la femme follette

bears all things. believes all things. hopes all things. endures.

Remember how I was writing about split-sole ballet flats?  They need sewing, they come incomplete.  It is not the biggest deal, but it is something to be done.  Another thing on a long list of things.

 

 

Pointe shoes need elastics and ribbons sewn on.  Just stop because I will not even.  Her flats are leather, so it is pretty easy to sew to the lining without going through it.  Satin shoes are an entirely different thing.  Also, 4 sewn-on things per shoe.  No. 

I am not the hand-stitcher in the family, Mari is.  I mean, I like the dainty stitches required in hemming and finishing exterior seams, but honestly, anyone who lives here will wait forever for me to sew on their buttons.  When we got the note from school about the handwork-demo, I told Mari he would have to go.  He did, but somehow I wound up being the stitchery supervisor this weekend.  I mean, the meeting was mostly about where to fasten.

I think it was when I broke it to him that he would have to use mattress stitch -- invisible from either side -- which Fifille knows perfectly well from her knitting times.  But maybe he did not want to deal with her sulky attitude, which was a factor, definitely.

"Why, Mommy, why do I have to sew them on myself?  You have always sewed my elastics.  Why me, whyyyyyyy?"

Honestly.  Earlier this year, there was a day where I thought, from about two rooms away, that I would have to strangle her.  The hair-tossing, the eye-rolling, the foot-stomping, the kicking little kicks at the pillars and columns and staircases of the world.  The mumbling little mumbly, grumbly complaints under the breath.  Oh.  Oh, no.

Lucky for her, on that day I was awash in the satiny-pink afterglow of some heavy (metaphorical) lovin' the Israeli had laid on me.  So, I was watching her give the dishwasher's kick plate tiny little kicks, reeling, kind of analyzing how she was wicked, wicked, and I stopped. 

You know, and I know this is well-known -- even if you have never said it to my face -- I was wicked as a girl.  Not a 10-year-old girl, either; a 20-year-old girl.  When I was 20 (and 21, and 22), I was unspeakably wicked to my favorite + best, the Israeli, at intervals from the minute he began serving his compulsory, from 7,000 miles away.  In case you have never considered this, let me assure you that in the 20th century, it took an incredible amount of dedicated ruination to get a message across at that distance, but I succeeded by either epistolary action or default.  Sometimes I let other people do my dirty work for me -- everyone loves to gossip.

When he returned, I was not measurably better.  Things were much worse before they would improve, but all along the way, I have to admit he never killed me.  He doesn't just take it, but mostly he just waits it out, until I am who he knows me to be at my best.  In the meantime, he would never deny me a thing.  So I felt like, yk, OK, this is a minimum standard I have to achieve as the actual mother of this child.       

But Mari did not have this whole cathartic time with his present + his past, and plus he was not interested in showing her something he did not know at all when I was available to direct her.  So I did it. 

 

I explained to her that I have been sewing on her elastics as a courtesy because she was more comfortabe in shoes which came unfinished.  The other girls wore shoes that came finished.  Now that everyone is in shoes that come unfinished, she can be one of the everyones taking care of the business.  There was huffing in futility.  I waited, pleasantly, while playing upon her familiarity with the work because of a different project which she had enjoyed.   

She remembered how to do the stitch, and agreed, so I got things all pinned for her elastics.  Pinning, basting, try-ons.  Fine.  That was yesterday.  The funny thing that happened between Mari telling her she would be doing it with me (she had been hoping to get her way from her Pop, seeing as he is more malleable than I am in this way) and her getting the first shoe's elastic sewn on was that she realized Zomigod I can do this myself!  Me!  Not a baby!

It was just like the time Charlie & I watched her go all the way down the block all by herself (all! by herself!) to see if the neighbor had an ice-cream scoop.  She was bounding and smiling and so happy & so big.  It was huge. 

 

Look, sewing & smiling!

She did a great job -- careful, tiny, even.  Right now she is clomping around upstairs in them, trying to learn to walk while wearing them.  She is so pleased with herself.  "Mommy, everyone else's mom or grandmother is sewing their shoes for them!"

