Last Saturday my friend and I shook our hands in agreement of when we
meet up, we wear our own (hand)made clothes. Just for your knowledge we’re not
some undiscovered fashion designers, although I’m positive you’ve figured that
out about me without me needing to tell you this. The thing is that we just
happened to go to see the showcase of Burberry works (FYI – clothes made out of net
curtains and upholstery fabric are in fashion and some lovely knitted jumpers).
After that we stopped off to have couple of glasses of wine during which we chatted
what kind of handicraft we learnt at school. This made me confess and list all
my shortcomings in the field while she has always been so meticulous and is absolutely
brilliant in needlework, studying and mastering her skills at the moment in Japanese embroidery.
I on the other hand was never patient enough for a neat embroidery work
at school. I did enjoy crocheting though but was never that keen on knitting. I
managed to knit a pair of mittens, despite of the fact that both belonged to
the same hand. And in an effort to save my grade I ironed the thumb of a mitten,
pressing it to the other side. Somehow I got away with it. I also knitted a
woollen jumper but the sleeves ended up being too wide for the armholes, so I
had to have (unevenly) gathered sleeves (or set-in sleeves, or puffed or
whichever is the correct term, I'm confused as they all seem to have different meanings, but look alike!). But as
it was nineties, so I guess I was allowed to come up with slightly awkward clothing.
And as I wasn’t good in counting the right number of stiches to
match the armhole, it should have been expected what to look out for when
learning to sew, because I wasn’t necessarily following the saying ‘measure
twice, cut once’. Funnily enough in Estonia we say – ‘measure nine times, cut
once’. Maybe that many times put me off measuring... Who knows how much time I dedicated
on it but when it was time to sew pieces together, I
noticed that the two sides of the shirt front looked a bit different: one fine and well executed, the other one –
inside out. I blame the mittens!
Both of my grandmothers were fabulous crafters though and we were always
well equipped for the winter, especially by woollen socks (I might still have a
pair somewhere). My maternal gran also used to sew me a lot of clothes, and she
owned two Singer machines: a treadle sewing machine and the other with a
handwheel. The latter was later given to me and I used to do my sewing homework
on it as craft lessons were part of the curriculum at school.
So with no surprise while living here in the UK I wished I had an old
Singer, exactly like my nan’s, and not obviously the electric one, that would have
been way too fast for me. Over couple of years I’ve sewn exactly one cushion
cover. Nice and easy straight lines. And accomplishing this, I’ve obviously
entered a new level of confidence in my abilities, so naturally the next step
up is to design and make my own clothes and wear these in public (does the
public toilet count?). The more I think (and write) about it, the more insane I
sound, but oh well, we’ve agreed that it’ll have to be a spring/summer
collection as one would hopefully need a fewer layers at that season (meaning
less clothes to create) and also we would have a bit more time to get accustomed to
this unexpected plan of ours.
And additionally on a similar note – when I studied youth work, we had
to organise a fashion show and our whole course of about 30 were to present our
own-made (recycled?) clothing in front of rest of the students. I remember some
of us coming up with totally magnificent ideas while I tried to get away with as
little effort as possible (that sounds like it could be a motto in my life...) and I tied
different scarves and headscarves around me to cover myself up. I might have run a scarf short but believe me – all the places that needed covered, were so. In conclusion if I’m not
going to get my handicraft skills up to speed for the next fashion season, the scarf idea might be my plan
B for this recent challenge.
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