Today I took this selfie in a dress I made. Does anyone else enjoy sewing and making things by hand?
"Sewing is a dying art," people say. I find this hard to believe.
To keep us out of trouble, the mother of my best friend, Jami, taught us girls to sew the summer before we started 7th grade. Jami and I loved sewing.
We both sewed our clothes in junior and senior high.
Later, I made clothes and Halloween costumes for my daughter, Claire, and her dolls. Since it always snows on Halloween, I had to make her costumes warm.
Claire was a gypsy for Halloween at age 6-1/2. Here I'm working on her costume. Every five minutes, I gave her wiggle breaks.
Unfortunately, Claire couldn't go trick-or-treating because she had the flu. Hence the pouting photo.
"Mama, I love falling asleep to the sound of your sewing machine," Claire said.
Adorable! I used to make some of the kids clothes when they were infant /toddlers. And have made a few Halloween outfits, silly winter hats, and recovering projects. I need to whip up a bunch of curtains sometime this week.
I still do a lot of needlecraft projects...mostly Christmas themed ones...a lot of vintage things I find on eBay. And I crochet. ?
At this point whatever is 'one of a kind' is gaining popularity and demand. People are starved for that which is flawed but beautiful. Water torture perfect computers are numbing starved brains for subtleties of real, living differences and flaws. That is wherein the music of life lies.
Christmas stocking I made:
Claire. Made the amatuer mistake of gluing on sequins.
When Claire grabbed her stocking, sequins scattered. Last year, running out of matching sequins and stars, I sewed them all on. First, drilled out dried glue in the center of sequins with an X-Acto knife.
Rosie, Claire's cat. Half-Spanish, Claire was seven years old.
Matt, Claire's finace'. Matt never had a Christmas stocking before. He loved it.
Cocoa, Claire's lovable, goofy dog. Half husky and half golden retriever, Cocoa weighs 90 lbs. This looks like Cocoa at one year old.
"No way," I thought, thinking about embroidering round C's and O's. Found a leather boot lace in my sewing box. Cocoa's name took 10 minutes.
"It looks like Cocoa's rawhide chews," Claire's artist dad said.
Life is really made up of small triumphs.
I make crafts of all kinds to suit my friends and family, I upcycle, can make anything you can imagine out of wood and I make preserves as I live off the land. I volunteer at the local school teaching how to build cedar strip canoes to prevent it from becoming a dying art. When Christmas comes I feel so much love and appreciation from all the homemade gifts it fills my heart to do it again year after year.
My mom was an excellent seamstress. How the term "tailor" doesn't apply is beyond me. But I remember her correcting me so I use that appellation at her behest. I can remember the swell of work she had when I ceded the small bedroom so that she could use it as her.... um. Studio?
And yes, the rattle of her Singer was as Sominex to me.
I do dollhouses and miniatures and have been trying to learn different fabrics and techniques to make clothing to fit different sized dolls. very challenging to make tiny things!
It's lovely. I did sew some curtains once. They were for my truck, which was my home for a year when I drove around Oz.
Not very competent.