 

I mean, I told her, I don't know, maybe she will grow up & look back & think, Jesus maybe my mother could have sewed my shoes for me because I was only ten years old, but we will have to see.  Je t'embrasse.

I am not humble because false modesty is a sin

So,  let me see if I've got this all the right way:

1. There are some women
   • who have a secret bulletin board
   • where they devote themselves wholly to the business of tearing down other women and the weblog-content those women put forth into the world. 
2. A bunch of them left comments here yesterday
   • in which they collectively reveal themselves to be pretty much illiterate,
   • in that they have no ability to detect  

   a. subtletly

   b. irony

   c. tone

3. which explains perfectly why they are obvsly incapable of working out that
   • my "vague terms" are to keep the entire population of internet grifters from getting into the business of my family + friends
   • plus also that those same familiars hardly need me to "deign to show them how incredibly gorgeous I am," since my God-given pulchritude is pretty much the single outstanding thing about me, (because it isn't all you need, but it gives one a prodigious headstart)
4. to say nothing of how very, very rich it is that  (see: a, b, and c, plus also: board devoted to tearing down other women) they accuse me of being a hater.  Ahahaha!

Did I cover everything? Are we about square?

So way past beyond-hilarious that hateful people on the internet would wonder why anyone would keep their business as tightly-leashed as possible, coded in a portmanteau for people who can hear the words on the screen in my voice.  Um, clearly because there are people like them in the world?

But there are in this world so many, many more people.  Everyday pals, faraway friends, best-besties, my husband -- none of whom need to read by the lights of their projectors and the horrible, noisy, whirring distraction, since they have been for two decades or more surrounded by an exchange of words in writing.  Or, because they have my g.d. phone number and can call for clarification if they need to know so much more.  

I would be remiss if I failed to mention a small but mighty group of generous people who have never met me and who know how to read for content and its fulsomeness.  This project is sometimes a jumping-off point, it is sometimes backfill, but this project is always mine, for me, this little scrapbook on the internet.  Yes.

Forward.  Because it is again an interval for making herbal medicines, at a minimum.  Looking at you, Lisa -- yr package is almost ready.

 
 

Also, here:  I have created a fucking monster with the bespoke menswear, I swear.  I had to sadly tell Mari the tailor's shop is closed on Saturdays in July.  OK.  Additionally, I had to explain to him that they are away in August.  It was like the first time he impressed me, when I had to explain to him what Yom Kippur was.  Only now he's been married to me for 15 years and I was more than a little like, yk, seriously?  Italians go away in August.  Also, Greeks flirt.  Come on!

When we got off of the phone & I was hassling Fille to bring me her laundered yardage so I could start on her skirts, which obviously -- all this inability to be off-the-rack -- is it nature or nurture? 

Friday!  I feel great.  All the marking & listmaking & nonchalant interfacing makes me feel like I'm blogging Alex's blog, and this has the right feel for the rest.  Plus, same hairdo, obvs.

 

Gros bisous!

interior

Yesterday was fun!  With the ranting about current events and the emails + the tweets; the texts & the phone calls.  Lately, I know, I had started writing here in that useless, inaccessible way I can be in real life, which is to say circumspect + too much talking at once.   But all the globalized, incoming-from-all-spheres chattery of Thursday was like Facebook without any hackers, I thought!  And people said it could not be done.  Honestly!  But I am not going to write about that Facebook situation right now, because I have important information to impart to Becky.

 

A few days ago, I had interstate errands, so I stopped by Antique Norma's.  Norma is fine and has promised me some divisions of pretty, yellow, evening primrose when the fall comes.  Some other plant, too, I forget. 

Anyhow, when last I was there -- in January -- I noticed she had a Rumrill vase from the Red Wing years.  I loved it, but I did not love it for what she was asking, especially since I would have to part with some things in order to give it room in a place both safe + accessible for breakable decoratives.

