Editing continued

O.K. I think it is fair to tell you I am on a bit of a theme here. 

A couple of things happened. 

First of all I turned 55 last month and, yes, this month was asked twice at stores if I wanted the senior's discount. A reporter friend of mine was asked the same thing when he was 45 so I shouldn't take this personally, and of course I will take any discount going. 

But it made me think. 

I am not bothered about aging but I have a lot I want to get done, and suddenly I can see the time will be running out on the meter one day and that I should be making choices on where I am going to direct my time. This goal, not that one.

Secondly, I listened to an episode of This American Life about a woman whose job it is to go into people's houses if they die unexpectedly (no this is not as gloomy as it sounds bear with me, it was actually quite a funny episode in places) to find evidence of next-of-kin. The shocking thing about this was that in that process she uncovered so many attempts of things that were abandoned. This horrified me. I imagined my children trying to find anything around here and seeing all the evidence of my creative disillusions. Vintage patterns bought online to be used once I had taught myself how to grade, miles of horsehair interfacing for when I was going to tailor men's suits, bound button hole gadgets, Christmas ornament patterns ... I can hear them now "What was she thinking? When did Mom think she was actually going to get the time to do all of this?" Do I want people to remember me as a planner but not a finisher? One of those women who stands in jeans, sweats and runners and wrestles you for the Designer Pattern at the Vogue sale? Someone who really didn't know herself and her own life all that well?

Thirdly with all my marking I have had a reason to think a lot about how important editing is, something all writers know anyway. I am also reading Steven King's excellent book on writing which says the same thing.

What have I been writing on my papers? Apart from "No caps nec."?

1. Cut, these words are not necessary.

2. Break this one sentence down into two or three simple clear sentences.

3. Vague. Where are you going with this?

4. Needs focus.

Fourthly I have been thinking about the current SWAP competition on SG where the challenge is to make a capsule wardrobe of clothes that you would actually wear in an typical week in your life.

Imagine! How crazy is that? To sew clothes that you would actually really wear!

This has been a hard concept for me to get my head around but in combination with items 1-3 sort of boiled up in my pre-Christmas brain into a whole lot of thoughts and various activities, many of which I am going to document here.

The first thing was the Big Throw Out. (Caps. nec.)

A few nights ago in an anything-but-marking mood I stayed up and started throwing things out of the three closets I have taken over. Four garbage bags later for the Diabetes Society this is what went:

1. All skirts that were not in my basic colours of black, grey and navy. Anything lighter makes me look fat, anything else will require me to make tops that won't go with anything else but the said skirt.

2. All skirts that are patterned and loose. Some of these are in lovely fabrics, silks etc. but I have a straight up and down body and longer loose flared, draped skirts are counter my shape. Also since I have never adjusted to the idea of a coat that is shorter than a skirt, even if it seems to be fashionable, this meant that I needed to sew a slightly longer coat to wear over them in spring and summer. Let me see, a lined light wool coat (47 possible patterns collected) so I could wear skirts that didn't suit me. Out.

3. Suits and suit jackets. Lots of them from my recent corporate life. Good fabrics, good clothes. Problem is that I can't wear these things to teach in. I suppose it would do my students good to see me all super professional but these are not comfortable for my life which involves walking through the woods to work (often within feet of deer it is really lovely, beats the pavement) and running around a classroom talking to kids, sitting in groups, sitting on desks, drawing on boards etc. Also if for some crazy reason I ever go back to the business world by then these things will be just out-of-date enough to be aging. I have also realized that my large number of "investment" pieces really are the kind of classic that despite good fabric and decent construction, actually manage to navigate that place where they are not ever quite out of fashion, but not quite ever in it either.

4. Anything that doesn't quite fit or isn't comfortable. Some of these things hurt to throw out because I made them.

5. Synthetics. The hot flashes have put those in my permanent past.

It was tough and I admit to a moment in the middle of the night when I stood beside the clothing donations bin and wanted to climb in after my stuff and pull a few things out and I actually finally now have a real "Capsule Wardrobe" because there is not much left. And what is left is going to have to work a lot harder.

But I do feel clearer.

Catch up

Late yesterday I posted the last of my semester marks. Very happy to have that done and a little time to breath before the holidays.

What do I have to share after marking all those term papers and exams?

First when did they start teaching in school that capitalizing a word made it important? As in "The most Important thing to remember about this Issue is the Ethical consequinces (not my misspelling) of the practitioner's Actions." I wrote "Caps not nec." so many times my hand got cramped.

I am also struck by the cultural advantages some kids just have that puts them at an advantage over other students quite out of proportion to talent. Some students come from an educational background or region that just equips them to slip into university life, some have such a longer way to go to adjust from the style and communication of their communities before they can figure this out.

