skirts – How Would You Do It?

Ma’s Church Skirts

Ma loves to wear skirts to church; they’re easy to pull on, she has a variety and they have a tailored fit. You might note they all feature an elastic waistband. That is her preference. The length is her request. She also picked out all of the cloth. I’ll tell her, “No more! You have enough!” She will agree! Then we’ll spot a gorgeous piece of greatly discounted material and…

I made her some dresses, too.

This shows that a couple yards of material and about an hour total time can make an 85 year old woman that can’t get around very well anymore happy. That’s happy when her custom skirt or dress is first finished and then again each time she saunters into church with a big grin. Worth it.

Ah, Sew…

I have come to the conclusion I am a person driven by one compulsion after another. Brew season, I am obsessed with sanitizing more bottles and deciding how many buckets I can manage fermenting at one time. In the Spring, I am consumed by trying such and such fruit trees yet again or having another go at more flowery bushes. When I am writing, I write non-stop many hours at a whack.

Now I sew. I have spent way too much at Hancock’s (great bargains!) for material and patterns. My weekends are gobbled up with sewing up one garment after another. It doesn’t seem to matter we don’t need more clothes, I simply love making them!

Most patterns get used in an inspirational way, maybe make this shirt pattern into a dress with poofy long sleeves. Make this unlined simple jacket pattern into a lined and insulated long coat with cool toggles. You’d think I’d need fewer patterns if that’s what I used them for. Ha!

The only possible conclusion is that making something well is the way I judge my self-worth. When the books I labored over so arduously do not sell, I get anxious and crave another creational outlet that might do better. I made three fruitcakes last weekend with supreme optimism that at least one will make a wonderful birthday cake and present for Ma who will be 85 the day after Thanksgiving – she adores fruitcake. I hope she likes the fact I’m slathering them with homemade apple wine periodically.

I also made Ma an electrical blue with silver sparkles tunic with matching skirt and me a poetically patterned dress and a black and white plaid pencil skirt with a matching cool, complicated jacket. I love the feeling (perhaps mistaken) that I’m gaining some degree of mastery in this endeavor. Did I mention the saddle-brown boot skirt just made that has the back zipper pull on the inside? I decided it wasn’t that big of a deal and left it that way…

Once I get my backlog sewing projects done, next is the acrylic art studio upstairs. Or perhaps I’ll be in that studio all this weekend…I have a marvelous idea and have made ten sketches already. That room is over the garage and not directly heated, so if I am going to paint, I’d better get a move on!

The Sewing Marathon!

I threaded up early and kept on until almost midnight Monday night. Take a gander at what I sewed up:

This is all from one three-day weekend, in between making a devil’s food cake with fudge icing, a double rice pudding, routine meals and clean-up, laundry, yard work and enjoying music and movies. This was not ‘trying to see how much I could do’, it was rather, ‘let’s get this backlog of sewing out of the away’! Some backlog remains, but this weekend it dedicated to my book – it does not write and promote its own self.

Although there is one really lovely tropic print that yanks my attention every time I waltz by to the kitchen. It calls out, “Just some thread, a little elastic! Stitch me up! I’ll be fantastic!”