I felt fine about it then, but when flower season came a few weeks later, I thought about that vase every single day.  Ok, not every single day, but I thought of it a lot.  Here it is with the rest of the Deco-era collection and it becomes obvious why.  When I went back, it was there and I am pleased to own it.

 
Even Mari endorsed the purchase after the fact, so obvious is its fitness, even as he does not really care about anything decorative.

He was less enthusiastic about the flowered rabbits I bought. 

 
Ok, but I am always looking for spring mantle decorations that are not pastel.  Which he also understands, so anyhow.  For him, I got a few more doilies.  These were Norma's solution for me last summer when I confessed to her that Mari wanted always to set something down on the furniture -- not drinks, we have coasters for that, but things -- and it was getting me upset about scratching and I wanted to be not-fussy.

 
She took me to the back and handed me a stack of doilies, all kinds -- crocheted, eyelet lace, applique -- so many and so lovely.  Just slip one of these underneath everything and it'll be just fine, she told me.  She was right.  Also, handy for console bowls, footed dishes, and vases!  I bought an oval one that is perfect to fit under the McCoy piece I have sitting on the coffee table.  (It had a perfectly serviceable round doily, but this one is better, obvsly.)

  
I greedily snapped up a 1941 Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, and also a rather foreboding, 3-inch-thick book from 1940-something titled America's Garden Book.  There is a ton of information in both of those books.  

I was worried on the drive home that I might be on my way to a hoarding situation with the vintage cookbooks, but I only have two already, one from 1951 and another from 1948.  I think that going forward I will have to restrain myself.  I also had to get rid of Breakables I Did Not Love to be able to safely store this fourth vase where it is also handy.  That, like the whole Facebook situation, is a story for another time.  

I am spending this holiday weekend working on hemming those napkins in the background.  I am mitering the corners because I want them to be fancier.  It is way mathy and so taking a lot longer than it should, really.  We are not doing anything else because we both hate to drive in this kind of holiday traffic. 

We were invited to a cookout and I was all, "Oh, thanks, I'll let Mari know, but I am not really feeling so much like extra people."  I know.  Because conversation is sure to turn to something intense and people are unlikely to be, like, up to speed, and ugh, not like yesterday's synergy.  Which was awesome fun.  I should blurt out what I really think and at length more often, haha. 

warp & weft wednesday

  
I finished a bunch of little sewing projects last week, plus went 80% on a pair of trousers.  The nice thing about sewing -- also the worst thing -- is that there is a machine involved.  So, moreso than knitting, it is about just making the time to sit at the machine and get it done.  Kind of like, uh, mowing the lawn.

 
These (previously-revealed) tea towels and tea cozy are for the school spring auction.

 
Mari is very impressed that I made the tape for the loop.

 

This baby quilt is for a past-life colleague's new baby.  It is loosely based on a pattern from Amy Karol, but I made it a billion times less fussy.  It is two square-yard pieces of cotton, sandwiching one of cotton flannel.  I drew lines on it and straight-seamed until I was happy. 

 

It has wobbly highways of topstitching that I was a little sad to see go. 

I have to say that knitting a baby blanket is a month's commitment to hand stitching one stitch at a time, hours and hours of knitting.  Sewing a baby blanket?  Two baseball games on the radio.  Vrooom! Vro-ooo-ooom!  Finished! 

Also, I added two years onto my life and at least 7 onto Mari's when I realized -- pertaining to the issue of Spousal Counsel on Straightness and Seams -- that our next-door neighbor is not just my favorite guy from Duluth, but also an architect. I called him onto the project -- upper-midwestern guys, they love to tell you the One True Way -- between sessions 1 and 2. 

"Do I sew," I asked him, "on the fabric's pattern line here?  Or on the 'plumb' line?"  Which was not plumb, obvsly, because the two diverged on one of the lines I was trying to chalk along.  He scrunched his eyebrows while he tried to interpret my non-technical verbiage then said, "Oh!  No!  Always on the pattern grid!"