That goes two ways though. There are the privileged kids who have been gaming the system their whole lives (one conversation from a mother who works in the profession "he always has had a habit of doing his papers but forgetting to hand them in", yeah right) and the kids, who I admit, are dear to my heart, who don't do well at all their first assignments, often in this part of the world from small fishing villages, who nevertheless come to my office and say "OK tell me what I have to do to be better at this" and keep coming back at me, cheerful and determined, until they start to get it. That attitude is worth so much more than any GPA, that ability to take advice as an opportunity to learn not a criticism.

Versus the girl who came to my office and said to me "I don't think you understand, this paper is a C. I am an A."

Actually you might not be right about that kiddo, at least not today.

I am not one of those middle aged people who would ever talk about the problems of kids today however. Let me tell you they are marvelous. I wouldn't have given up the adult world to come here if they weren't. Underneath the style, they are just like we were, only now still open and vulnerable and funny and honest and real in a way that makes you want to just say "don't lose this" because so many of us do.

If you are making the adult, corporate Christmas party cocktail party rounds these days you know just what I mean. Did any one ever plan to grow up and become one of those women who makes sure every sentence lets you know how many accomplishments she has, "Funny you should say that I actually wrote a book about that"?

Of course some people retain what my students have. I had lunch yesterday with a chemistry teacher who got teary talking about how she feels when she imagines her students finally walking across the stage at graduation.

It's so important to make sure you spend your time doing the things that are worth getting teary about and not doing things just for external audiences. It's important to not get so task driven that you forget to play.

Which is what sewing is to me, and more on that later.

I am back, kind of

I have felt terrible about my blogging lapse but I have been a prisoner in a place called end of term marking land. 113 term papers and 93 exams and 37 assignments. It just wouldn't stop and there is more to do this week. I swear those papers were reproducing at the bottom of the pile. I found out last week that other faculty with my course load have at least two markers and I am going to have to do that next term, I have always resisted because I don't trust anyone else with my first years and I want them to get lots of good feedback. But this has been crazy.

I have however written many posts to you all in my head, read sewing magazines every night in the bath and planned about a hundred new projects. Does that count?

My hope is that I will be released from marking land in two more days if I work really hard, and then it's back to blogging and my sewing life.

In the meantime I am posting a picture of my mom, of the Mom's skirts, because I think she looks pretty great for 81 (I have more grey hair than she does) and my wonderful daughter at her wedding in September, and me, wearing polka dot dress because my daughter insisted that I was not to look mother of the bride but to dress like I am, which to my kids is Babs. Once a 1953 baby always a 1953 baby.

Off to bed now for a rest. More marking tomorrow.

I hate home dec

Just because you sew does not mean you like to sew everything. 

Let's make that clear.

I love fashion sewing and spend most of my free time thinking about it, even when I can't get at my machine. I like the project nature of sewing clothes, all the variety of jobs contained in one garment, and of course I just like clothes. And because fashion changes, there is always something new and interesting to think about, and sew. Which is why I have never been able to restrict myself totally to the idea of core patterns and why my pattern collection is so delusionally huge.

The have-to-sew stuff is what I avoid. I have not made slipcovers for my living room furniture, although that would be a very good idea and the bought ones I have on the couch don't fit, and despite the fact I have the fabric, patterns and tons of how-to books. It all seems so tedious and to me represents the kind of non-gratifying sewing that would cut into my precious sewing time in a big way.

To me this stuff is production sewing in its worst sense, all about product and not about process - and I love process.

Curtains are even worse. I hate the large pieces and the fact you lose any sense of where you are, where the edges are, and mistakes when you make them tend to be large and obvious, like curtains that are 4 inches shorter than a the window.

But I have to do it. My husband is big on destruction, of walls that is, and I now have a larger bedroom with three, rather than one window. With Christmas coming and people coming home I should do the right thing and get some really simple curtains up. I have gorgeous fabric and have invented a really simple way of doing the casing involving blanket binding so there is no real excuse.

And the upside of making curtains is that I won't be sewing slipcovers.

Since I have promised myself no more big garment projects until Christmas is organized (and I feel that I am almost ready for Christmas 1982 this year) the only other way to postpone this is to get to work on my second most disliked job, alterations, which now is looking actually quite attractive since I hate home dec sewing so much. I figure that I have about ten items in my closet that if they were tweaked a bit could return to action.

This week's projects for sure.

The mom skirts done

My mom's skirts are now done and wrapped, soon to get packed off with other things for family and entrusted to Canada Post. Sewing for people at a distance can be tricky and waistbands, even those in elastic, are the most difficult. This is a problem I am sure for grandmothers who sew for children in other places. 

