Where did the week go?

Good question.


I have had a work intensive week which is a good thing because I am feeling well caught up with my classes. I have to tell you I just love my students. Why do so many adults let this kind of funny openness be taken out of them? 


The kids got off track at the end of one class and started talking about getting ready for the work world (they are last years). The girls in particular, in fact the girls only, didn't want to talk about salary or work itself but about the terrible pressure to wear the right thing. As we talked I realized that for women of this age it is all about fitting in. The big question is "what are you going to wear?" translated to I want to fit in, not be over-dressed not be under-dressed. I wondered at how much time, money, and most importantly emotional and intellectual energy is being diverted into this.


And I wondered if this kind of process is what takes those nice edges off them as they "grow up?" What pieces of themselves do we make them leave behind in all this fitting in?


I was surprised this week to get an message from a former student, a sort of silly, wild child but a good kid, signed with his name and "who loves you like a son." And the big, athletic, beautiful and quite wonderful student who, on the subject appearance, told her classmates that she knew she would never be one of the pretty girls in the work place and had the students on either side put their arms around her. There is a solidarity to these kids that I feel quite privileged to see. Gee I don't want them to lose that.


It also made me think of course that I too spend a lot of emotional energy on the "what will I wear" question myself, but that to me I no longer feel, at all, like any desire to fit in. 


So the big question, and at the root of why we make our own clothes, is how do I want my clothes to make me feel? I am not sure if I can define that yet, except to say it is more about how I want to feel about myself. Not as how others see me but how I feel inside those clothes.


Like myself, comfortable, cheerful, relaxed, stylish.


I also realized that for a sewer, most sewers, they are wearing the process as much as the product. What we each get out of that process is very different for each of us. I can see that in my blogs I read.


Some of you are fitting sewers and are so good and energized by the almost mathematical challenge of perfecting fit.


Some of you are collection/competition sewers and have wardrobes that give you clothes for your life.


Some of you are designers and transform TNT and other patterns into something special.


Some, like me, need variety and are excited not as much by a patterns that works, as by a pattern that may or may not.


With this rare bit of self-insight I threw out so many patterns yesterday. I am not going to be working on last season's to-do list next season. I am dying for my new fall patterns to arrive.


That is of course why my white shirts stalled after three. I was soooo bored. I can only do these when I have something new to work with, and those are going to have to get done one at a time when I have a new pattern that inspires me.


On the home front I am going to be doing a little son shirt sewing this weekend. My middle child headed off to London Wednesday and then to NYC in October. He is doing so great. I am just lucky and keep reminding myself to keep my eye on the person he is and not the person who used to live here.


And this weekend, a long weekend here too in Canada, my daughter and her husband are going away to a wedding, and it's going to be just Miss Scarlett and I for three days. She's pretty busy but awfully funny. We are both good schleppers so it should be a good weekend.


However if any of you want to drop by and give me a hand, well that would be fine too.

My weekend

First the sewing.


I have, the last woman standing, finally made my edition of Vogue  1250 What a nifty pattern. Here are my back of the bathroom door shots, as my photographer is still in the middle of nowhere. I miss him a lot. Great cooks who will listen to you talk for 20 hours of a day and still love you are not all that easy to come by. Took me a while to find him.

I took an extra shot of the neckline because it really is a thing of beauty. I need to get a someone, probably my daughter, take a picture of it on me. It really looks very nice, with the control panties and the Spanx going on both, and if I stand up straight. I actually think I may wear it to my DSD (dear step daughter's) wedding instead of the Loud Dress. It would probably be appreciated.


Until I get a picture taken I can tell you that it looks just the same on me as it does on the model on the envelope, if you can image the model at 57 and having had three babies, one of them 9 lbs. 10 oz. and a C section. Cool, easy to sew, fun to sew dress.


So far I haven't seen anything in the fall catalogues that has this potential for star status. What do you think? 


I am hoping, seeing the BVM Butterick sale on now, that they will deliver something soon, or the next version of Vogues. I love an interesting pattern.


My next projects will be shirts for my DC to be NYC son, which I have been putting off because I find men hard to sew for, they can be so particular, but he loved the last shirt I made him a year ago, just wanted the collar " a little different" - can you translate that into fractions of an inch? 


I am also going to be making my daughter some knit wide leg capris, sort of gauchos, with a pregnancy waistline. She is due with #2 on October 10 but was in the at Emerg today with some definite contractions and some dilation so is off work immediately. Those 12 nursing shifts are too much in these circumstances. I am going to have to help her more when I am not working with Miss Scarlett. I know that she is feeling big and unattractive and thought some new versions of the capris I made her for her last pregnancy would help.


The other reason I have not done a lot of sewing this weekend is that Nat, my son in transit, came home for the weekend between moves. His company is actually sending him to London England for two months before he starts in New York and he decided to have a break here.


