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I think every mother knows that one day her time as perfect in her child's eyes will be up.
Every mother, no matter how hard she tries, knows full well that if one of the kids ever goes to therapy as an adult the first thing the shrink is going to say is "tell me about your mother." Whatever goes wrong in the future we all know that the string will be followed back to us.
Daughters in particular have an extremely clear eye about ways in which their mothers can improve. For instance today mine mentioned to me that I was a very intense person and they all know that.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN I AM INTENSE?!
She must have seen me with a seam ripper in my hand at 11:00 pm.
She also says some very nice things to me too, which I like to think are as accurate as the above.
One thing she tells me is that I nurtured their nature, meaning the three of my children are all very different and I noticed this.
Now we both know there is very little difference between sewing and life. One informs the other.
Fabrics are like children.
It seems to me that too often we proceed as if completely different fabrics should behave the same way.
"I never had this trouble with your brother getting him to do his homework."
And of course this approach works about as well for fabrics as it does for kids.
Case in point.
A few weeks ago I made a Rockford Raglan out of some weird but wonderful crinkly grey tissue knit. I was doing some assembly line sewing at the time, under pressure to get some tops made before I went on a little trip. As a result I whacked on a neckband to this fabric just like the neckbands I successfully had put on a few other shirts.
Somewhere in the back of my mind when I did this was a little voice saying "this fabric is super light, are you sure this is a good idea?"
At the time I was not in a slowing down mood so I ignored that voice.
The neckband was of course not very nice. I persuaded myself that the rippling was simply the result of the wrinkles in the fabric and not operator error.
However I wore this top yesterday and that neckline bothered me all day.
So last night I cut it off just before bed.
Below is exactly why this neckband didn't work and evidence that I should have known better. See how all that heavy serging overworked the fabric?
Exhibit A:
Honestly Babs.
I should be ashamed to show you this. I make a lot of sacrifices for the educational value of this blog.
A complication of this surgery was that I was left with a top that was crazy terrible with a wide open neck that would never fit on my chicken neck and shoulders.
Exhibit B:
Remind me to learn how to take a selfie. How are you actually supposed to do it when the phone is in front of you? A learning task for another day apparently.
After this bit of drama I went to bed and couldn't sleep. I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do with this hacked up top now.
When I got up this morning I had an idea.
My idea was to nurture the random floaty fabric of this top with my one remaining remnant and put in a cowl neckline. I figured this would bridge the opening and my neck, and let the fabric sort of be fluffy like it wanted to be.
Here is the result as photographed by my granddaughter this afternoon.
And here is the full view:
A shout out to my photographer. I asked her if she had time to take my picture.
Scarlett said "Babs I am a kid, I always have time."
She did however want me to explain that this messy wrinkled fabric is supposed to look like this. She doesn't want you to think I am a person who doesn't know when something needs to be ironed.
And here she is, a kid who always has time and has heard of ironing:
