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:
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.
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.
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.
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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