Squeezed Tight

Yesterday's posting had a record number of readers and a record number of comments. It seemed to touch a cord. THANK YOU for your thoughts and for sharing blogs in my age range. Surprisingly, I already knew about almost all of these so perhaps I'm more connected than I thought.

By connected I mean connected as in reading these blogs not connected as in I know these people. That's a strange aspect of the Internet. Blog postings only show one portion of a person's life, only what they're willing to share. It's not a complete picture. A close friend used to read my blog and base her actions on what I wrote thinking that if I was upbeat and happy in the blog posting, there was nothing else going on that I might need to talk about or if I said I was going to do X and Y that day, that I didn't have time for coffee even though she'd said she'd phone. I had to ask her to stop reading. It was creating all kinds of issues.

My first blog was to stay in contact with my textile art students. My second blog was to continue writing and sharing each day while changing the topic to fashion sewing. In the hierarchy of activities that I enjoy, writing comes before sewing, reading, and knitting. Perhaps that's why I'm able to find time each week to write. It's not because I have way more time than most people. It's that writing is something for me. Thinking of what I could write about makes me more aware. I like that.

I'd originally hoped that blogging would lead to friendships around fashion sewing and in a very few instances it has but distance makes it difficult to connect on any real level plus, I'm biased from having been hurt quite badly by two Internet friendships gone wrong. I've been learning to settle for blogging as a predominately one way exchange. That's not my nature. I really enjoy people. I especially enjoy enabling them to their best.

Moira's comment - ... b) I find the "style" aspect of blogging intimidating and (sometimes and in some bloggers only) irritatingly narcissistic. - is something I've worried about. In talking about my life and fashion sewing, I want the intent and context to be sharing and caring and not oh how wonderful am I. That would be an easy line to cross.




One of the conversations we had when I was teaching textile art was around how vulnerable is the artist. My students worried that in sharing their feelings through their work they would be baring their souls to the audience. In response, I would show them this piece - Squeezed Tight - and ask them to tell me what they thought it was about. I'd get responses everywhere from water to prisons. Not one student ever came up with the right answer, which is that wonderful feeling you get when your children come up behind you, wrap their arms around you, and squeeze tight.

What that conversation illustrates is that we view life through our own paradigms. Our past experiences and whatever we are currently dealing with in our life at the moment heavily influence what we are reading or viewing, which means that we can completely take out of context what the author is writing.

sdBev wrote - ... but your post was heart wrenching. I think you're feeling the approach of a certain birthday.

I found this reaction really interesting. Reading over the paragraph that I wrote about Carolyn, I couldn't find anything heart wrenching about it, just facts. She does have a tremendous amount of clothing. She does take amazing photographs. She is very confident in front of the camera. She does have an extensive selection of accessories. I do find it both intimidating and inspirational. That's just truth for me and I'm sure for other people reading blogs. My only intent was to say I bet we have this in common because it's "normal".

Birthdays will come whether you want them or not. I've never had a problem with my age or telling people my age. It's only a number. More important to me is what I do with my life, taking time to celebrate, and being sure to use milestones as opportunities to evaluate and redirect where necessary. There has been a lot of grieving in my life over various things in the past three years. It's tiring. I want to be done with that.

Turning fifty (in 2012) is not turning five. It is in the last half of life, not the first half. Not that it will happen to me but deafness, blindness, and dementia run in my family along with other heart and stroke issues. When I think about ages 50-60, I realize these could be the freest years of my life, after the primary child raising years, and before the possibly not so healthy years.

I am excited about that possibility. It's time for me to bloom and grow in new ways. I'm not at all tolerant of issues that stand in my way, which does create some tension that will need to be dealt with. I had a chat about that last night at dinner - with the men in my life. In particular, I explained that I am not an unpaid maid and I won't be making your life easy at the expense of mine. I bet a lot of women can relate to that.

LOL - back to sewing. Apparently the way to deal with the guilt of the fabric stack on the counter is to sew it up. This is another piece that I bought while on holiday - at Dress Sew. It's quite atypical for me. The background is a mottled yellow/pink hand dyed look embellished with tiny rows of ruffles and fuzzy thread. The ruffles are two inches apart with the fuzzy thread in the middle.

Along each selvage, there was a wide unembellished section. Because the fabric has four way stretch, I was able to trim this off and use it for the neck binding.




I serge the binding on right sides together, turn it to the wrong side, and stitch it in place. Typically, I use a double needle to do that placing the left needle in the ditch and the right one on the binding. Due to the move, Fabricland is out of double needles so I resorted to a narrow zigzag. The prefect matching thread is a dusty pink. That lets me know for sure that this top is atypical. I'm not a dusty anything kind of girl.

The serger was threaded with black. I tried a sample to see if changing the thread was necessary. The black showed through so I used white instead. The serging cuts the seam allowance to an even width and provides a sturdy edge to turn over so even though it's not seen, it adds wonderful advantages to the neck line.

Lorrie wrote - While a number of younger women are sewing beautifully, there are many whose techniques are not up to the standard that someone who has years of experience wants and expects.

Sampling is such an important part of learning and of getting the look. I see this with fashion sewing and I saw it with textile art. So many people are in such a hurry that they don't take the few minutes needed to create a sample, test their idea, and figure out what to do. In the end, sampling builds technique, skills, quality workmanship, and creative ideas. It's so worth it.

Here's the t-shirt so far. The base is my T & T pattern which started life way long ago as New Look 6735. I just need to stitch the side seams and then press and stitch the hems in place. I'll do that today and wear it to work tomorrow although I'm not sure what with. I'll need to look through my wardrobe to find an appropriate lower garment... or maybe I'll sew one - VBG.

Talk soon - Myrna

Grateful - warm morning sunshine