I spent a good portion of my day behind the sewing machine. I made a few more head scarves from Weekend Sewing – those things are just what I need for keeping my long hair out of my face when I’m leaning over a project, or (more importantly) out of my eyes and my mouth while I’m driving with the windows open. I’ve started keeping a dedicated one in the van, and now I have one to keep in the car as well.
And two more to leave around the house 🙂
I also worked on two skirts. The first is one that I made over a year ago, but I have never been happy with how full it was. While I liked the “flowy” look, I thought it added too much extra bulk to my hips, and since extra bulk is really never something I will intentionally do to myself, the skirt has remained on it’s hanger nearly all of its life. Today I took it down, cut it apart, and re-assembled it according to a pattern I made, based on a favorite skirt with an excellent fit.
I am so much happier with the skirt now. Good thing, because I think this funky fabric deserves to be out in public now and then.
The second skirt is made out of a pair of vintage pillowcases that I picked up in a thrift shop on our trip to Ocean City a few months ago. I had originally thought they’d become pillowcase dresses, but the skirt idea came to me this afternoon and I couldn’t resist.
All of the fabrics I used today were once someone’s bed linens, and from the motifs on them, I’d say they were probably used some time ago. It got me wondering why it took me so long to learn how to sew. Had I known how to do it ten or more years ago, I’d have had the enviable opportunity to go through my grandmother’s sheets, blankets, pillowcases and tablecloths before the house was sold. I’d have put aside a few special pieces to become skirts or aprons, or be used in quilts. Heck, I’d have probably taken the whole lot.
I do have two tablecloths that my mother saved, and she gave them to me when I asked, but I’ve been reluctant to cut into them. I need just the right project, and once I have it, I need confidence that it will be something I can actually pull off successfully.
I would have loved to go through my grandparents’ things then with the perspective I have now. Instead, I go to the occasional thrift shop and plunk down my change for someone else‘s grandmother’s things. It’s not quite the same, I know, but sometimes it smells the same.
Does that sounds strange? Maybe vintage linens – the heavy, cotton, old kind – all have a similar inherent scent. Because when I bring one of those vintage pillowcases to my nose and inhale deeply, I could swear I am thirteen years old again, and just drifting off to sleep at my grandparents’ house in the country.
Great. Now I want to go thrift shopping. Or skipping through a field of Queen Anne’s lace and buttercups in the country. Either will do.