SewWhat

Sewing is a major source of trauma in my past.





Starting with Girl Scouts. I was a very successful Brownie, I'll have you know. Girl Scouts was a different story. We had this lame project of making an apron. Materials: thread, rickrack, a long piece of canvas type material. That's it. the apron was to be a long rectangle with a tie fashioned out of a long skinny piece of material. Sew rickrack on bottom. How tough can that be? As it turns out, it was overwhelming for me..... I cheated and had help and was caught by the troop leader and I resigned in shame. To this day, I never wear aprons.



Flash forward to adulthood. My father gave me a sewing machine as a present (wedding? christmas? don't remember). Well, that was as useful to me as nuclear warhead. To make it worse, he gave me a kit to make a down vest for my brother. He might as well have asked me to perform a self-lobotomy. The material was slick and impossible to sew.... down feathers flew in the air, and a ZIPPER??? I soldiered on, setback after setback. Finally, the vest, as it were, was finished. A tragic looking thing. I hereby apologize to my brother for the ugliest sewing project ever. But, it was not my idea in the first place.



So, here we are today and I am, of my own freewill, undertaking a sewing project. With the optimism of an amnesiac, I have decided to make throws for the twin beds in the yet-to-be photographed bunkhouse project. I decided that old jeans should not be tossed but saved for future use. Ok, I was inspired by the Gee's Bend quilts. Now any observer could note that if I could not assemble two pieces of fabric to make an apron, how in the world am I going to piece together random patches to make a duvet cover? Good question. No answer.



I suppose all this shows is the triumph of the human spirit in facing the ghosts of the past......or being a damn fool and thinking that I can pull this off.