OR: "in which I stop hating my body and start loving my sewing machine. Again".
OR: "in which I pay homage to the crazy-talented women in my family".
I can't remember a time when I couldn't sew. 'My' first machine was one of those wonderful old Singer treadle machines, and I had the best-dressed Daisy dolls in town. My mum was a fantastic seamstress and made all my clothes when I was a child, including jeans, jackets and a parka. So growing up I guess I thought that sewing your own clothes was something you just did - like having dinner every night, that level of mundane.
I made and customised a few things during my teens, but when I left school and home (and being without a sewing machine) I bought a lot of clothes, mainly from op-shops but also from the sort of small boutiques that teenage girls love! I remember in particular a red rubber skirt from a hole-in-the-wall place in Christchurch, I wonder what ever happened to that?
Then mum bought me a sewing machine (a knee-press Elna from the late 1940's) and I started university and just went mad for sewing. And the gorgeous things I made! I loved hand-painting fabrics and lurex and silks, satins and sequins. I made clothes out of curtains (shades of Scarlett O'Hara), upholstry fabrics and bin-liners. Looking back I'm sure I looked a bit bizarre sometimes but I didn't care. I was having fun, expressing myself and I thought I was pretty damned fabulous.
Generally I made myself a new frock every time I went out in the evening. I could cut it out at mid-day and be at the club/party/gig/event by 8. Obviously not every outfit was a great idea (although I still lament that there are no photos of me in the yellow cigarette-pant/floral chiffon coat ensemble - with a jewel set in my belly button to boot) but fun times.
A few years later I was doing the semi-corporate job in Wellington, and although I was buying a few pieces of clothing (op-shop AND chain-store now, as I was finally earning a bit of money) my wardrobe would have been about 70% handmade.
Then I moved to Sydney and stopped making 'daywear' - it was much cheaper over here, and why put myself through the agony of making a knit top when I didn't have to? I concentrated on sewing 'eveningwear': lots of velvet, satin and PVC, and lots of corsets. Making a corset is a dirty thankless task until you put it on for the first time. THEN it makes sense.
The last thing I sewing in this particular era of my sewing history was the Coat o' Faaaabulous:
(you have to say it like Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous would say it).
This coat was built around the collar given to me by David's grandma. I had as an inspiration the coat that Penny Lane wore in Almost Famous, except I couldn't find any photos of it and had to rely on (as it turned out) my rather dodgy memory. The coat is black cotton velveteen, and was mostly made from the scraps of another coat. It's Faaaabulous. (It's also undergoing renovations as it's a bit shorter than I'd like, and when it's done it will be even more Faaaabulous.)
And then my nanna died.
My nanna was an awesome woman and was creative until the day she died. In addition to bringing up five children on a back-blocks farm she dyed, spun, wove, knitted, embroidered, sewed, painted - you name it. I remember her talking about how a particular project didn't work out (I was about 19) and I suggested a work-around. She fixed the problem using my solution, and seriously I COULD NOT have been more proud.
After she died I just stopped. I mean, I stopped doing anything creative. Actually I pretty much stopped doing much of anything. Except drinking wine, at which I am, and always have been, very proficient.
It's funny, I didn't realise until I came to write this just how depressed and shut-down I became. and I'd never before made the connection between her death and my need to do anything but be creative. I really don't know what I did that year - I went out a lot and read a lot of books.
After about a year I started sewing again, but cushions, table-runners, napkins, not clothes. So there I am - I haven't made a piece of 'daywear' for about six years, and I haven't bought anything for at least two years (you just don't need that much when you don't have a job which requires you to leave the house on a regular basis) - and my wardrobe is rapidly becoming threadbare. So I made up a couple of my tried-and-tested patterns and - oh wow.
Newsflash: clothes that look cute and funky on a 22-year-old woman don't really work for a 37-year-old woman. And it wasn't really that my body was that much bigger - apart from the tummy - more like it was a different shape. For the first time I had actual, tangible evidence that I wasn't 22 any more.
I spent the next year in a sulk with my body for stupidly going and getting older on me, while trying to work out what clothes would suit my 'new' body. My clothing asthetic had also changed, so I had to think of what I wanted to look like. I also threw out (donated to the Cat Protection Society's op-shop) about 90% of my wardrobe.
Anyway, once the look was sorted I started making patterns, and I am crazy slow at making patterns. I doesn't help that I make changes in increments of millimetres, and that I'm always obsessed with finding The Perfect X Pattern where X = skirt, wrap dress, evening frock, whatever.
The above was a long, loooong preamble to showing off the few items I made during The Month of Sewing My Clothes. While I didn't get half as much done as I wanted I did get a few things done:
(7 skirts, a top and an evening frock. Not pictured: 3 pairs of pants and another top [the victims of some mysterious confusion in the laundry]).
I'm still working on The Perfect Wrap Dress Pattern and The Perfect Evening Frock Pattern, but I think I have finally integrated sewing my own clothes back into my daily life, and that in itself is a huge reward.