More about interfacing and about life's hardest job

O.K.


I have two more Jane shirts cut out, one loud with a white background (I think you saw that fabric on the line) and the other loud with a black background. Sort of my positive and negative shirts.


I am on standby for interfacing though, so I am sewing everything but the collar pieces and facings - they have to wait.


I finally ordered in some interfacing from Pam at Off the Cuff and after a five year self-imposed ban on the stuff, I ordered fusible.


For years like everyone else I used fusibles and they worked just fine. Then, five years ago, I was making a real nice blouse with the same fusible interfacing I always used, and it bubbled.


Bubbled. 


You know the kind of stuff you press and press before you wear it but those bubbles still rise up again to ruin everything. You try to say it is OK but it isn't. I was so traumatized, the same interfacing I always used, and suddenly it bubbles.


I lost my nerve. 


In fact ever since then I have gone back to sew-in that I have even sewn in. However sometimes I wonder if my collars and cuffs look old school, you know sort of uncrisp like this, a bit bumpy around the details:

So I am going to close my eyes and fuse, with the $9.00 reconditioned steam iron I got at Big Lots since my own irons are at home and the mouse who spits in the rental model is getting tired.


I've got a lawn chair set up beside the mailbox and as soon as the interfacing arrives I am ready to go.


On a totally different note, but something I was reminded of when thinking of traumatic events and old pictures, I have bought my husband his birthday present a few weeks early.


I consider buying presents for males one of life's hardest jobs. What they want, which is usually very specific, they buy for themselves. If you ask them what they want from you for a holiday/birthday/etc. they say "I don't need anything." Or even worse they say things like "well you could fix that zipper on my jacket".


Well that's a help. As if you are going to give someone a nothing or a reconditioned jacket.


No wonder there are so many socks under the tree across the nation.


However this year I figure I finally scored. Here it is:

A genuine antique picture of, you guessed it, a fox terrier with the exact same expression that Mr. Rascal has on his face, and come to think of it, my spouse has on his face too.


Now what am I going to get him next year?


Maybe I will make him a shirt with a crisp collar and cuffs.


Maybe.