All Sewn Up

Pulling my trusty sewing machine out of retirement paid off in several ways. Not only do I now have new curtains, but it re-awakened prior knowledge, if a little too late to be useful:

It’s a good thing the McCall’s pattern moguls aren’t asked to take a lie detector test regarding the veracity of their claim of

             Home Dec in a Sec! 90 Minute Curtains!

Re-folding sewing pattern tissue so that it will fit neatly back in its ridiculously under-sized envelope is a goal as unobtainable as restoring that map of Washington D.C. to its original shape while sitting in your future husband’s tiny (but very cool) MGB. 

Coordination and focus are key if you want to avoid driving a pin into your thumb while you are feeding fabric into the maw of the machine, thus avoiding the extra ornamentation of blood on the white trim of your project.

Pattern companies grossly overstate the amount of fabric needed. Either that or the same blockheads that wrote the obfuscated and cryptic directions are also the people who measured for yardage.

(Know of anyone interested in a yard and half of perfectly lovely curtain material?)

That grey wooly ball of self-doubt  you’ve been living with:  that material is too loud, these will never turn out like the picture, this is costing more than if I’d just gone out and bought the damn things –

will all evaporate once you put away the machine, the ironing board, the iron, the pins, the needles, the scissors, and pick up all the tiny fabric bits and thread off the floor, and finally, at long last, stand back and

admire your product.