This morning, walking in this glorious fall weather, I am reveling in the leaves raining down. I hold my face up to them as they drift around me to the ground, and the air seems to lighten at their touch.
This season, I've been more and more picking up needle and thread to do little quirky sewing projects (the weather is far too pretty for winter knitting yet). Though I don't do much shopping except for weekly groceries, I admit to sneaking into nearby Mulberry Silks and Fabrics, a fantasy in a cozy brick complex that was once a mill. It now houses small shops, as well as my primary grocery, Weaver Street Market, and in Mulberry I buy a yard here and there of colorful, eye-tickling material, sometimes knowing what I am going to make with them, sometimes not. Bright orange and blue, yellow polka dots, fanciful images...I can hardly choose.
In a wide-open, light-filled room the size of two-bedroom apartment, it's hard enough ordinarily to take in the jewels there. Indeed, wandering among the piled and hanging and binned bolts could take a whole afternoon. These days, wandering is forbidden...the store is open online, with online popup sales every week, or, for the very brave (like me), the cheerful, helpful, masked and gloved ladies who run the shop have set up a table at the doorway and will bring you any bolt your wandering eye wishes to consider. They like to know what you are planning, too, and offer suggestions and accessories. It's a dream, really...like shopping in Mr. or Mrs. General Store way back in those old television Westerns, only the ladies at Mulberry are a lot nicer than the mainly arch characters who, depending on the plot, may or may not deign to serve you their wares.
So far I have made two simple quilts to give as gifts (one successfully, one not so), two little bags I am keeping back as holiday gifts, some luncheon napkins (I'm infamous, I'm afraid, for my napkins, which I can turn out anytime I am bored), and, of course, a few more masks for everyday use.
The one most fun, however, was this lady, which in its primary stage Alexander called,"The Stinky Cheese Lady", after the children's book. Since then, I've managed, with a lot of scraps from those earlier projects, to lift her spirits, and at the moment, she's sitting outside on the porch waiting for Hallowe'en to begin. I'm thinking, with a week left, of giving her a friend.
The key word here is simple. I'm not anywhere near the adept seamstress my forebears were, but I can hem, patch holes and replace buttons and zippers...even, if pressed, put in a button-hole. I've made pillow cases and porch chair cushions when the need arose, curtains, tablecloths. I've tried needlepoint, but not often, and not so it mattered. I've sewn in art, of course...book bindings and collages, hangings, and other ephemera. But I'm not my grandmother and aunts, who whipped out practically my whole wardrobe from infancy, and made sure I was fitted and stitched properly otherwise. And while I greatly admire their skill and prolific activity, I am sadly not dedicated enough to do the precise and astonishing needlework of my friends Anne or Marty.
Beginning with a mostly clueless Singer Sewing Center class my mother and aunt desperately signed me up for one summer in my early teens, every now and then over the years I'd make A-line dresses or skirts, a tennis outfit, ties for my husband to wear to the clinic in the '70s, and years of Hallowe'en costumes, of course, as the children came along. I'm not sure I got any better with the practice, just more experienced at what to take on and what to leave to someone more expert.
Making things the slow way makes me feel...I'm not sure how to put it, exactly...a small link in an historical tradition as old as Eve, who had to find ways to cloth herself after the vines in Eden dried up. And there is no better way to induce calm, for sure. Even when the thread snarles, or I've got to rip a whole piece out, I'm still happy being part of something that feels essential. These days, that's a pleasure to hold tight to.
I realize I am romantizing what is really just a functional act, but still...does it not go along with art itself by hand, and music by hand, and building by hand and inventing by hand, baking bread or cultivating cheese or planting a garden? It is the process that engages me, like probably all those other creators, more than the product that ensues, as if the end result is just a byline of the real joy of making. It reminds me of my father in his garage workshop, who used to say about whatever he was working on, "Just making sawdust..."
Anyway, that's my excuse as I delve into my sewing basket. What's yours?
