a minor heartbreak

I was cruising along, working on the dress that goes with this sleeve, and I reached out to get the sleeve to put in the armhole, and *gasp*....someone had found a pair of scissors and done some "alterations" on my finished puffed sleeve.  I know that this is one of the risks of sewing in a house brimming with little children.  I put the scissors as high as I can, I put my sewing away when I'm done, but somehow they still find ways to do things like this. 

Do you know this kind of heartbreak?  I know that in the scheme of things, this is the kind of disaster that doesn't even rate, but it's the kind of thing that makes me close my eyes, take deep breaths, and move myself far away from my little boys for a few minutes. 

It reminds me of when I went into the local Bernina shop (not the same place where I humiliated myself) to buy a new bobbin case for my machine.  I explained to the shop lady that my children had stripped my machine.  New needles, new thread, new bobbins I could get locally, but the one bit I couldn't get was that darned bobbin case.  So I packed them up and drove the half an hour to get a new bobbin case.  As she handed me the $65 piece of metal, she said sagely, "Cover your machine."

I had to keep myself from gaping at her.  Did she have children? Are everyone else's children so different than mine, really, that "covering your machine" works on them??

I glanced over my shoulder at the four children who were reducing her shop to parts and stopped a rolling spool of fancy expensive thread with my toe.  

"Thanks for the advice," I said, and we left her store.

So if you have a heartbreak like this, would you tell me about it and make me feel better?  Have you had your precious handmade clothes ruined just after, or even before, they were finished?  How did you cope?  Tell me your story down there in the comments, and I'll go make up a new sleeve, and we'll both take a good, deep breath together.  Deal?

puffed sleeves

The first time I ever made a puffed sleeve, I carried it around cupped in my palm for a week. I'd seen them in the pattern pictures, I'd seen them in all the dresses I wore when I was little, ("Mom, why do you always put these "muscle" sleeves on my dresses?") but as soon as I pulled up the gathering strings and my very own puffed sleeve took shape, I was in love.

This picture adequately sums up how I feel about puffed sleeves, I think:

Over at children's fashion workshop today, there's a tutorial on making puffed sleeves. You know, the kind that go in dresses. Or, if you just want to fill your best crystal bowl full of them to use as a centerpiece, I'll totally understand.

~Mother Bird~

misplaced

My oldest son and daughter were born three weeks and two weeks early, respectively. Before their due dates, I mean. The only problem with babies being born a little early is that you come to expect that subsequent babies will follow suit, and when they don't, you're set up for some serious misery.

This is the situation in which I found myself, just a few days before my third child's due date. Large. Tired. Miserable. More pregnant than I'd ever been, still hauling two little children around with me, and starting to feel, just to add the final polish to the situation, like the baby was going to slide on out of there any minute.

I needed to sew, some kind of awful. Now, I don't say "I love sewing", because I'm not sure it's true. Sometimes it's all I want to do, to cut good fabric with sharp scissors, watch a little something take shape, figure out the unimportant-in-the-scheme-of-things issues that arise with any project, and, eventually, finish something. Sometimes I don't want to look at anything that has to do with sewing, can't stomach the idea of having to figure out all that minutiae, just don't want to deal with all those threads and pins, and go for weeks without sewing a stitch. When I decide that the little universe of sewing is where I need to go for a while, though, nothing else will quite fill that void, so I go on sewing.

On second thought, this may be a sign of a deeper problem.

At any rate, my second-hand sewing machines had both died a messy death several weeks before, as I tried (so frugally!) to fashion an Easter dress out of fabric I had on hand, so that my toddler-daughter could have something pretty for spring that we hadn't had to buy. Because, see, on top of all this, we were broke. I had tossed the wadded-up dress in a corner and cried. Pregnant + thwarted + hormonal = crying fit.

Now I've painted the situation for you. Miserable, waddly, thinking I was overdue but with no reason to complain because I really wasn't, needing a little hobby-therapy, and with broken machines.

Finally I hauled my unwieldy self up off the couch and said to Father Bird, "I'm going down to the Bernina store. Just to look."

The ladies at the Bernina store welcomed me and I told them the situation, that I had no money, but just needed to look at a new machine. They were completely understanding, brought me over and let me push buttons and sew little fabric scraps together, showed me all the whistles on the new machines and cooed over them right along with me. There was a reason those women worked at that store. They loved those machines.

Finally, I knew I'd better get back home and stop dreaming. With my head full of gorgeous stitches and precision threading and push-button everything, I floated back out to the car. But...where had I put my keys? I'd had them in my hand when I'd gone in. When I'd sat down to look at sewing machines I must have put them down on the table next to the machines.

I went back in and looked all around the tables and under them for my keys. Nothing. The helpful ladies were concerned, I told them I'd just had my keys, asked if they'd seen them, they said no, did you leave them in the car? Back outside, I looked in all the windows and couldn't see the keys. Now I was really starting to panic. They were the only set of keys we had, and if Father Bird had to come pick me up from somewhere else because I'd lost the keys/locked the keys in the car/done something else stupid, I didn't think I could bear the humiliation.

I went back in the store, and by now all the ladies were hunting for my keys. Under racks of fabric, all around the sewing machines, under the front desk, everywhere I'd been. One of them walked with me as I looked, feeling so completely foolish I could hardly stand it.

Suddenly I realized I hadn't even bothered to check whether I had pockets. I'd taken to wearing the one pair of maternity jeans that still fit, and they didn't have pockets, and my brain was programmed to the lack of them. Only after these kind women had searched their little store over and over did it register with me that there might be, allll the way around that huge belly, down there where I hadn't seen in months, a pocket. And it might contain my keys.

Dread and embarrassment ate me whole. Because as soon as I thought it could be possible, I knew it must be true. I felt around there, and sure enough, there was a pocket. With a jingle in it. I hung my head. I tapped the hunched-over store lady on the back and said, "Here they are."

"Where did you find them?" she asked happily. "In my pocket," I had to tell her.

"Don't tell anybody," she said immediately. Then, popping her head up above the racks of fabric, she shouted to the other women, "We found them!!"

"Where were they? Where were they?" the other ladies asked. "Right over here!" said my lady innocently.

I thanked her profusely. If I could still have hugged anyone without it being horribly awkward, I would have hugged that woman who saved what was left of my face. I took the keys, went home, and convinced my husband that these kindest of all ladies needed me to buy a sewing machine from them. "Well," he said slowly, "there is the tax return..."

It was done before he finished the sentence. I spent the next day cuddling my new baby, and the day after that birthing my new son. The machine still works beautifully. I wish I could say as much for my brain.

~Mother Bird~

silk, with late afternoon shadows

When the UPS lady brings me treasures like these, how can I help but love her?

What will these lengths of silk become? Stay tuned...