Tag Archives: sewing

Bordering on Blasphemy

Posted on by
Reply

I cannot sew. I have mentioned this before, I know, but I’m not sure that I have made it truly clear that to call myself a sewer would be to border on blasphemy.

My woeful sewing skills came to a head this fall when my sisters and I set out to make a quilt for our mother for Christmas.

Allow me to explain a couple of things.

My oldest sister is a fabulous seamstress. She makes marvelous quilts and crafts and clothes. She makes them quickly, and she makes them perfectly. She has a new sewing machine that can make anything except dinner.

Our other sister is a fabulous crafter. She carves, sculpts, glues, cuts, welds, and owns an excavator. What this has to do with sewing I don’t know, I just felt compelled to point it out.

She also sews.

And then there’s me. An optimist who thinks she can sew but really can’t. An optimist who once made a quilt without a pattern (because I’m too lazy to follow directions) and who forgot how to thread her sewing machine because it had been sitting idle for approximately 8 years.

My quilt had zero diagonals, zero tricks. I walked into Hobby Lobby, bought a bunch of fabric I liked, went home and made the quilt. I added two borders because I wanted it larger.

I am rather good with borders. Nice, easy, straight lines – I can handle that.

The quilt I made 8 years ago, sans pattern.

So my sister – the sewer – asks me if I think I can participate in The Great Quilt Project for Mom. I said yes.

(Remember: I’m an optimist.)

She sent a packet of instructions and cut fabric, oh, maybe August. Lots of time before Christmas.

I sat on it for, oh, maybe 4 months. (Remember: I’m lazy. I’m also a procrastinator. I’m also a people-pleaser. None of these things made for a good situation come last Thanksgiving when I finally admitted to myself, “Shoot. I can’t possibly do this.…”)

My sister – the sewer – had said to me when she sent the squares, “Just let me know if you can’t do it, mail the stuff back, and that will be fine.”

She’s very kind and very wise.

And so, along came Thanksgiving, which, as you know, is close to December, which, as you know, is the month wherein lies Christmas…and the due date of this surprise quilt.

I called my sister. “I can’t do it!!!!!!”

“I told you that if you couldn’t do it to just let me know.” She is NOT cross, she is NOT hollering, she is NOT even being quiet and fuming. She was possibly laughing to herself; I’m not sure.

So I mailed back the packet of fabric, the directions, the carefully cut strips of fabric in pristine zip-lock bags, the brand-new roller blade thingy for my rolly-cutter thing….

Too bad I couldn’t mail back the 4 months I’d sat on the project.

When we went out to Washington to be with my family for Christmas, my dear sister – the sewer – sat beside me while I sewed – in nice, easy, straight lines – the border for the quilt, on her fabulous new sewing machine that can make anything except perhaps procrastinators hurry.

I had border experience, after all.

She allowed me – nay, WANTED me – to do this so that we could say we all three made the quilt for Mom.

Do I have a wonderful sister, or what?

I have, as a matter of fact, two wonderful sisters. Their quilt squares were so fantastic I can’t even tell you.

My borders set them off perfectly.

The quilt in question - along with (from left to right) the excavator-driving sister, the sewing sister, and our mama. Isn

I Knew there was Some Reason that I Never Learned to Sew

Posted on by
4

I’m becoming resigned to the fact that there simply isn’t enough time to do everything that I want to do. That I will die without having a gorgeous garden. That I will never learn to sew. That my photos will remain in disorganized boxes and never see the light of a beautifully produced scrap book.

Bother.

We all have choices, yes? Choices of how we spend our time. Choices of how many books we read, how many television shows we watch. How many snacks we eat.

I choose to spend my time writing.

The problem with writing, of course, at least for someone like me who is a stay-at-home mom, is that I can do it always, or I can do it never. I can spend any spare moment at the computer on any given day…or I can find no time, ever, to write. In other words, without a set time and place to write…it becomes both impossible and perpetual. I can never do it – yet I am always doing it.

Everything else – the garden, the sewing, the organization – falls to the wayside.

Does that mean my life is not balanced?

Possibly.

Probably.

So what am I going to do about it?

Become a Renasaissance Woman? Learn to garden, sew, cut and paste and, while I’m at it, polish my long-rusted piano-playing skills?

No. Not likely. Because it all comes down to where my heart is. Yes, I’d like to have lovely scrapbooks, filled with ticket stubs, photographs, and zig-zag-edged polka dotted papers. But I don’t want it enough to actually do it.

Or, looked at another way, I want to write more than I want to garden.

Everything else just has to be set aside.

Let it go.

That’s the mantra of my life right now.

Just let it go.

Let go the need to be right.

Let go the sense of inadequacy.

Let go the pressure to be the person other people think I should be.

Besides, turns out they all think I’m eccentric anyway. Why not just embrace that?

I’m willing to embrace the writer-image.

At least to a degree.

Just don’t expect me to start smoking and wearing berets.

Scarves, though…

I’m all over the scarves.