On those arms

On and off on the sewing blogs there has been debate about whether or not Michele Obama should cover up those arms. From style experts on her strong arms have caught people's eyes and attention. All this in a society that is training teenage girls that cleavage falling out of wonder bras is OK in class.

This morning Maureen Dowd in the NYTImes said it best. I hope hers is the last word. Here is what Dowd wrote:


During the campaign, there was talk in the Obama ranks that Michelle should stop wearing sleeveless dresses, because her muscles, combined with her potent personality, made her daunting.

She ignored that talk, thank heavens. I love the designer-to-J. Crew glamour. Combined with her workaday visits to soup kitchens, inner-city schools and meetings with military families, Michelle’s flare is our depression’s answer to Ginger Rogers gliding around in feathers and lamé.

Her arms, and her complete confidence in her skin, are a reminder that Americans can do anything if they put their minds to it. Unlike Hillary, who chafed at the loathed job of first lady, and Laura, who for long stretches disappeared into the helpmeet role, Michelle has soared every day, expanding the job to show us what can be accomplished by a generous spirit, a confident nature and a well-disciplined body.

I also have no doubt she can talk cap-and-trade with ease and panache.

On not insignificant small pleasures

My mother had a cousin she liked but who sometimes embarrassed her. Disabled as an infant by a birth injury he learned to walk only just before he started school and struggled to keep walking his whole life. This she admired.

What made her uncomfortable was that sometimes he was pretty colourful. Let's just say his nickname was Eight Ball and leave it at that. He worked as a store detective and even as a small child I figured out that it was pretty weird that he was supposed to be undercover when anyone could see him coming and never forget him.

The man had a way with words though. One of his favourites I will never forget was "You never know from where you sit when the man in the balcony is going to spit."

This needs no explanation.

Thing is things happen, and the older you get and the more extensive your family, stuff just happens and increasingly I can see that, as a woman of this age, my role is transforming into one of someone who needs to support but often just can't fix it. That's the role I am growing into this weekend. Hope for the best and do what you can do, and keep yourself going so you can do that.

A while ago I was moved by a post on A Corgihouse about a series of events, a death, and some hard times. Seems to me that sometimes things happen that just are not fair, and sometimes lots happens at a time. So what do you do?

I personally believe that big problems are often handled best by holding on to small pleasures. Restoring order when you clean -a shiny bathroom in a messy day, the way an old dog still lifts her nose to catch a new scent in the wind, someone walking carefully across a room so they don't spill the tea they made for you. Making tea for someone else.

I think it is so important we do not underestimate the power of these things, and I find so many of these small and restorative pleasures when I sew.

Here are some I enjoy:

Finishing the seam before the bobbin thread runs out.

Sewing and particularly pressing cotton after a long time of working with other, more difficult fabrics.

Putting in a zipper and doing it up and finding that it is perfectly even at the top.

Thinking, being sure, you have thrown out that facing piece and finding it right on your sewing table.

Looking for the first time in the mirror at something you were not sure you would like and realizing it is the nicest thing you have made in a long time.

These small things are not so small. They are little links to normal life when life isn't normal, reminders that life is lived in the details, and as long as well hold on to that, we hold onto ourselves.

What are your own small joys while sewing?

Therapy sewing

I have had an intense week.

Some health issues in the family turned up and my after work hours have involved a lot of thinking through the information, listening lots and trying to say and do the right thing. I'm beat. I think that things are going to work out fine but this is no weekend for me to attempt anything that requires major brain power. That's used up for the moment.

So guess what? I'm doing the dreaded bedroom curtains. Usually the long straight seams of home dec bore me to death but mindless sewing is particularly appropriate at the moment. A plus will be that once this is done it will be behind me.

Off to indulge myself by setting up the iron in the living room close to the TV and kitchen and to just sew.

Back later.

Considering Julia Child

I read the most interesting thing the other day.

It was about Julia Child. 

Apparently Julia loved Chinese food but never cooked it. She figured that mastering French cooking was enough for one lifetime.

This is very interesting.

It seems to me that sewers are faced with these kinds of dilemmas. What kind of sewer are you? Do you specialize? Have you drawn the line at some point in your sewing career and said I can buy pants that fit so I am not putting energy into sewing them? Do you sew for grandchildren but not yourself? Are you a Matterhorn sewer and like to master one challenge after the other? Are you a sewer like those folks who, when they eat out, always look at what the other people  have ordered and wish they had ordered that?

Do you focus when you sew? On one type of garment, or one concept like SWAP, or are you a restless sewer whose mind is always on the next, and different, project?

Could you sew like Julia cooked? 

Would you want to?

These are very serious issues.

I'm back, sort of

Why I mean sort of is that I have been sewing, sewing when I should have been blogging, I guess but have left my camera at work and have nothing to show you.

That will happen.

I have been busy sewing up the cotton summer dresses in the fabrics pictured in the last post. It makes such a difference to have things cut and the edges serged, and also when you know that the pattern will fit. The ease of this has me thinking again of choosing patterns that can have many incarnations. I have realized that for the time being at least I might be what you call an incremental sewer, slow progress made by a bit here and there -staycations are rare.

I was also overcome last weekend by the need to sew something instant. After fitting this dress to death and by the pants sewing experiment I just wanted to whip something up. I figured that a couple of skirts would make sense but for some reason sewing plain old skirts doesn't excite me much. I had three pieces of rayon and something with a little stretch in it, in tan, black and grey so in the end I decided to make the world's easiest skirt.