He gave me a little pep talk on how nothing is plumb unless you have a specially-fixed point.  I asked him, a little panicky, to explain to me what about the other side? (this is why Mari is glad he was not a part of this)  He frowned and gave me that look they give you when they don't want you to worry yr pretty little head. 

"You are not a machine," he explained, consolingly.  I love him, you know.

 

When that was all done, I felt like I wanted to pull together a little something for the baby's sibling.    I went to the Mini-Moopy.  This was an embroidery project + a sewing thingo at once!  Two projects in one!  Super. 

 
She is kind of cute.  I want one for myself.  I stuffed her with wool, which I think is a billion times nicer than poly-fill.  That occasioned an extra day of test-washing and drying, and so it is machine-washable & dryable.  It was a little harrowing, because what if she fell apart?  On the other hand, who wants to be the dick who sends a surface-wash-by-hand-only softie to a child that lives in NYC?  I do not.

So, lots of sewing, but no homemade granola bars in our pantry.  Sad, but everyone seems to have survived.

treading national poetry's water

 

God, Jesus, I can not even keep up with Alex and his National Poetries.  It is funny to me that the other day he wrote about Anne Sexton, though, because I was thinking about Anne Sexton about three hours before I read it.  I was wondering if I should this year highlight a poet whose work I can not abide.  Sexton is right up there with old Syl Plath for me, with the bellyaching.  Get on with it, girls!  

Then, I was thinking about Creeley again, the glory of his coy confession.  Or, you know, O'Hara, who rattled off every confession that went through his mind, but had fun with it.  But the blah, blah, blah of those women.  Oh, especially of Plath.  I mean, ok, a stake in your dad's fat heart, sure, and then you married Ted Hughes.  Whoops.  Also, zzZzzzZzzzz.  Plath does turn these crystalline phrases sometimes, but her whining gets in my way. 

I like Sexton just fine, in small measure, her images are lovely, she is technically a marvel, but then she goes on and on; it is like too much on the cake.  I just wish I could scrape off her frosting roses.

Bernadette Mayer + Ntozake Shange are pretty much the queens of Satin Jacket Switchblade Confessions.

I have been sewing.  A lot.  Those tea towels at the top are for the spring auction.  Details later, when some things get where they are going.  Now, two poems by the aforementioned rumblers.  Two!

First turn to me ...
Bernadette Mayer
from A Bernadette Mayer Reader.

First turn to me after a shower,
you come inside me sideways as always

in the morning you ask me to be on top of you,
then we take a nap, we’re late for school

you arrive at night inspired and drunk,
there is no reason for our clothes

we take a bath and lie down facing each other,
then later we turn over, finally you come

we face each other and talk about childhood
as soon as I touch your penis I wind up coming

you stop by in the morning to say hello
we sit on the bed indian fashion not touching

in the middle of the night you come home
from a nightclub, we don’t get past the bureau

next day it’s the table, and after that the chair
because I want so much to sit you down & suck your cock

you ask we to hold your wrists, but then when I
touch your neck with both my hands you come

it’s early morning and you decide to very quietly
come on my knee because of the children

you’ve been away at school for centuries, your girlfriend
has left you, you come four times before morning

you tell me you masturbated in the hotel before you came by
I don’t believe it, I serve the lentil soup naked

I massage your feet to seduce you, you are reluctant,
my feet wind up at your neck and ankles

you try not to come too quickly
also, you don't want to have a baby

I stand up from the bath, you say turn around
and kiss the backs of my legs and my ass

you suck my cunt for a thousand years, you are weary
at last I remember my father’s anger and I come

you have no patience and come right away
I get revenge and won’t let you sleep all night

we make out for so long we can’t remember how
we wound up hitting our heads against the wall

I lie on my stomach, you put one hand under me
and one hand over me and that way can love me

you appear without notice and with flowers
I fall for it and we become missionaries

you say you can only fuck me up the ass when you are drunk
so we try it sober in a room at the farm

 we lie together one night, exhausted couplets
and don’t make love. does this mean we’ve had enough?

