Belly Literary Universe (part 2)

Camilla's Clothes Part 6: Recovery

Camilla grunted as she contorted her body. Cutting out heavy-duty clothes patterns required more work than a one-time-use paper guide. The movements were not difficult, but with a dozen thick holes in her body from having large tissue samples taken, any movement was painful. Even after a few days, stretching and compressing the wounds still shot electric pain through her. The doctors told her to take it easy, but she wasn't about to miss a deadline, and risk the procedure being defunded by Cozca. Even if the deadline was one that she set herself. The machine whirred to a standstill as she finished cutting out the shape. With the task completed, she tossed the pattern to the side where it thunked into a delivery box. She sat back cringing from the pain. Simply putting up with it was exhausting. The bone marrow samples they took from her femur hurt the worst. It'll be fine. Whatever samples they need they can have. Whatever they need for my miracle.

Breathing heavily, she fetched the blueprints for the outfits and taped them into the box with the patterns. Tomorrow. I'll ship the box tomorrow. Leaning back again, she looked at the line of unfinished and unpatterned outfits on the huge-bellied wire mannequins. Attempting to stand, her legs nearly gave out from exhaustion and pain. I can work on more tomorrow. With her mind freed from work, her thoughts wandered to dark places. My miracle is on the way, but I have no one to miracle with. She thought about calling her ex, James, again. Or texting. Or emailing. Or writing a letter. Or visiting.

She was halfway into an email before she stopped herself and deleted the whole thing. "Look at yourself darling. You're obsessing over a ship that sailed years ago. Your clock isn't ticking. If anything, you're getting it rewound. You've got time. We gotta just start this whole business over. You're not gonna find any men by just moping about and thinking of past flames. You're a great catch. A successful business owner. Quite good looking still. It'll be easy," she said to herself in a pep talk.

With a smile on her face she took to the internet. How do you meet people? No. Men. I guess dating sites work? That's what people do these days, right? Well, it's worth a try.

She took a cursory look over reviews for dating sites before joining a few.

"A username? Oh. How about Mothersjourney81? That's available? Good, I'll just use that. Female. There's my age. Body Type: slender. Kids? None... Definitely wants kids. uhhhh... Demographics there. Here is some pictures uploaded. And then a Bio? Why do i gotta do a bio. Ugh here's one."

'Hi, I'm Camilla. A southern girl now living up in the pacific spanning mountains. I'm an independent woman who knows what she wants. Good clothes, a cozy blanket, and a big family. I already have two of those so why don't you message me about the third! Hahaha!

After years of building up my life and business I'm looking forward to finding someone to settle down with. I'm open to someone with pretty much any kind of background. But they should be good around the house. You should also have your own interests. I don't have any interest in lazing around the house and drinking and watching game show reruns. A handy family man type would be real wonderful. Message me and we can talk about whatever you like.'

"There. That should do it. Now what else?"

Camilla grunted, and repositioned herself in her chair. "Get out - that's what people say you need to do, right? You need to get out to places. I already get into town a lot. Maybe there are dating events around. I could always head down to Azure Heights. Lots of people there. There's bound to be some handsome guy who wants to marry quickly there." She laughed to herself. Spurred by the idea, she scoured social media looking for any large events that might have desperate men visiting them. She found a few meetup groups to keep her eye on, and signed up for a speed dating event deep in the city scheduled for next week.

Spurred with new hope, Camilla forced herself to stand up. Undeterred by the pain, she walked along her outfits, adjusting the fit of the planned outfits. The outfit pattern set for delivery was for some basic shirts and dresses fitted for women with huge bellies. They weren't fancy outfits - they were just normal clothes tweaked to make sure they'd fit bellies ranging from big to massive. The remaining outfits fitted onto wire mannequins were more experimental. They were more risque, more unusual, and were far less finished. One of her most extreme ideas was an iteration of the idea for a belly brassiere - a supportive garment to help some of the huge women she'd seen, carry around their own body. A problem she'd been facing was that at such large sizes, no matter what was holding up the weight of the belly, all the weight would ultimately fall onto the back and shoulders. Pain. Injury. Discomfort. She was hired to make clothes for these women, so this project was one she'd spent a lot of time on. Over the last week her design to help address that physical reality had bloated to a serious undertaking.

Structure was what was needed. At first her mind went to a garment used for support for centuries - a corset. But the problem with a corset in that case was the same problem she was looking to assist with: massive bellies. And so she went to work with scissors, and cannibalized the back half of a corset. She lined it with much stronger ribbing made of titanium, hoping that if the garment was tight enough, it could press some of the weight from a woman's suspended belly directly to the bottom of her spine, relieving a significant amount of force.

The difficulty from there was attaching half a corset to a woman. Early designs involved maintaining a small strip at the top and bottom of the corset to keep it closed. But with so much fabric and structure missing from the midsection, the whole garment was prone to collapsing in on itself. After that she developed an elaborate harness. A strong band would circle around the base of the wearer's belly vertically, from bust to panty line, and be kept tight as possible. From there, sufficient weight could be transferred to the supportive back. The design was not finished yet. There were plenty of places for her to improve it.

Style was not there yet. She knew that some amount of aesthetic would have to be sacrificed for practicality's sake, but she was still interested in making the whole contraption attractive. The strappy look could fit in well in some kinkier circles, especially with a web of straps holding a belly aloft. Aside from that she had several ideas for gothic gowns or formal dresses which could make use of the design.

She even had crazier designs on paper that could include exoskeleton components to further improve mobility for the wearer. Those were mostly doodles in a book, though.

She was sure that Miranda and Rachel would appreciate the work on those designs.