Muslingate

I am amazed and amused at how a simple post on making a toile turned into a Muslingate.

I am talking about my Burdastyle guest blog post. The post triggered lots of positive comments and great questions. Of course, some readers also explained how they never make a toile, or, even, how toiles are a waste of time. That’s ok, right? I believe in personal choice, and we all want to have an opportunity to express our opinions.

But there were also some pretty fiery comments, like the one Gertie decided to comment at on her blog. I read her post on Google reader, before, couple of hours later, she removed it from her blog.

“Enough people were irritated by my directly quoting a Burdastyle comment that I figured I should take my earlier post down lest I offend anyone else,” she said

Ok, here is the culprit:

“Unfortunately it seems to me that this one-upmanship in the couture standards (as if every single summer dress needed to be a work of art) has been muddled with working methods of past custom dressmakers, so that innocent beginners now thing it’s normal to muslin every t-shirt. As a result they have encouraged pattern companies to be even more slack in sticking to their defined sizes. So one now often needs to do a muslin when sewing up the big 4, which seem to be morphing from merely strange sizing to really all over the place. Sigh.”

I did comment on this on Burdastyle, readers. Nothing scandalous - be disappointed :-) but, seriously, do you think pattern companies are lurking in the blogosphere looking for a pretext for neglecting their jobs?.. or, is there really a need to protect ‘innocent beginners’ from negative side effects of muslin-making?..

Now, about directly quoting the comment here. I posted it, readers, because I have something to say about it. I know it may seem ‘frightening’ to some that a comment can be reposted and responded to, but that’s the essence of social media we all are part of– we act and react. There is nothing bad about it. We do want to be nice to each other, but we also want to be able to express our opinions, like that person who posted the initial comment on Burdastyle.

Now, do comment, criticize, argue, but ‘keep it civil’ as Gertie said. I believe constructive debates are very useful!


I am adding this edit after I read Gertie's comment that she intends to repost her post with some changes. I am looking forward to it!