watching t.v. we wonder if each other wants to
interrupt the plot; later I beg you to read to me

like the Chinese we count 81 thrusts
then 9 more out loud till we both come

I come three times before you do
and then it seems you’re mad and never will

it’s only fair for a woman to come more
think of all the times they didn’t care

with no immediate cause
Ntozake Shange
from Nappy Edges

every 3 minutes a woman is beaten
every five minutes a
woman is raped/every ten minutes
a lil girl is molested
yet i rode the subway today
i sat next to an old man who
may have beaten his old wife
3 minutes ago or 3 days/30 years ago
he might have sodomized his
daughter but i sat there
cuz the young men on the train
might beat some young women
later in the day or tomorrow
i might not shut my door fast
every 3 minutes it happens
some woman's innocence
rushes to her cheeks/pours from her mouth
like the betsy wetsy dolls have been torn
apart/their mouths
menses red & split/every
three minutes a shoulder
is jammed through plaster and the oven door/
chairs push thru the rib cage/hot water or
boiling sperm decorate her body
i rode the subway today
& bought a paper from a
man who might
have held his old lady onto
a hot pressing iron/i don't know
maybe he catches lil girls in the
park & rips open their behinds
with steel rods/i can't decide
what he might have done i only
know every 3 minutes
every 5 minutes every 10 minutes/so
i bought the paper
looking for the announcement
the discovery/of the dismembered
woman's body/the
victims have not all been
identified/today they are
naked and dead/refuse to
testify/one girl out of 10's not
coherent/i took the coffee
& spit it up/i found an
announcement/not the woman's
bloated body in the river/floating
not the child bleeding in the
59th street corridor/not the baby
broken on the floor/
there is some concern
that alleged battered women
might start to murder their
husbands & lovers with no
immediate cause"

i spit up i vomit i am screaming
we all have immediate cause
every 3 minutes
every 5 minutes
every 10 minutes
every day
women's bodies are found
in alleys & bedrooms/at the top of the stairs
before i ride the subway/buy a paper/drink
coffee/i must know/
have you hurt a woman today
did you beat a woman today
throw a child across a room
are the lil girl's panties
in yr pocket

did you hurt a woman today
i have to ask these obscene questions
the authorities require me to
establish
immediate cause
every three minutes
every five minutes
every ten minutes
every day.

good fences, bob frost

The weather is so nice, sunny & clear, not at all too-warm, which is usually perfect for going around in the garden, but I am inside, starting my engines on a few projects, which is its own fun. 

 

My neighbors are having such bad behavior, which is another reason I am gloried to be inside with the making.  I try to avoid all of this behavior by curtailing my sidewalk-gardening chores to the hours between 10 and noon, but still I might wind up passively harangued into chat by the tenured professor who lives down the street & keeps bankers hours.

Last week, or maybe two weeks ago, he sallied by on his morning constitutional and told me he is moving.  Apparently, his wife has been cheating on him with the pastor of her church.  I know.  Also, that he found this out -- well, he suspected something was up, but "trusted her" (his words) -- when the grad student that lives next door to them mentioned something (zogma!  What kind of balls does that even take?  I have to take a garden transplant down to Ben the Ph.D candidate and investigate him now!).  Subsequent to the neighbor telling him his wife was a whore, two people from her congregation phoned to break the news to him.  Good thing, too, because the next person on the horn was the freaking guy from the Diocese who handles these matters.  Seriously?

So, anyhow.  Later, I told Mari, and he was just like, "Why did he tell you?"  Um, because he is moving and she is taking the dude into their home and wouldn't you tell everyone?  More to the point, would you not -- here in the lawless East -- make me the very first person you told?  "Be good," is all my husband had to say about that.  I know. 

As Frost also said in "Mending Wall," Spring is the mischief in me, and maybe so in everyone.  I just confessed to the Israeli my weariness in my own habit of slyly goading people into fault.  We were catching up and I was about to tell him a mostly-amusing anecdote culled from real-life interaction, but then settled for, "You know, you've seen this a million times:  someone I don't care for is bleeding and I suggest quietly to them that something cool is in the water, and then say nothing more about it, but am deeply satisfied when they jump in."

