Not Sew Easy

For all the other wonderful things I am, I am not a seamstress. I have a hard time fixing a loose button, or sewing over lose seams or hemming pretty dinner napkins. Just can’t do it. This may not seem much of deal really, but it is a huge irony. My grandmother, had she been born some sixty years after she did would have been a fashion designer. Her cutting and swing skills are hard to match. Not to mention the embroidery. She has painstakingly made tapestry like “paintings” - embroidering with single stands of silk floss to that reflect detailed scenes of a family of tigers in the jungle and another idyllic scene with peacocks. She went on to opening a small boutique with her daughter in law. Then comes the mother who, if they had college degrees for tatting and crocheting would have earned multiple Phd.s. She is constantly giving me elaborate table runners and coasters made in such detail, it would require an electron microscope to truly appreciate all the intricacy. I obviously am very scared of using them and have been thinking of framing and putting them up.

So, on that background, I am a complete looser. I remember almost four years ago, overcome by motherly intentions, when my best friend was having a baby, I decided to get a sewing machine. I wanted a simple one. The one that could, well, stitch and was powered electrically. Singer, perhaps? I mean weren’t they the only guys that made sewing machines? No, I think Brother made them too. BigGeek said, Husqvarna. Husq-what? I hadn’t even heard of the name. It must have been a well guarded secret that they knew only in underground sewing circles. How the hell did BigGeek know it?

So, off we went to look at sewing machines. Every store we went to, there was utter sexism at work. All the store associates would come up to me and try and sell me a particular machine using words like, tension, bobbin, stitch length, auto-fix, foot. And then, with one tongue firmly in cheek I would explain to them, I had no idea how to sew, my husband would be using the machine more than I would. On hearing that some salespeople would slip away, the braver ones would try and sell the machine to BigGeek.

So, in the end, days after days going to the big box stores and sewing equipment boutiques and cellars, BigGeek decided to shell big bucks and buy the Husqvarna, despite my many protests. We went home with the beauty; I went to a fabric store the next day to buy some fabric to make cushion covers which turned out to be totally lousy. In my utter exhilaration, I ordered yards and yard of fabric – red fleece, green flannel with cute clowns, blue and white polka dots, green cotton with turtles on it and batting; I had just discovered batting and was thrilled to throw such words around – you know, oh I ordered a couple of yards of batting. Polyester or cotton? Someone-who-obviously-knew-more-about-batting would ask me There. Just when I thought I was a step away from the underground sewing circles, they throw this at me.

And so the days passed. My friend had her baby, I gave her a store bought layette because there simply aren’t patterns even for newborns that don’t involve stitching around a curve. Yeah, I am that bad. And then I became pregnant, and I secretly hoped it would be a girl. Simply because I had seen a pattern for a strappy, summery toddler dress that involved stitching only in straight lines. I had no courage to even attempt to sew a romper or a pajama if it turned out to be a boy. The fabrics I bought stayed at the bottom of the linen closet. I had only sewed a pair of curtains for the nursery and a covers for two chairs. I tried to do a baby blanket complete with batting for another friend with the help of visiting SIL, but she gave me the third degree because my straight stitches were too wiggly and she made me rip them again and again till I got it right. In the end, she ended up sewing the blanket, but we ran out of ribbon to do the edging and the blanket has been languishing with the fabrics at the bottom of the closet.

But all that has changed now. When I was complaining this weekend to the MIL about how expensive Chip’s pajamas were here and how he goes through 2 of them everyday, I remembered the green flannel with clowns on it. Can we turn them into pajamas? I asked the MIL. Pajamas are the easiest things in the world, she told me. I want to learn, I want to learn. I said, not jumping up and down. So she cut one, while I cut the other, she sewed one while I sewed the other. The result was quite pleasing – the MIL’s pajama fit better than mine, but Chip isn’t complaining.