Question for you

I feel really bad about not posting, but life has been dense.


OK, the update.


I was definitely the only person who wore a bug suit at the event last night. A couple of people even told me that they couldn't believe I made my outfit. I am sure they were being honest.


The high point for me of the whole black tie event though was seeing my students. Some of them were working as servers, some where on the door. I had a moment just while I was leaving when one girl found me in the hall by the coat check and said " Come here give me a hug" and she told me that I had given her confidence to be herself. That meant so much to me. 


Is there anything we can do as adult women that is more important than giving a young girl faith in herself? What a protection that is from what we adult women know really lies ahead.


I want to tell you a story.


I once had an important job. Good salary, great pension, fancy title, etc.


Well then one of my sons graduated from high school and I went to the ceremony. I had one of those moments standing in the auditorium and I looked at the graduating class and I looked at the teachers and I thought, their lives have been worthwhile, their work goes on to the future. And at that moment I knew I should have been a teacher, like my dad who left a good profession and went into the high school classroom.


You know when my dad died we had to put speakers on the outside of the church so all the kids who were standing in the street could hear.


Well the universe noticed and let me be a teacher too,


What matters in life?


There is a lot should have mattered to me that didn't. In the end all that really matters to me is young people and my sewing. And looking at other women who sew and really seeing who they are. Does that matter?


Does it matter that when I see someone's mother, some women in jeans and a hundred obligations. Some woman with a few extra pounds with a to-do list from last week, and so many people asking her to be someone - that I can see a focus on a bound buttonhole, on those pants that finally, after twenty years of trying that really fit, that I can see someone there really trying.


I notice.


That, in my bug suit, is who I am and what I see,


Sewing is the spirit man, sewing is the spirit.

New Look 6051 bug suit

After a very fun sewing day with my local guild in a church basement I was able to produce this version of New Look 6051. It is sort of a poncho thing in bug fabric as part of my some-old-little-black-dress disguise.


No doubt some of you are going to look at this and think "is she crazy enough to be wear that?"and I can only answer, yes I am.


Of course on the night I will wear proper jewelry and deal with the hair somewhat, but for the purposes intended this is fine with me. Question for you though. You can see the grey coming in here. I decided to let my colour go in the hope that it would be good for my fine-thin-disappearing hair, make it thicker maybe or healthier, but is this a good or bad or useless idea?


Next. Back to the sewing:


Technical notes are :


1. No, the pattern did not call for an asymmetrical hem. You can achieve this exact same look in the privacy of your own sewing room by sewing the waistline elastic on crooked. Not that hard to do if you concentrate.


2. The pattern called for two button holes in the front, as waistline casing and a drawstring. I did not do any of this. Reasons- I am not so crazy as to do buttonholes in chiffon. And there is a local to this location policy, to never put details over our stomach.


Also zig-zagging on elastic on the inside was fastest, even faster if you do it crookedly. That's a tip.


So you see I am almost back under control here, and if there is any doubt here is a candid shot of my contractor/husband, entertaining me. And no I did not put his head through the wall. Tempted... Not really.

What a guy, you can see why I married him.