So for these skirts I decided to use the elastic with buttonholes in it, something I have not done before. This elastic is actually quite expensive and since I have acquired rolls of elastic at various discount places over the years (does anyone but me have tons of notions stashed away that they had totally forgotten they had, where they got it, or even what project it was for?) I decided to piece it. Pretty simple and it is nice to know that she can make these skirts fit. If I did this again, and I probably will, the one change I might make is to wait until I had threaded the elastic through the casing to add the button. It wasn't a problem but I think I was lucky and another time the button might get stuck crossing a seam. And of course I left a small gap in the waistband casing stitching so my mom can get at the elastic to adjust it.

Oh and I put a small piece of woven interfacing under the button on the wrong side for reinforcement.

I also like the fact that I could go in and straighten the elastic once it was in. I must have some weird perceptual problem because 99% of the time when I insert elastic into a casing and stitch it together I have a twist in the elastic and have to cut it, turn it and restitch and usually I make the same mistake again.

Sewing companions

I don't sew alone. Here is a picture of Mr. Rascal (muddy nose from a wild time sticking his head into bushes on his walk) showing just how fascinating he thinks sewing is.

It's nice to have company, even bored company. 

I have also recently added some audio to my sewing, something that I am sure everyone in the world but me already knows about, and that is the free radio broadcasts that you can play on your computer while you sew from This American Life

These shows are totally perfect for sewing accompaniment. Quirky and not too serious and crazy topics (while I was doing my mom's skirts I listened to one about people who lived alone, and about breakup music ) but really just interesting enough to keep you company while you sew, but not so serious that you would put down your sewing to listen.

My children are familiar with a film genre that I also call "Sewing movies". Sewing movies are movies that you can have on that you can be watching but also quite comfortably leave the room to go and iron something, or to go down to the basement to find more interfacing, but when you come back - you haven't missed anything. 

Gig Young is featured in many of the best vintage sewing movies, Sandra Bullock is pretty reliable too.

Another busy week but Mom's skirts nearly done

I think I said a while back that I was making my 81 year old mother some skirts for Christmas, because fashion and fit for seniors really is hard to come by and my mom gets around and needs clothes for her many church activities, teaching Sunday school, tutoring reading at my niece's elementary school, taking care of my young nieces and nephew, doing the swimming competition rounds, and all the other crazy things she does like pick up a friend every Saturday morning and go to an equally crazy hairdresser who sets both their hair at 6:30 a.m. My mother claims this is the only time the three of them can fit this in.

So my mom needs to look nice. 

I knew she would want elastic waist skirts in neutral colours, so I made her a black and grey one and one in purple too because apparently when you are 81 purple is a neutral. I used a simple four gore pattern that I thought would appeal to her, Simplicity 4044 and used a washable rayon/poly crepe. 

After much consideration I decided that I needed to hem these skirts with a machine blind hem. With my mother's running around with winter boots to go on and off and knees that don't always bend I was concerned that she would tear out a hand stitched hem and I didn't want her to have to worry about that. A plain old straight stitched hem I decided would look tacky with the crepe, I mean these skirts are for my mom, and I knew that a well-stitched blind hem would both be invisible and also strong, and even if she caught it the lock stitch would keep it from unraveling.

The problem with this of course is that machine blind hems are usually a disappointment. How many of us have had those terrible old sewing machine dealers tell us "Dear this machine does a blind hem you won't ever have to do one by hand again." Yeah right. These guys have never seen a decent hand stitched hem.

But committed to new adventures I tried again and I have to say that it worked. This is what I did and this is what I learned:

1. For those of you who have never used a blind hem attachment there is an excellent video on YouTube on How to sew a blind hem that is very helpful. Basically the process is to press up the hem, pin it and fold the hem allowance back onto the right side of the skirt so the raw edge of the hem allowance is single layer next to the folded hem allowance (OK this is totally confusing you had better have a look at that video). The usual method is to pin the hem allowance up, this is in fact what they do in the video. I didn't do that but instead machine basted the hem allowance 1/4" from the finished edge with a very long stitch - the 9 mm. on my machine. I found this much easier to butt my blind edge foot against than just a fold held together with pins. I used a contrasting thread so it was easy to take out afterwards. I found the simple act of machine basting gave me a better edge and vastly improved the quality of my blind hem.

2. I lengthened my stitch length in my blind hem stitch to the max (6 mm.) and used a fairly wide zig zag 4.5 m,.

3. OK this is the trick has nothing to do with skill but with the conditions. I found that by using a nubby fabric like a crepe, and just as important one with spongy body and depth, that the stitches just disappeared in a way that was just not possible in the flatter, smoother wovens I have tried this on before.

I am posting some pictures here of the hem that resulted from the outside and the stitches on the inside once the hem had been smoothed down and pressed. Really you can see almost nothing of the stitches on the right side at all, and we all know I am not a very careful sewer.

So what have I learned?

Well something pretty obvious that is true of all other sewing - the fabric you choose makes all the difference. So from now on rather than deciding a particular technique, or in this case an accessory foot, doesn't work for me, I will try it in another context and another type of fabric before I make that judgement