Act Your Age

Inspirational song: Little Black Dress (Shock Treatment)

I was six the first time my grandmother let me play with her sewing machine. She had little 2"x3" fabric samples that I was encouraged to stitch together like a tiny quilt. By the time I was nine years old, she was paying for me to take sewing lessons at the local Bernina store. I kept sewing as much as I could, almost always having some project or another in the works, peaking in my mid-20s, when my friend and I had our costume design business. After those overwhelming few years, I scaled back, making Halloween costumes for the kids, but not much else. I gave my sewing machine (won as a doorprize from that same Bernina store from my childhood) to my older daughter while she was in college, showing signs of following in her mama's footsteps, designing clothing lines for shows with the CU fashion club for each semester she was in school. I took a much needed break, only attempting two hand-sewn articles of clothing in about four years (and I was obviously out of practice, seeing how unwearable both of those pieces came out). I bought a replacement sewing machine only a year ago (or was that two? I get mixed up about recent history), and I am learning that I really did miss having projects around, but somewhere along the way, I appear to have learned how to pace myself. No more twelve hour days trying to put together a half a dozen outfits, and never being able to dedicate my full attention to any one of them. I have two things in progress right now, and there's only a deadline on one of them. It was that one I focused on all day today.

Daughter number two has always enjoyed playing dress-up, more than anyone I've ever known. When she was little, she was our best customer for the product line we called "Act Your Age." I suspect she was responsible for us wearing out our first two washing machines, with all the extra laundry she generated wearing five or six different outfits a day. One of my favorite photos of her as a girl was of her dancing with wild abandon under a stormy sky, in her shiny gold and green dress-up dress in the side yard of our Oklahoma home. It's only logical that as an adult, she has found like-minded people who still play dress-up too. They probably shudder when I call it that. "Cosplay" doesn't sound more grown up to me, though. There is a big gathering of these folks coming up soon, and her outfit for that convention is my bigger sewing project, the one that has a deadline. Lucky for me and my rusty skills, we took the easy route and bought a pattern rather than having me design it from scratch.

Cats cannot resist fabric and pattern pieces spread out on the floor. Every single one of them interfered with the layout and cutting process. Some were more damaging than others. Zoe merely walked across the pattern once, made eye contact with me, and moved on. Jack, Rabbit, and Athena had murder on their minds. The paper crinkled so well, it must have been made of mousies. Sitting on the floor, cutting out fabric, always hurts. Leaning across trying to push away cats bent on destruction only prolongs the pain. I am going to blame their distraction for the mistake I discovered at the end of the evening. I failed to lengthen one out of the six long coat pieces. Now I have to go buy more fabric and try again. I must say, it was sure nice having a dedicated sewing table, so that when I found my error and decided to stop, all I had to do was turn off the machine and walk out of the room. So easy, so convenient. Pure luxury, for a person like me who should have had (but didn't have) this kind of setup for her whole life.