Sew Far

This week I’ve been absorbed with a hefty sewing project—my pioneer dress! It’s a beast, but I’m so excited to finally have a “frontierswoman” style costume. Laura Ingalls Wilder is one of my lifelong idols, after all. Even though this trek dress is supposed to date in the late 1840s, (30ish years before Laura’s heyday), it’s still way closer to her style than my old Boone Home dress (dated 1800). I just love historic clothes, even though I know that all of my favorite historic icons would disown me if they saw my wobbly, patchy sewing.

It’s not quite done yet, but think I’ve wrestled with it for enough hours that it should be done by now. Sewing patterns are like a foreign language with no grammatical structure. Stitch back facing to front self facing. Sew pressed-under edge over seam. Press. Umm, come again? I literally spent more than 30 minutes last night figuring out what a single line of the instructions meant. I’m still surprised that I figured it out at all.

It’s been quite the challenge trying to sew while managing normal household tasks like laundry and bread and sweeping and childcare, with extra baby Layne in the mix. It’s tricky. Yesterday when Steph came to pick up Layne, I had to slip out and go on an intense, pavement-pounding run to blow off my sewing frustration. I haven’t needed a run that bad in a long time. It was extremely therapeutic. I kicked a yippee chasing dog in the jaw right in front of its owner too, and then kept right on running. Sweet revenge [and justice].

Today I didn’t have Layne so the sewing went a little faster. My poor patient kids. “All” I need to do now is add the sleeves and hem this monster up! And sew on seven (!) buttons. I hope I don’t look too much like a walking couch when I wear it to our next Ma and Pa trek training meeting. [Jay took this picture for me]

Last week, my friend Janay and I tried making our own dress form with tape and an old t-shirt. The idea was simple: put on a t-shirt, tape around your torso, cut off the t-shirt and tape up the cut, stuff it full of plastic bags, and poof! Customized dress form.

Fail. The masking tape (we used an entire roll) wasn’t sticky enough, so it all kind of just unraveled and the stuffing fell out. I trashed it. It was hilarious though, so at least we got a good hearty belly laugh out of it! I do think it’s worth a second try, with duct tape instead next time. In other words, I did NOT have a dress form to make adjustments to my dress. Instead I did a lot of trying on and blind pinning. It eventually panned out for the most part, but it took a while, and it’s not done yet.

These patient cuties decided to read all morning today while I deciphered pattern-mumbo-jumbo and stuck pins all over the place. Jay is so good to his little sister. I promised them that they could watch a Sesame Street after lunch, right before Rose’s nap. While I was cleaning up lunch, they started reading again. My Mommy-conscience wouldn’t permit me to take away a book to turn on a show, so we sacrificed part of Rose’s nap instead and waited for them to finish reading before turning on Netflix.

I probably should’ve waited till I finished my whole dress before I did a post about it, but by the time I’m finished with any project, I’m usually completely DONE with it in every way, as in I don’t really want to think about it any more. This way, when it’s done, I can just post one picture of the finished product and say “It’s done!” and you’ll know what I’m talking about without an explanation of the preceding agony.