Two hours a week for six weeks. Cutting, ironing, pinning, trimming... If sewing hadn’t quite become second nature, it was getting to be at least fourth or fifth.
Just one task remained before our beginner status expired and we were unleashed into the world on our training wheels.
The cushion. We’d already made a teeny tiny cushion for pins. Now we would make one for actual people-sized people. From scratch. Inner cushion pad, cushion case, nifty ribbon tie, the lot.
Excitement levels ran high. For most, this was a stuffed furnishing first.
Strangely though, in the completion of a circle that began a long, long time ago, I wasn’t one of them.
Reader, I confess: I am not a cushion virgin. To find out the whole, sordid tale, we must unwind the bobbin twenty years or so, to sometime around 1987.
A memory of a bored summer’s day, a whirr of machinery and a fleeting moment of triumph, lost and forgotten in the intervening decades.
It was one of those endless school holidays you can only dream about now. Having exhausted all creative possibilities with toilet roll interiors (Dougal from Magic Roundabout with glued-on wool strips having been the apotheosis of the art form), I needed a new outlet. I don't know why I chose the Machine; perhaps just because it was there. And it felt naughty. And it was better than the lawn mower.
I dragged it out of the cupboard and switched it on. A full bobbin of white thread lay waiting. Now I just needed some material. As chance would have it, the first item I rummaged out of the Material cupboard was a lovely bolt of soft pink silky fabric. Perfect. I cut a big square from the middle (a legitimate use of the Sewing Scissors) and matched it with a white square of sheeting.
Onto that I carefully cut out and assembled a rather fetching motif of a mouse, I thought, complete with frilly lace tail and round felt nose. Then, in a rush of euphoria, I pressed the pedal on the Machine and appliqued my design onto one side of what I'd now decided would be a cushion.
It was uneven, wobbly, snarled stitching but it did the job. As evening drew on, I sewed my two squares of my fabric together, turned them inside out and stuffed them with kapok.
And there it was. The cushion I made earlier. No zip, no ribbon, a rather raggedly-looking creature on the front, more akin to a whiskered slug than a rodent but a cushion nonetheless...
‘It’s lovely,’ Mum said, swallowing hard. ‘I'm sure I can get another piece of that very expensive pink silk I was saving for a blouse.'
Oops. Still, as childish projects go, this one had a long and happy life. Surely longer than a blouse, subject to the whims and fads of the fashion world. We reminisced about it recently.
‘Remember that cushion you made?’ Mum said.
‘Which one?'.
I thought, having expanded my repertoire, she might mean the pin cushion.
'You know, the hedgehog cushion.'
'Hedgehog?'
'Ever such a lovely hedgehog.'
'It was a mouse...'
For my next attempt I also chose squares of expensive silk, purple this time – and not earmarked for any higher sartorial purpose than that of the humble head rest.
I matched the fabric with a gaily spotted ribbon, and, as the clock hit 9pm on our last ever class, I turned my silken case inside out, slipped it over its handmade stuffed interior and gently tied it up.
Sophisticated, elegant and with colours to make you smile. I hugged my cushion tightly to my chest as we said our goodbyes. And with that, the course was over. We were on our own.
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