"Right," he said, for he has known me for many, many years.  "And then they find out that the something cool is hungry sharks?"  Yes, kind of like that.  I did that again the other day, with a different neighbor.  I mean, on the one hand I am weary of my own petulance and impertinence, but on the other, whatever.  

The first line of this poem always reminds me of one of Creeley's:  Nothing says anything/ except that which it wishes/ would come true.  I can never articulate why, but I think it is a function of the letting instead of the making.  Important!

Mending Wall
Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

memphis sky

It was really sunny out today, a gorgeous day, and the children were so happy to be sent outside to play without feeling sad about it.  All those days where it was feels-like-8-degrees?  Outside to play with them.  I have to teach these lessons about the weather when we have it available.  Only one day they were kind of bummed out, because they wanted to be inside doing other things.  Evidently a neighbor asked why they did not just go inside and Fille said, "Femme says if we don't play outside every day, we will grow up to be weaklings." 

Well, it is true. 

I was just talking the other day (on AND on) about 80s music, and then today (as was inevitable) "Pride (In the Name of Love)" came on the radio and I was trying to think of one single 21stc band that could pull off a bold, anthemic, international feat like that and I came up emptyhanded.  In fact, I was left with a little bit of a headache, as if my mind had been struck blind by the sun.

 

This is Pointy Kitty.  I started work on her last Tuesday, in the afternoon, while noodling around minding my business.  The children are taking a private sewing lesson at the kids' sewing-class place in the next town in a couple of weeks and I was advance-working Pointy Kitty to see if she was appropriate for a first project.  (She is not.)

I was assembling her & poking along at my own pokey pace  -- sewing again has forced me to admit that I am not just a slow knitter, but a slow crafter -- and then the mechanic called to say our car, she was ready, and we all went in the ZipCar Prius to get our car .  It was on the way home from the mechanic that Mr Jerky drove into me. 

Anyhow, the one thing that bothers me so much from the bicycle crash is that demarcation, that Before and After.  I am still very stamped by What I Was Doing Before the Crash.  I remember exactly:  I made a batch of granola; I defied a Jehovah's Witness; I wrote a letter to my friend Charlie for her birthday, a letter to the Israeli, and a letter to Flora, my friend's 9yo daughter.  I took the granola from the oven, gathered my things, and set out for the farmers' market to pick up our CSA share.  When I came home, I was going to set about dealing with the 20-odd pounds of fruit in our house.

Obviously, that never happened.  I cannot recall whatever did happen to the fruit.  Looking back on it now, the whole experience last summer was about me thinking of how I do not need to be the ringmaster for the whole house.  That not only did the fruit never get dealt with (or maybe it did), but that I can not remember.  And really, that no one cares.  It would be accurate to say that later, when the work of just healing up was done, I looked back on this and was a little bit depressed by the not-mattering of it all.  It does matter, obviously, and it would have been senseless for me to think & persist & attend the road I could not be on when I was not able to be on it, but still.  There are things that were important that I was doing and I had to suspend them and that was over 6 months ago.  In the meantime, I watched an episode of that Hoarders show on the internet and I almost went batshit crazy because obviously not having completely dealt with the appropriate liquidation of your yarn stash means that you are but one step away from having a colony of something living beneath your carpet in its larval state!

(I am completely deranged.)

Also, I can not really remember what I did after the crash.  It is kind of a series of wavy lines in my mind, but I guess I did all the normal stuff, but I was slower and it was harder?  Or something?  I do not know.  There is a lostness about that time that I did not really even realize until I was thinking about 2009 in a year-end review and it was depressing, to feel so cut-off from whatever it was I was doing or had planned to do.  Or to admit that I had done nothing!  That I was broken means nothing in indolence's defense; I am from the midwest.  So, it is all troubling.  But, behind me and also has yielded a greater benefit in a wider sense and anyhow, so that. 