Thing is that my below the waist figure is pretty boxy. You could more or less run a ruler down from my waist to the floor along my hip so I opted for elastic waist straight skirts. One seam no less with an extension down at the bottom for kicking room and a vent. I sat down with a tape measure around my hips which I figured gave me my minimum width, and added about 1 1/2" for ease.

I am pretty pleased with the result and eventually will show you a picture. Now I am not going to revert totally to elastic waist skirts but they have their place and the fabric is nice. In most of my tops, which I wear out, you can't tell that's what I have on and they are comfortable. I will eventually make some proper fitted, lined skirts out of my wovens but for now, as a bit of wardrobe adding, these are just fine.

Sometimes I feel like making a new recipe from a cook book with new spices I have to go out and buy. And sometimes I'm thinking a decent tomato on a grilled cheese is just what I need.

Nothing wrong about that.

Staycation summary

I started my stacation in workplace mode, with a huge to-be-accomplished list in my head, with a very clear idea of what my ideal output at the end of the week should be. What I achieved in the end was quality, not quantity, and that was a lesson in itself.

In my sewing life this is what I did:

1. Perfected a really nice dress pattern. In fact I have decided that if I sew only this one dress pattern this summer, with variations I will have all I need to wear to teach my summer courses, plus a few separates and what I already own. It is still February. I can actually see a summer wardrobe of all I need (these are the operative words and suitable for these times I think) within my reasonable grasp. Anything else I make will be just for the fun of it. I have decided, really decided, that I am tired of always feeling that I am working behind deadline in my sewing life, I feel enough like that already in the rest of my life. My new aim is to live so I can feel caught up, rather than live always feeling like I am behind, in more areas of my life - even if to achieve this I have to simplify (patterns and pattern ambitions for example) and attempt less.

2. Cut out and serged, and in the floral case already posted, underlined with more China silk, four more dresses in the my really nice dress pattern. Fabrics are posted. You can see I am still going on my bright theme. I lay in bed this week when I woke up and looked at my winter wardrobe hanging in the closet. All so dark, like a nun (no offense to nuns and I note that even they are wearing colours these days), or a postal worker, or like the meter man, or meter person I should say - why go institutional when life is so short? Uniforms after all are the ultimate classic. I'm thinking it's time to bring back sharp.

On the thinking-about-life front my sewing time also gave me the time that I realize now was so so overdue to think about larger issues. The incoming recession/depression was one of those issues. Like everyone else who was counting on investments to fund at least part of retirement I realize that there will probably not be all there what I had planned for (spent a bit of time with the calculator beside my sewing machine - trying initially to figure out when I could retire sooner so my staycation life could become my whole life - last kid to get through school still though and bills still to pay). However I realized this:

I love being at home in my own environment sewing along, cleaning and cooking when and if I want, visiting by email, in my sewing group, by phone and in person with friends and family. If that's where I am headed, with a few trips a year to visit family in other places, and not on cruises and big trips, well that will be just fine. Just fine. I realize that the people are my real adventures and my real aim is just to have more time for them, not places.

I have reached a time in my life where I understand exactly what makes me happy. How good is that?

Sewing settles me right down. Having time to sew, not under the gun with the thought I should be doing something else, rights this boat. I don't know any other way to explain it but having a free week to sew has made me feel twenty years younger, more like myself than I have felt in a long time. I am teaching a lot right now, course overloads in fact, and with all the other things that go on I feel like I am giving out every minute I am awake. I really needed to reel that all back in to the centre where I discovered I still am. Intact. I have to schedule more mini-staycations into my life. I will let you know how I manage that.

I also need more fabric. Yes that is right. An order from Fabric Mart arrived in the middle of my week (see cut out fabric above) in record time and I was so glad to see it. For the very first time in my life I am now finding myself wanting to make something but unable to find the fabric I need to make it. I am out of China silk for example. I have a trip planned to DC/Baltimore in April and that will be very fabric focused.

And finally more than anything I realize how much I needed this sewing staycation. I am going to look at my calendar for the rest of the year and see where I can find more.

How about you?

On dresses and staycations

I have just posted a new picture of my underlining baste-and-then-cut-out technique which should give you an idea of how bright my staycation sewing has been, despite the relentless grey, ice and cold of the outside.

I really decided this week, as is obvious, to leave aside the should dos for the want to dos. Despite some hilarious suggestions from my husband along the lines of "gee since you are at home this week this would be a good opportunity for you to paint the bedroom, move all the junk from the basement to the garage, etc." Needless to say those jobs are for another time, along with the curtains.

This week I had the extreme pleasure of sewing without interruption, unless I wanted to like a matinee and swim with my daughter, and I realized that it has been years, and yes I mean years, since I have had a chance to sew like this.

Years.

Too often my sewing now is bits fit into weekends or evenings done with the uneasy feeling that I should be doing something else, and there is always something else, and usually on a project that I need to wear. Obviously in February in Nova Scotia my staycation summer dresses are not under a deadline.

What a difference that makes.

I took my time to perfect the fit on one dress pattern, it took three versions to get it right and then went on to make one in linen, black and white shown here, underlined in Bemberg and silk in the bodice, and for once I have what my mother and grandmother told me to aspire to - a nice on the inside as on the outside.