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Sunday, October 7, 2012

A VISIT WITH MY MOTHER



My mother passed on in 1997, but she still shows up from time to time, not as an apparition but as the form of my thought processes. Her appearance is most apt to occur when I’m sewing.

Saturday (Oct. 6), Mike and Ken took the dogs and went out for a morning hunt. Having the house to myself, I decided to cut out some doll clothes for the silent auction. You know, we’re a week into October now, and Christmas is coming. I have things to do!

Anyway, I want to make some pretty doll dresses for the P.E.O. silent auction. I hope these dresses will interest a P.E.O. sister whose two granddaughters have American Girl dolls. The girls are getting older, and you never know what that will mean. Maybe they will lose interest in the dolls altogether, or maybe the dolls will get dressed up and sit on a bed or shelf. Last year I made casual outfits for them. This year I’m making pretty dresses.

So I was working with this taffeta remnant – a plaid with a gold thread running through it. The pattern was laid on the fabric and I was just ready to cut when Mother showed up. “You aren’t cutting to advantage,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Okay, Mother,” I began, “I could re-pin this and save an inch or two of fabric, but I don’t think it’s worth my time.”

“Time is what I had,” she says. “And you never know how that extra inch or two might come in handy.”

And that set me to thinking how in my growing up years I carefully followed the cutting diagrams, pulling the pieces as close together as I could, folding and refolding the fabric so as to conserve a couple of inches along the edge. And in retrospect, I don’t recall a time when that two inches along the selvage or six inches left over at the end was all that useful. Eventually such scraps made their way to Mother’s stash barrel in the basement to be rejected time and time again as too small for any purpose whatsoever.

“I know this was important to you,” I argue, “but this is just a little scrap of fabric and I don’t care about its future beyond what I’m doing here.”

Then she faded away and I went on to do it my way, only feeling a little guilty for breaking Mother’s rule.

Having cut out several dresses, today I returned to my holiday quilt. It takes up a lot of space now, and I dream of having it finished. KW

4 comments:

  1. That's so true! I can't tell you how frequently I hear a voice telling me: "Any job worth doing, is worth doing well." or "Do unto others...". Any guess as to whose voice that might be? As a parent, I can only hope my children also sense my presence from time to time when they might need a little guidance.

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  2. A few days ago I learned about the death of a dear friend of many years. She was an outstanding mother to her only child, a son. The young man's father died when he was 14. The son commented that losing your last parent means the end of your childhood.

    We all can hear our parent's voices teaching us things long after they've gone. A parent thinks that when their adult child leaves home, they can't protect them. We can always remember what mom and dad told us, though.

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  3. I generally find the cutting diagrams to be c*@p. When I first started sewing, my mother horrified me: she never followed the cutting layout, she never followed the directions. The more that I sew, though, the more I realize she was right: the diagrams aren't always the best way. And quite often, the directions are just plain awful and there's a much easier way to do it.

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  4. Hi Amanda! Thanks for your comment. I had a friend in college who never followed the pattern directions -- just looked at the drawings. I admit that I read the instructions closely and occasionally do my own thing, and sometimes I find out that their way was best.

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