I've got to tell you something and it doesn't make me look good.


I am a little stressed with this move to NYC. I really love this guy and miss him a lot. Every day.  He is great company and if he were ever to decide to move back into his own room and reinstate me as part of his day-to-day life that would be great, but that isn't going to happen of course.


My way of dealing with it is to keep in touch with where he is and what he is doing. I got used to DC. I got used to his neighbourhood at R and 1st. and liked it. I had my own system there and was happy visiting him. DC is on the top edge of entering the south, and I love the south. The south makes sense to me. That whole family oriented, not real hurried view of the world is pretty much the way I am. I have done some high powered work in my time, but me the person is not very high powered. At all.


Now he is going to NYC I feel as if I am moving too and I wonder how I will do. I am sort of holding on to the idea of the garment district and trying to figure out what the visits will be like. He is living of course with room mates and I will be in hotels. It looks like a night in a Manhattan hotel is my seasonal fabric budget. Should I stay outside and travel in? What is the transport like? 


Man is this guy ever going to get married and have a normal house with a place where his mother can stay and set up her machine and do the mending? Will he be with someone who will give me jobs to do and make me feel like part of the family? Middle aged mothers think these things, but never say them. In the meantime how sophisticated do I have to be?


He will be back in the States and at work there at the beginning of October. Then I better get down there and get myself a relationship with New York.


In the meantime off to make maternity pants.

Sewing when you have no time to sew

I am working during the week and the weekends are my sewing time. However sometime you just have to produce something. Even a little something.


Remember all those scraps Miss Scarlett and I threw out? Well, there were a few I kept and am going to turn into my no-brainer-nightgowns. I am not in general a nightgown person but summer nights are an exception.


I have a Liberty print piece (that I actually got in London when my son lived there, when I made a mistake in my head and reversed how the exchange rate worked - in a fabric frenzy I convinced myself the pound was worth half a dollar rather than two dollars), and a piece of silk I dyed only semi-successfully, and this piece of seersucker left over from a recent dress.

Same drill, band at the top, gathered body, and elastic bra straps left over from a Fabricmart sale. Oh, also a piece of nice cotton lace that I have had forever and once tea dyed to go on Christmas decor I never made which I then had to bleach again for this. Somewhat out of control but you know this is one breezy nightgown. BTW those elastic straps are great. Stay put and are comfortable and you don't wake up with a nightgown all twisted which is why I usually don't wear them.


A summer dress to sew this weekend and a start to some shirts I have been promising my son for a year.

Dressing for movement

One of the courses I teach in the summer is media relations. One of the things we do in that course is visit a TV studio at news hour. We met tonight with a woman I have known for years at the station, a former host, reporter, and producer. She is now working in management and not in front of the camera.


I hardly recognized her today. In her past incarnation she was the person I usually saw a trend on first, she had a major do, killer shoes, and beautiful makeup.


Today she came out to meet the class, still with the great makeup, but in a swinging sort of knit knee length skirt, hair that she had let go natural, a fashionable knit top, and flats:

She looked incredibly hip, far more attractive than I have ever seen her before, and for the first time I realized what a good looking woman she was, how animated, how warm, how connecting with people. 

I also realized that she was a mover. She moved her arms a lot, was expressive, moved closer to students when they asked a question - and it hit me. Her clothes were allowing her to move freely and for the first time since I have known her I realized just how alive she was. I finally saw her style not her fashion.

This got me to thinking that we often consider clothes as something we pose in, but unlike other design products, like jewelry or buildings, they move with us because people move as they live.

Clothes that don't move well contain rather than express who we are.

I think this is an element of clothing worth thinking about, way past comfort, way past the take-it-off-the-minute-you-get-in-the-door clothing, but about moving with style. This is what people really see, this is what people really watch.

I have to think this through, but I am going to start to pay attention to how clothes move on me and with me, and to what moves well on other people.

On a related note I randomly came across this tonight, on the subject of shoes. What is interesting to me is the observation that heels go up when the economy is down, can't quite make out why. Well if folks are going to read my feet, I think I might dress for prosperity. It's easier to go places.

Picking up where we left off

Debbie Cook over at Stitches and Seams said a few posts ago that she is doing exercise dvds. 


The exercise thing is tough because let's face it who wouldn't rather be sewing?


But I must confess I have myself got into the dvd thing. In fact it would be safe to say that if it's in the  $5.00 bin at the grocery store I have it. I am in fact a connoisseur of moves I can't make. The privacy of my sewing room is where I do my exercises - a place I like to be in anyway with no prying eyes to see what I can do to the New York City ballet warm up.


Be clear though I am only doing this to be stronger and less creaky, my knees are losing it. I have no interest in back problems or being slowed down etc. I have a lot going on. Also I have no interest in losing one pound or one inch. I have the fitting issues for this body figured out and that's that.


