A Tale of Two Fabrics

There are so many fabrics out there to choose from; different patterns; different textures; different origins - Japan, America… where do you start?
The answer is that sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you just sit back and wait for the fabric to choose you. You’ll see it, and know it is absolutely, completely, faithfully yours. Because although still invisible, contained in that fabric is the essence of a skirt, dress, pin cushion that you will adore. It’s just a question of cutting it out and sewing it together.
This happened to me after a colleague introduced me to Etsy – another mind-blowing world of choice. Not exactly knowing what I was looking for, I typed in cow fabric. This brought up a lot of unusual bovine articles – and a bolt of fabric so bold and bright and funny it just moo-ed buy me. So I did, plumping for a conservative metre and wondering what I’d let myself in for. Three weeks later a brown paper parcel arrived from Turkey containing acres of fabric covered with hundreds of cheery green and black Jersey cows all splattered with orange flowers. It made me smile then, it makes me smile now.

Cows and Dots

My second foray into Fabric Land was made with an idea in mind. This time I was doing the choosing, and what I wanted was blue with white polka dots. Easy enough I thought . Who was to know that, like asparagus, there is a ‘season’ for polka dot fabric? And with typical bad-timing, I’d landed in the middle of a polka dot desert? Not even Cath Kidston, the queen of all things dotty, seemed to have what I was looking for.
Then I had a Confucius sewing moment: sometimes what you’re not looking for is better than what you are.
I went to Sew Much Fun and Roz showed me her nearest polka dot approximation – blue fabric, white dots and a motif of roses. It looked like two bolts of Cath Kidston fabric rolled into one but was actually by an American designer, Tanya Whelan, who lives in Belgium (see her blog) http://grandrevivaldesign.typepad.com/
Rosie Dot. The fabric called out to me. I had no choice. I could already see clearly the outline of what I’d be making from it.

Tidings of Excitement and Joy

After my sewing course, Christmas loomed around the corner. A perfect opportunity to test run the Machine. Any socks and handkerchiefs that found their way into Santa’s sack in 2009 would all be handmade. By moose and Machine.
On the first day of Christmas we wondered what to make for the lovely Kat, Dan's girlfriend. A tough one this. What to give the girl with the perpetual smile; who could find excitement in an empty paper bag and whose idea of heaven is a square of brown cheese? The girl who spontaneously combusts each morning just through the sheer joy of being alive? The girl who wouldn’t know cynicism if it picked her, pickled her and turned her into an agurk?
Kat's Little Bag of Excitement, that’s what. Filled with hand-stuffed, hand-selected morsels of joy and exuberance. To make sure that the joy never, ever runs out. Spiffing.

A Moose is Born, November 2005

The next best thing to being a moose is having your own moose. So when it came to a 30th birthday present for a beloved best friend, the answer was simples. A life-sized stuffed moose. But where would one find such a beast? The answer, for anyone reading this far, should be obvious.
I must stress that I was very much the deputy in the making of this monstrous moose. As well as providing cups of tea, I did some pinning and tacking in addition to expert consultant advice on how to make the antlers stand erect (insert chopsticks) and what facial expression to have (perplexed). The bulk of the work fell, as usual, to our long-suffering seamstress who – if she’s reading this today – I wish Happy Mother’s Day. And thank you for the moose.
It truly was a creation of genius. If not quite the majestic king of the forest, at least a smaller, cuddlier version less likely to hurtle over your car bonnet and crash land in your passenger seat, alive, and perplexed. Yes, this has really happened. Though not to me, sadly. Or to our moose, which lives happily in a log cabin just outside the M25, its antlers drooping only slightly with the passing years.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11920063/

From Legs to Fishtail

Cast out into the wilderness, the moose went back to the Machine. It was a strange reunion, like being beamed back to the clunky, rather resentful mothership after a modern, state-of-the-sewing-machine-art interlude on Planet Roz.
'Where have you been these past six weeks?', the Machine seemed to say.
We were on a break…
Awkwardness. Clumsily fumbling with the bobbin, struggling to thread it in the guilty silence. Why are relationships so difficult? To make the peace, something needed to be made. What though? I’d been so used to being told what to do, handed bits of paper or fabric that I was suddenly at a loss.
Then my eye alighted on The Unpicker. One of the trusty trinity. And an idea sparked.
Sometimes sewing isn’t about making something from scratch. Sometimes it’s about taking one item and transforming it into another. Just like you can turn a prince into a frog (try harder) you can turn an old dress into a new top.
My friend Helen has been doing this for years, I was surprised and ashamed to discover.
‘Yeah, I’ve been sewing since I was little,’ she said. I’ve known her for years. I felt I should have know that.
‘Weird isn’t it. It’s something we never talk about.’ Until now. You can’t walk past any cafe-cum-purveyor of very expensive teas without seeing groups of thirty-something women busily waving their knitting needles or embroidery thread around. Normally when Helen and I meet for wine, talk is of men, work, Amazonian jungle treks. What would it mean if we talked of sewing machines and charity shop finds instead? A sign of the times? Or just another step towards the zimmer frame??!
So transformers, robots in disguise. I knew what I wanted to adapt. They'd been in the cupboard for years, waiting for the change. Well now it was coming. I've always liked jeans turned into denim skirts with the zig zaggy effect of splayed out seams. Surely my beloved old baggy black trousers would make that perfect little black skirt I've always felt was missing from my wardrobe.
I started with a surgical removal of the legs. Ten years of good walking, summarily chopped off. Next I picked up the Unpicker and started to unpick.
Unpick pick pick pick, pick pick pick pick, unpick the whole day through.
It was tough work. I'd never realised how much reinforcement goes into the crotch of a pair of trousers. It was like breaking into Fort Knox. A double layer of stitching made twice the work - funny; I always thought destruction would be easier than this. To top it all, I felt like a pervert, scrabbling away in such an intimate area.
Finally Fort Crotch lay open. I cut two long V-shapes to fill the gap between the flapping splayed-out legs and pinned the lot together. Then, black thread into the bobbin, I sewed it all up and used my new hemming skills to neaten up the now mid-thigh length. Curtain call...
'Look at my new skirt!'
'Why does it have a tail?'
It did. A weird sort of fish-tail poking out the back. I'd put back too much material, and now I was the Little Mermaid, in a neat reversal of the fairy tale. Still, that's the joy of sewing. Creation, transformation; you can change anything you put your hand to.
Why hello your Royal Highness.
Ribbet.

Two cushions twenty years apart

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.

History comes alive...

It would seem the last tango is for Stella McCartney. This is in her Paris collection as featured in the Independent today... it's the orange dress reborn!