On hibernation and life

It is deep winter here in Nova Scotia.

Icy and cold outside. Daisy walks with boots on and a down coat.

This season, which is one of great therapeutic value in many ways (Canadians tell themselves things like this a lot), has made me think of how wise nature is. 

The smart ones fly away like the Monarch butterflies who go 20,000 miles to Mexico and back, or like the V shaped flocks we see going away every fall and coming back every spring.

But lately I have been thinking of the hibernators, the bears, skunks, bees, and bats who eat up, hole up, and snuggle up till it is reasonable to come out.

For this human hibernation has been a whole lot of sewing.

This year we put off our annual trip south to be able to spend more time with my daughter. But next week we are going to be leaving to go down to Texas to visit one son in Austin, and from there a flight to Berkeley to visit the other son, my daughter-in-law, and new granddaughter. I admit to you I am feeling anxious about leaving my daughter who has a a few new challenges lately, but she has promised to be truthful about how she is feeling when I am away. And planes have been invented right? And I really need to spend some time with my other kids.

On the way home we will be stopping in Tulsa where I will be teaching at the Vintage Sewing Adventure. I have corresponded with the organizers a lot and really like them so decided this was something I wanted to do. Plus the conference will have an association with the Sewing Machine Museum and I really want to see that a lot.

Now those of you who know me know I am not exactly a vintage styled dresser. The style thing which I love, but not compatible with my current life.

BTW anyone else watching Mrs. Maisel on Prime? 

The clothes alone are worth it. Although I have to say that it is not entirely believable. Why would Joel at any time not want to work in his dad's garment district factory? This part makes no sense. I love the shots of the bolts of fabric and the machines. He has a chance to work in the garment district in its heyday. I wish when I talk to the screen that he could hear me.

Back on topic.

So even though I am not a vintage dresser I have become recently very interested in something I am calling Heritage Sewing. To me this is the technical side of garment construction that utilizes methods and thinking that previous sewing women used.

I have been doing a lot of research on this and this is my big discovery.

There are a lot of really cool techniques that have been lost! 

It has been my big discovery that in the mass production/simplification/commercialization of all aspects of the sewing industry that some intriguing ideas have been sort of been forgotten.

I have decided to do a little work on sharing as much of that as I can.

I think this is important for these reasons:

1. So many of these methods are so effective and easy. Some of these ideas would make modern sewing better and easier. Somethings are meant to be passed down generation to generation. What happens when a few generations stop doing that?

2. Cultural responsibility. This is women's history. I am talking about housewife and home dressing maker sewing here. History is made by who kept the records. That's why so much of boring history is all about politics and men. Those were just the folks who were writing it down.

I want to acknowledge the work and creativity of those who were unrecorded - specifically women who worked alone in their homes and made wonderful things with their hands for themselves and those they loved.

I want their afternoons remembered and honoured. I want their work and thinking to be passed on in some way in this relay of life.

Does that make sense?

So I decided to go to Tulsa and teach a session on vintage sewing machine attachments as a starting place in this.

Here's why.

So many of these crazy, bizarre looking attachments do an amazing job of completely aceing some of sewing's more tricky jobs. 

A few of these attachments of their modern pseudo versions I have used, some like modern binders and narrow hemmers, but I have to tell you the vintage attachments just work so, so much better. As in hands off, relax and watch it work better. 

No struggle.

Now one of my sons and I were talking about this. He works in the tech industry in San Francisco and understands the theme of our time - that all things technical are just advancing and advancing. That this year's model is better than last years.

I get this. 

I am not a nostalgia type, good old days person of the sake of needing to just slow it all down. I am not a collector or a period dresser, that is something I respect but just not me.

But I know a good brain when I see its fruits in action. 

And I have been seeing some really smart engineering and thinking in evidence as I have watched some of these old 50-60 year old attachments (which BTW with and adapter foot will fit on and work on modern machines) manipulate fabric and place it exquisitely, effectively under the needle.

This has been a light bulb moment.

What about the concept of lost technology?

What if a better way to do some things had been developed and then forgotten?

What about that?

So this is what I am going to do.

Right now I have been making my samples up for Tulsa and putting together class notes. 

I have decided to turn these notes into a little how-to booklet that I will share after I have done the workshop.

Do you think anyone would be interested in something like that?

Tomorrow I am going to do a long post on blogging and what I am wondering about that.

In the meantime here are some shots of my vintage attachment using samples:

More later.

Just when you thought you had seen everything: zipper pocket tutorial

I see C&T has just put up a little video I made in San Francisco on a zipper pocket.

For all those sewers/sewists out there who could use some entertainment tonight, live, sort of, and as will soon be evident, completely unscripted:

What I thought when I made ties and why I wrote a book

Tomorrow my book is released (see above, for sale on Amazon, you can click the link, and a variety of retailers). Family has been asking me how I feel about this.

To tell you the truth I didn't write this book with tomorrow in mind.

I was thinking about someone who was sewing alone and sitting down with her to talk about sewing.

To explain what I mean I think the process is worth sharing and something you can identify with.

One summer night nearly two years ago I was looking at patterns, indie designers, and some sewing blogs. I just happened to scroll down a list of patterns for sale and then I saw this yellow coat.

It looked to me like an interesting design for a coat but I couldn't help but notice that the melton hem was over pressed but still kind of lumpy. I felt bad for the sewist because I had a pretty good idea of what could be done to fix that hem.

Trimming away bulk would be a good start.

Even more importantly padding that hem with say bias cut flannel would eliminate the way it went out in points here and there - both smooth it out and soften it - so the characteristics of the hem would match the characteristics of the fabric. 

I also knew exactly why the person who had made this coat had not done these things - there were no instructions in the pattern to explain this, or there had been no one around to tell that sewist those little technical tricks that make such a difference.

