Sewing, Shopping and Shari Don't Mix

Clothes my mom made.  We had to
try them on and the pins were sticking out.

From the time I was a young child, I've always hated shopping and sewing.  My mom loves both. We were a bad combo when it came to these activities.  I remember my mom taking me on her shopping trips to the fabric store.....the two things I did NOT want to do.   I'd beg her to let me stay home and take one of my sisters instead of me, but no.  My mom was bound and determined to make a shopper and a sewist (Artist with sewing?) out of me.

For those who don't know about sewing, picking out the things needed to make an item of clothing can take forever.  You have to pick out the pattern, then the fabric, elastic, buttons, zippers, snaps, rick rack, thread and other embellishments.  When you go with my mom, each item takes at least an hour to find.  There are walls and isles with more walls of sewing things.  There are big books of patterns too.  Sewing stores cause minimalists, like me, to get twitches.  (For insights about my minimalism issues please refer to my blog "Spartanism.  The perfect psychiatric disorder".) 

This is a pattern for culottes
from the 70's. 

I've had bad experiences when trying to sew.  I've never understood why someone would choose to spend a bunch of time sewing a piece of clothing when you can go to the store and buy it for less.  No offense to you talented people who sew well and love it.  I am not good at sewing and I don't love it mostly because the items I've tried to sew, look like a kindergarten felt project gone awry.  For instance I once made a pair of pants...........my mom called them slacks.  By the time I finished my slacks they were what I'd call bellotes.  One leg was a culotte and the other was a bell bottom. The crotch seam went at an angle across the buttocks area thereby causing a perma-snug.  I put them on once and took them right back off to deposit them in a dumpster.  I'll never get those 41 hours back.

Another time I had to sew a tote bag for my 7th grade home economics class.  I started sewing on this tote thinking "How hard can it be to buzz a piece of material through a sewing machine while a needle goes up and down and sews it for you.  I had a lot to learn.  First, when you push on the sewing machine peddle to make it go, you have to be aware that it is NOT a car.  You don't floor it.  I floored it and the needle zipped up and down like a jack hammer.  The material bunched up and was spit out the other side in a wad. Plus, I nearly sewed my finger up into the wad of material.  I realized that this is a difficult and dangerous hobby.    

The next thing that I learned was that the person whose sewing machine was going the fastest did not win. I had my sewing machine going at warp speed.  I did not win. In fact, I had to unpick the stupid tote bag 17 times.  I looked around the class after a few days of this project and noticed that the other kids in the class had not only finished their tote but most of them had sewed a t-shirt and were moving on to the cooking portion of the class.  They got to make these peanut butter balls which I got to smell while I sat there unpicking my tote bag for the 12th time.  I unpicked the stupid thing so many times that the fabric kept getting frayed. The teacher made me trim off the frayed part of the fabric so many times that the tote bag turned into a coin purse. 

My mom had special things she would do when she sewed.  When purchasing patterns and fabric you have to know what size of pattern to buy.   Every time my mom sewed something for me, she would pull out a sewing tape measure and measure me.  I can't imagine that my size was a mystery.  She bought my clothes so she could have looked at the tags on my store purchased clothes to see my size.  Better yet, couldn't she just eyeball me?  My theory is that she loved to measure and wanted to measure while she held pins between her lips or put a red pin cushion, full of pins, on her wrist like a bracelet. Those are things that you do when you sew. 

The measuring part of sewing was not near as bad as the trying on.  Trying on comes after you go to the fabric store and cut the clothing out and do some sewing.  The bad part about trying on partially sewed clothes is that the fabric is pinned so there are pins sticking out everywhere. It like trying on a porcupine.

My idea of everything one needs
to sew.  No fabric stores needed.
A little duct tape works wonders too.

Still, the worst part of the sewing experience for me as a child, were the trips to the fabric store. Just walking through the door to the fabric store would trigger an urge to go use the bathroom.  I don't know why this would happen but according to my mom, "Fabric stores don't have bathrooms so you just have to hold it." This can't be a good thing for anyone.  To this day, my PTSD from shopping in fabric stores has led to a feeling of instantaneous diarrhea whenever I walk into a store that sells sewing items. 

When my mom and I were at the fabric stores, I would entertain myself by climbing under the long desk where the moms would sit and look at giant pattern books.  On the underside of these desks you could see particle board with a piece of gum stuck here and there. That's how long I was under the desk.  My mom would look at patterns for what seemed like ages.  One time while under the desk I had a stoke of genius.  I looked down to see a pin sticking out of the carpet.  Now if I could get the pin to stick straight out of my kneecap then we would have to leave the fabric store to go get the pin removed and get a tetanus shot.  2 minutes of pain vs. infinity hours of shopping for fabric. I kneeled on that pin and it went in my knee but not very much.  I showed my mom the pin protruding, which was sagging out of my knee cap and she just pulled it out and hit the pattern book again. Done. That was so not worth kneeling on a pin.

My mom used to sign me up for sewing classes in the summer time.  It KILLED me to sit inside and sew stupid things when I could be doing a million other things outside, like having fun.  My sister, who attended some of these classes with me, said she remembers me sewing for a few minutes and then I would disappear from the class.  My sister (along with the rest of the class) would then spot me outside running past the windows like an idiot.  I explained that I was taking a lap around the building out of frustration so that I could come back into class and sit there wasting the rest of the day unpicking my new bellottes project.       

Me in some snazzy bells
No I did not make them because
they are not bellotes.