Sewing

I'm learning how to sew. Yes, it's true. For those of you who knew me when I was a teenager, I know you're finding this hard to believe. When I was a kid, my mother made a brave and valiant attempt to teach me how to sew. There was just one problem: I hated sewing. I still hate sewing. I'm terrible at it! As a matter of fact, I'm so bad at sewing and the stuff I make is so atrocious that it makes me laugh. It's turned out to be a great source of entertainment. Our fashion design teacher is teaching her students how to sew and her level 2 students each have to create their own line for the fashion show. I figured that as long as the kids are all sewing anyway, I might as well join in the fun. We all sit in the fashion design classroom with our little sewing machines and our pins and try to take that tricky, slippery material and turn it into something recognizeable. The kids are doing a great job and I'm there as the comic relief. Well, not me, actually, but my sewing attempts. The only problem is that the teacher, who hasn't actually really looked at anything I've "made" has asked me to teach a small group of children how to make a bag on Saturday morning. Those poor children! They'll never be the same! They'll be scarred forever. They'll see a sewing machine and run away screaming or curl up in the fetal position in the corner and rock back and forth ... back and forth.

*side note* the girl doing the afternoon announcements just announced that they're going to hold softball tryouts. softball is a spring sport!! The end is near!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, my current attempt is a dress. Yes, a whole dress. Did you know that patterns come in different sizes? Yeah, I know that now, too. Let's just say I didn't get the pattern with my size so now not only do I have to sew the dress together, I then have to tailor it to fit me. Today the fashion teacher and I fit the dress (or as I lovingly refer to it "the tent") onto a dress form. But she didn't pick out the dress form that's my size so I'm not sure if I'm going to have to tailor it then tailor it again or if I'm maybe wrong about the dress sizes. (I've learned in fashion design that what designers used to call a 12 is now an 8 and a 14 is a 10 and so on and so forth.) That's all well and good until you're trying to sew from a pattern and a dress form and you're basing your dress size on the size written on the tag on your jeans but the size on the tag on your jeans is different from the size of the dress form. AIYEEEE!!! (This is part of why I'm not so good at the sewing thing. Let's simplify, people!!) Anyway, so I guess that when I "tailor" (a word I use very loosely!) my dress tomorrow morning I'm going to have to ask if I'll actually be wearing the "dress" or if it's just for show. Maybe it'll be the example of what not to do in fashion design!

So far I've done the easy part of the dress. I still have to put on the sleeves.....