So that night, alone at my dining room table with Miss Daisy on my lap and a cup of tea on a coaster, I sent off an email to a good publisher that essentially said I want to write a book of all the things your mother would tell you about sewing if she could sew.

I had a mother who could do that, and two grandmothers who were both intensive sewing people themselves. And I have spent an entire life time collecting sewing hints and tricks between these two ears.

At the time I figured well I bet this publisher get lots of emails like this and this one will probably be one of the nutty ones.

And that was that.

About four months later I was in the changing room at the pool with the little girls (trying to keep one from locking herself into a locker and helping the other one find her lost bathing suit since my daughter wants to know how it is possible for us to lose one bathing suit a week) when my phone beeped. I don't usually hang over my phone when I am with the kids but it was the end of the day and at that point I was wondering if my daughter was planning on collecting the kids early.

So I checked my phone.

It turned out that the beep was an email from the publisher C&T saying yes they would like to publish a book.

I was amazed. So I told the girls (turned out the bathing suit was in the locker BTW) and they wanted to know if they would be in it and then we went home.

What followed was nearly a year of writing, of waking up in the middle of the night with random details that I felt I had to make sure to tell readers to save them heartache, and of writing ideas down on index cards I kept in my purse until I lost them.

Somewhere along the way I realized that I wasn't just writing a book about sewing but a book about my life. Some of my hints, or advice, or random ideas were things I had figured out one day 40 years ago and some where things I had learned by teaching younger sewists over the past few years. I wrote stories about my grandmothers, about my mother, about sewing students and sewing machine technicians and so many sewing friends. 

My book became a kind of a road trip of my life with so many of the important characters in that life handing me sewing knowledge as I went by.

So I wrote and wrote and wrote and came terms with the fact that my entire time on this earth had been preoccupied with sewing.

Then I learned about how books are built.

First I thought writing a book was like writing an essay for school and having someone correct it.

Not at all.

For a start there are many different kind of editors, copy and content editors, visual and photographic editors, and even someone who does flow which I have to say is just about the nicest job title I have ever heard of - flow editor. Wouldn't you like to be the person who knew how to do flow?

So next I cut and cut and added and cut and sewed ordinary daytime clothes in bright colours, because I thought who wants to read a book that isn't cheerful looking, even if these were clothes no one but me would wear?

What I ended up with certainly is not the definite book on sewing but it is my book and really the best I could do - all focused on the new or returning sewist I wanted to help.

I started and ended this book with one thought - if some woman alone in front of her sewing machine remembers something I wrote and thinks "why that is so much easier" then I would have done what I had come to do.

What comes next in this process is something I don't know much about, which is do what I can do so folks know this book is there and might be useful to them. To be honest I am not sure entirely how I am going to do that but I am again going to be my best. Getting the book to folks who want to review will be part of that, and I am going to keep an eye on the reviews on Amazon too. Those reviews are important I think, most folks read the reviews, just like I do.

And right now I keep thinking of that yellow coat. It would be so easy to fix that hem.

Which brings me to ties.

When I somewhat recklessly told my son that I would make his company some ties to wear to a trade show I looked at a lot of patterns. 

I even downloaded and bought a few, including the multi folded Osman tie from Burdastyle. I read and tried with care to execute multiple steps. I folded and folded again to the centres, I measured and read about the importance of pressing and then about the importance of not pressing.

I went step-by-step like all sewists do when they are trying something new, just like we all do when we are teaching ourselves to sew by working our way through patterns.

The thing is that those trial ties were not what I wanted.

Frustrated, and of course panicked because I had both a deadline and a promise to a kid on my mind,  I remembered something.

I remembered that I had written a book exactly about this. 

Exactly about the fact that step-by-steps are not enough. About how instructions so often leave out the important stuff.

About how you have to know why you are doing what you are doing before you can do it.

So I went out and bought a few good second hand ties and took them apart and tried to find that place - the what tie making was really about place- before I went into the detail of the how- tos, because after all I have just spent a year and a half of my life writing a book that says if you don't know why you are doing what you are doing you are not going to enjoy the process or do a very good job of it.

So this is what I figured out about ties:

1. A tie is a long piece of fabric cut on the bias so it bends around a neck and can tie smoothly into a knot.

2. To cut a long thing like a tie on the bias on most fabric it needs to be pieced, usually by adding a section in the around the neck part with diagonal seams (to preserve the bias).

3. The ends of the tie are faced with a facing that is about 3-5 inches deep. The top, unstitched end, of this facing is raw because it will be hidden when the tie is wrapped around the interfacing.

4*. This part is starred because this is the really important main idea (so I think now I will bold it too) - the construction of a tie is just about one simple idea - centre a no-seam- allowance tie interfacing piece in the middle of the tie, and using that interfacing as the edges to feel just wrap the tie fabric around the interfacing and, with as near as invisible stitches as you can muster (think I will start my hand sewing series tomorrow,) overlap slightly and stitch in place.

5. Press carefully and hope no one asks you to make them a tie again.

As to patterns I would just suggest you get a second hand tie in the size you like, open it up and selvege the essential interfacing pieces (in good ties this will be bias cut wool) and open the section seams, iron the fabric, and trace out your own pattern on paper (don't use the original fabric because it is after all bias and with handling will become inaccurate).

So that's how I would make a tie and so that's why I wrote a book.

If you read it I really hope that something in it will help you enjoy your sewing more and contribute to the best of all moments of sewing - that bathroom mirror try on when you look at something you make and think - I look great.

If anyone can make a couple of people feel that well then I think writing a book is worth the time.

So that's it.

And tomorrow the first of the hand stitching series starting with the hand stitch you should never use.