The point is, when I finally extricated myself from all the roadside car-crash bullshit, I came home determined to finish Pointy Kitty.  Because I could finish, not like last time, where I can not even remember what past the lying on the kitchen floor crying my eyes out.  It just seemed terrifically important to finish what I had planned for the day.  Even though, obviously, nothing matters.  It was a little grim, and then when I was finished with the machine sewing, I set her aside.

I have spent a lot of time on the yoga mat since last Tuesday.  A lot of time.    Because on the one hand, ok, nothing matters, but on the other hand, I mean, it is not supposed to matter.  I mean, I do not get to be in charge of it.  I had the right attitude after I crashed my bike, I think (I can not remember!), but now I am stuck in a torturous loop of bike-crash PTSD + existential grappling.  Plus, the psychic reverberations of the Snow Queen thing, which is one year old just about now, and ugh.  So, I am not in a rush, it is good to have Pointy Kitty's hand-finishing to come back to for sitting quietly & doing crafts.  Like in an asylum! 

new category

I want to document this dress project, such as I am able and willing, so as not to have it carrying over to 2010. 

 

Fille, my sweet girl, has a hard time finding dresses, really.  She is tall and quite slender, does not like frills, does not care for pastel colors, wants simple, clean lines without any frippery or patterning.  She and her brother dress very similarly day-to-day with the collective effect of a great blow against heteronormativity.  I have little to do with this, but it pleases me all the same.

At any rate, it is difficult to find a dress to fit her, with her aesthetic requirements coupled with mine of hem length and the fact that she likes her dresses to be sleeveless, even in winter.  Last year, she was shorter and we were lucky -- Boden made a velvet party dress that was modest, sleeveless, and came in a minky-brown color.  This year, we were not so lucky, and it occurred to me, paging through catalog after catalog, that I could make her dress myself.

As soon as I thought this, it was the stupidest idea I ever came up with.  But ... it was early November and I had plenty of time to do a little bit every day, and it should be fine.  I would counsel anyone who asked me about the best circumstances under which to stage a sewing comeback thusly:

• not on a deadline
• not for an event
• not during the holidays
• not on a dress-up dress
• not for a pattern which must be abridged on the fly, using two-decades-rusty skills

Ok.  So, that.  I would counsel anyone against all of that since that is what I did and it was a tiny bit more dramatic than I wanted my sewing comeback to be.  Also, the constant threat hanging over my head of unpredictable equipment malfunction.  The good news is, of course, that I have still got it.  Like riding a bike. 

I picked out a simple pattern for a sleeveless, plain-front bodice dress with a gathered skirt and buttons up the back.  Burda 9755, here.  I would like to take a moment to say, gathering.  Ugh.  I wanted the dress to have a lining, because it is so much more elegant and less-homemade-looking to have a lined dress than not and also it would drape better and plus, given all the deadline, etc, hijinks I was facing and the not loving my machine, I would not have to work so hard at finishing the inside edges. 

Also, I hate interfacing.  But that is another story.

Anyhow.  How it works to line a dress is overall like so:  Cut out two of everything, assemble + construct the skirts separately, leaving the bodices till the end.  Assemble the bodices, pin-basting everything, and sew the side seams only.  Attach each skirt to each bodice.  At some point you are going to have to start to put the two bodices together, but that really is going to depend on what is happening, dress-wise, fastener-wise, etc, overall.  I started putting the lining bodice together with the dress bodice at the point at which I was sewing the facings. 

 

In the end, when the pieces start going together, it is like a confuse-o-gram of  spatial relations and I just had to believe.  The dresses go together right sides together, sewing on the lining's wrong side.  The one thing I did absolutely right (very accidentally, but it was so so so good) is that I had a textured fabric for the dress shell, so there was a Right Side and a Wrong Side to orient me absolutely.

Anyhow, then once they are assembled and also put-together at the bodice, you pull the lining through the dress so that the two pieces are right sides out, with the wrong sides facing each other.  All of the inside selvages are inside the dress, and it looks really finished, which I think is totally important and makes the difference between handmade and homemade.  Then, you machine-sew the shell's shoulder seams together and then you hand-sew the lining's shoulder seams together and also stitch the lining to the shell (because the two are not machine-stitched to the edges).  I used a catch-stitch for that work, and it was not my best work, as it is midnight-dark at 4:45 & I took this to a cafe to finish.   