Anyway I had a bright idea the other day and that was what-ever-happened to Margaret Richards? You know from PBS Body Electric? When I had little kids I used to tape those VHSs - Nancy Zeiman and Body Electric, although I used to tape Nancy over Margaret a lot. She was good, those exercises were hard, I was so sore the next day.


So I went online and there she still is and I ordered in this DVD, which cost more than $5.00 but I was feeling nostalgic.

Now I have to tell you Margaret no longer looks exactly as illustrated. I find it strangely comforting, once I had adjusted to the fact that she hadn't stayed in the box looking exactly the same for 20 years waiting for me, to see her body has gone middle-aged too, although I would say she now has to be in her 60s. I am seeing those inner thigh things, bigger upper arms and mostly the famous expanding waist you get. I figure if she bought a 12 she would be grading it up to a 18 at the midriff. 


Her music is different, one of her songs is actually about a child growing up, not the same disco stuff. She even has a quirky blog on her site where among other things she shares her knitting. She says do these exercises, go for a walk, and make sure you rest and relax. This I can do.


O.K.


The thing is her exercises are still terrific. You use weights (got these at the grocery store too) and she is about being stronger and my god to do this all the time she has to be. I can hardly move this week everything is so sore, and that would be everywhere.


And I have found it so much nicer to be working out with someone who looks like me, which I can't really say about those folks at the New York City Ballet.

One loud dress

Self-portraits in the sewing room ...

Yes, it is pretty loud but I actually like it. Not sure if my consultants will deem it event worthy, we will see. At any rate this one is going to get wear, such a great, great pattern.


A lesson though - I don't have enough fabric in my collection (the family won't believe that)  I have depth but not enough breadth. And I won't be making it down to the garment district until later in the fall - seems fair to let the kid actually move there and settle into his job until I descend. One of the things about teaching is that you just can't take time off when you feel like it either. But I am never again going to be caught without The Right Thing in on the shelves.


Now off to get ready for a work week.

An odd and ends day

I just got a call from my husband, off in Deception Bay in the land where the sun doesn't really ever set this time of year. The place they are at of course doesn't have hotels so the company brought in a cruise ship for them to stay on - he said he had smoked salmon and Brie for breakfast. He claims he will be back in three weeks.


Mr. Rascal and I are a bit of a random force left to our own devices. Thisis what we did yesterday with a few of the usual revelations.


I started knitting a baby blanket for the new baby that is due in October, changing Miss Scarlett's only child status. It will take me that long and they better start having some good stuff on TV. Last night I watched TV like a man, with one hand on the remote.

I also thought a lot about Carolyn's Vogue 1179 and Rachelle's many gorgeous versions so, although I had cut out Vogue 1250, not wanting to be the last person to make this dress in the world - although I wish now I had waited until this morning and read Debbie Cook's detailed flat pattern alteration advice, I decided to make another 1179 for myself. My first version really is my favourite dress of the season.


Here it is in a rayon knit familiar to those who stalk Fabricmart, on my dress form since the photographer is at the North Pole:

While I made this, and was once again just so pleased with what an absolutely flattering dress this is on, it got me thinking about my step-daughter's wedding next month. BTW I hate the "step" term. Cinderella has ruined that phrase for me. My step children are really great people and have been totally wonderful to me since the day I met them. There is nothing "step" about us.


Anyway, as I have said before, this is going to be a very small group. Just five of us, at a very nice inn with a fantastic and small dining room. I was thinking of wearing a dress I already own but I decided that was a disservice to my step-daughter, the only one who is not having the big white wedding, as if it was not important enough for a new outfit. As a result I have been wearing my head out trying to figure what to wear. Dress up clothes are often not my favourites, it is the time I start trying to dress like someone else or for some occasion that isn't me and it doesn't work.


Then I thought why not make this dress in something fancier? 


It is in fact a dress that my husband has told me I look sexy in which is pretty good for something that is like a night gown to wear. But then again this is the same person who loves the polar fleece pajamas with the embroidered snow flakes that my mother gave me for Christmas - he thinks those are cool.


So I created a vision in my head of this dress and drove around to our 1.5 fabric stores to try to match it.


Don't you just wish you had a real fabric store that matched the one in your head? I was thinking sort of silk knit and all I could see was polyester crepe de chine and kiddie prints.


The only knit that caught my eye was this one:

Yes I know, the ladies in the fabric store thought the same thing - they were kind of lobbying for lilac once they knew it was a wedding.


However this is essentially a dinner at a restaurant. I am going to make it up and if it gets the thumbs down I will wear it anyway elsewhere.


Which brings me to prints and identity.


Women over the age of 40 around here dress sort of preppy plain and as they get older it gets more tasteful and quiet. I believe the word is classic. Problem is I really, really love prints, and colour. 


And I am a person who has worn out one side of her jaw from talking too much. What are you going to do?


O.K. off to the sewing room.