It's a Start

After years of collecting fabric, I have recently taken up sewing. I had my machine tuned up this spring - key to getting it to work properly, while exponentially lowering my (creative, I must say) swear quotient. I even took a few hours of lessons from a fab instructor. (Nicole Picard, that's you). I can't tell you how many times I stopped and started, both here in Montreal and back in Hoboken, NJ shoulders hunched over machine. Thread clustered into fist-sized jumbles, tongue curled over top lip as I followed the instructions and retraced the threading channel on my kick-ass Pfaff. Such inspiring fabric, with colours and patterns that make me want to gather it up and bury my face in it, so beautiful that I became afraid to cut into it. Damn, what if I ruin it?

My grandmother MarieAnne (Daigneault) Kelahear was a fantastically-talented seamstress. My Mum has told me how she loved beautiful fabric and how before each project she undertook - not for pleasure, mostly, but because they needed the income - she would wash the floors before laying out the fabric to cut it. So part of this is a way to connect with a grandmother I have but one or two memories of, but whom my sisters recall with great fondness.

So what changed? Well, I got tired of carting all this fabric around every time I moved. I found it ridiculous to continuously be that afraid to make a mistake - in and of itself, that became unacceptable. I asked for and got assistance. I loved every bloody minute of it - the instruction, the hum and satisfaction of guiding the fabric beneath the needle. Seeing something take shape before my eyes. Feeling that same joy of discovery and accomplishment, mistakes be damned, that you get when you're a kid, before the adult in you starts to reason away your impulses. (OK, some impulses need to be curbed, but not all).

I finished the dress last evening, from a fabric I bought in NYC six years ago before I left, one of those fabrics I like so much I wish I could eat it. If you look too closely at the frock (great word, frock), you'll find mistakes - so just don't look too closely! Lots of wasted thread and soothing swear words and now one new dress. I like this momentum.