I spent a lot of time at Ballet Town's Fabric Store during construction, pin-basting this & fooling around with it.  I am there in Ballet Town for a few hours each week, killing time, and the Store's Surfaces are all at the right height, plus also the sewing could happen in the presence of someone who would know what to do if the machine went sideways, which it did never.  So, instead of my 45-year-old Style-Mate I was able to use the store's machine, a Bernina Quilt-O-Matica or whatever.  It was nice. 

I do not know if it was $5 zillion of nice, but it was nice, certainly quiet.  I described it to Mari as being like the difference between driving our old sporty Acura Legend coupe and driving an old-school Cadillac sedan.  They are both fine & fun, but personally, I prefer to hear my car driving and feel the ground all rackety, vroom, and in the end you still get where you are going in either machine, so anyhow.

Ms Fabric could not believe that I would undertake an endeavor without a pattern's instructions.  I would get confounded by the sidiness of the lining & get a little wrinkle in my forehead and she would good-naturedly say, "I can't see why you would do this without instructions!"  I could not believe I would be expected to make something that was not exactly what I wanted. 

 Further, if I am making something, is the point not to make it exactly how I want it?  It does take more time, to figure out & use references and make sure, but in the end I think we were all happy, and really, WTF am I spending days & nights making something for, if not for us all to be happy?  What, so we can be OK about mediocrity?  Whatever.  zzZzZzzz.  I mean, I could have just written a check to secure a dress we did not hate.

 

There is more to this, something that occurred to me, lying in the bed on the morning of the Dress-Wearing Event, which is that I rarely follow patterns or recipes or anything to the letter.  That I am constantly abridging and amending and re-crafting.  In fact, many times do not need all the letters to fill in the gaps and produce the project.  What occurred to me was that Ms Fabric's surprise at my renegade willingness was not odd, that it was my readiness to blaze the trail.  But, anyhow.  That, also, is a reflection for another time.

In the darkest hours of the dress (all of which were at the beginning, for I despise pattern pinning & cutting), when the question Why am I doing this was the loudest in my head, I would hold fast to the answer -- Because there is no other way.

(That is not entirely true.  I could have dropped it off at any seamstress's to finish, but whatever, by the point I remembered that.)   

I was happy about the happiest accident, which could have been devastating.  When the time came to put the buttons & buttonholes on the dress, which I was saving for last -- it was funny, I was telling Ms Fabric about how I had to cut the square pieces and pin + seam ripper, etc, and she was laughing a little when she gently explained to me that in the 21st century, machines make the buttonholes automatically.  We live in the future!

(Ms Fabric also told me I should machine hem, which, hullo?  Puckering?  No.  So I did handsew the hem, as God intended, and it was fine.  It took less than an hour.) 

Anyhow, I was going to make them, last, and realized that because I had added the lining, the dress was smaller than the pattern wanted it to be (which is good, because looking at the model in the dress on the pattern photo, I was not looking forward to adjusting such an ill-fitting garment), and I only had room for an overlap fastener.  I used snaps, because I was dizzy from dress fumes by the end, but if I had had more time to set everything aside between stages, like I like to produce, I would have realized I should have used hooks and eyes.  But, I felt like it draped better & more elegantly without the bulk of buttons. 

 

In the end, it was pretty easy, I guess.  If it were not for my sub-par hand-finishing on the shoulder seams, the non-buttoned dress would in fact be reversible, which is cooler in theory than it really is.  I did not actually set out to make a reversible dress, ha. 

When I had finally ironed it to the end and we were looking at it here, hanging on the playroom wall -- I think when she is not wearing it, we shall have it hanging in the playroom, so we can all admire my workmanship -- Mari said, "Those people on that Heidi Klum show make, like, five of those every day." 

Do you give your husband the finger a lot in your house?  Any time he goes too far?  Sit right next to me.