan, Eric, Lorrie, and Jonathan - DEFCON, Meet the FedsAllan, Eric, Lorrie, and Jonathan - DEFCON, Meet the Feds

My second panel was back in the Paris hotel in another large room. Commissioner McSweeney and I talked about the FTC and our research wish list. I discovered that the super cool podium looks great, but is not so good for short people as I could hardly be seen behind it.

DEFCON FTC session DEFCON FTC session - Terrell and Lorrie DEFCON FTC session - Terrell and Lorrie DEFCON FTC session - Terrell and Lorrie

FTC folks all wore the FTC DEFCON t-shirts I designed, complete with secret code (successfully cracked by my son in about 90 minutes).

Joe, Lorrie, Aaron, Terrell at DEFCONFTC DEFCON t-shirt frontFTC DEFCON t-shirt back

The DEFCON vendor room did not have much for free, but lots of fun things to buy like lock picks and hacking tools. Contest rooms and “villages” featured tables full of hackers working on competitions and projects, lots of people soldering (not sure what exactly), cars for car hacking, and phones for social engineering. There were beauticians offering mohawks in any color. Hacker jeopardy was a low point, as interspersed between geeky technical questions were questions full of sexual innuendo, which produced the predictably inappropriate and vulgar responses from contestants. Not classy! While this sort of behavior seemed to be the exception and not the rule at DEFCON this year, it should not be tolerated.

Overall, I did not see too many women at DEFCON. One attendee who saw my speaker badge asked if I was Radia Perlman. Perhaps she was the only female computer scientist he could think of who might be a speaker? There are worse people to be mistaken for, but she is about 20 years older than me and we look nothing alike.

DEFCON Venders DEFCON contest room DEFCON contest room DEFCON contest room DEFCON car hacking Hacker jeopardy DEFCON soldering DEFCON

On the flight home the couple sitting next to me asked if I knew anything about all those people walking around the Strip with skull badges. Yes, indeed, I told them as I pulled my DEFCON badge out of my backpack and showed them how I could press the buttons in the right order and make it light up.

badges