I sewed a skirt out of old T-shirts, or This Could Be as Good as it Gets

Never Done: I sewed a skirt out of old T-shirts, or This Could Be as Good as it Gets

It's the vacation of new skirts! The day started out gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. I went for a long walk, we went out for breakfast, we went to the beach and swam and swam and swam, and even went for a walk on the sandbar, and sunbathed and sun-napped, and then before we knew it, a storm blew in and turned the sky dark and water aquamarine, and then lightning struck the lake and all the moms and dads got their kids out of the water, and the wind blew the umbrellas over, and people scrambled to pack up our towels and and goggles and chairs, and we all evacuated the beach in unison.

We got back to the house around 4 PM, and Karen and I started a new sewing project: skirts out of big old T-shirts. I didn't have enough big T-shirts with me to make one for myself, but both Karen and Andy gave me shirts to wear, and I ended up making a very New Yorky themed skirt. I think I'd be stretching it (so to speak) if I found something ethical in this endeavor. The truth is, I just thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with Karen and sewing, and I love my new skirt. At one point in the day, when we were sitting side by side, each sewing our own T-shirt ski, I remembers the very end of Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, when they have finally discovered how content they are to just hang out together, folding T-shirts. This could be as good as it gets.

I installed a zipper

Never Done: I installed a zipper (and almost finished making a skirt)

When Karen invited me to visit her in Michiana, she sent me a long list of things we could do that I've never before done. She knew what I'd never before done because she has known me since 1977, and also because she had just recently read one of my blog posts in which I posted a long list of things I'd still never done. One of which was sew undies out of t-shirts. I have still not sewn undies out of t-shirts, but Karen brought a book called Generation T: 120 Ways to Transform a T-shirt, along with a pile of fabric, and not one but TWO sewing machines.

I brought along three pieces of fabric I wanted to make things with, as well as the two pairs of hand-made undies (made from T-shirts) I bought from Etsy. The first thing I decided to do was a skirt. I had brought a large shirt that I had picked up at Brooks and Jeannie's annual New Year's Day clothing exchange. It had been Jewel's, and as soon as I saw it, I thought the fabric would make a very cute skirt. I even asked Jewel if she would mind if I took the shirt in order to transform it, and she loved the idea. So I deconstructed it, and laid out the fabric, and realized I would need some additional contrasting fabric in order to make a skirt. Karen also wanted to make something, so we headed into town to a fabric store, where I looked for contrasting fabrics to pair with my original.

Somewhere along the way, I found a fabric called French Country, which was line-drawn roosters on a cream background. And as I built this fabric into my others, it started to grab the focus, and before I knew it, I had to admit that my original fabric no longer fit into the world dominated by French Country. On the other hand, French Country was fantastic, and so were the fabrics we were finding to go with it.

I am often surprised that there is not a mide (middah) about dettachment, as there would most certainly be in a Buddhist ethical practice. (Here's a reminder list of the mides (middot). Maybe detachment is a combination of Order, Equanimity, and Patience?)

Humility: seek wisdom from everybody
Patience: Do not aggravate a situation with wasted grief
Equanimity: Rise above events that are inconsequential
Truth: Say nothing unless you are 100% sure it is true
Decisiveness: When you have made a decision, act without hesitation
Cleanliness: Let no stain or ugliness on our self/space
Order: All actions and possessions should have a set place and time
Righteousness: What is hateful to you do not do to others
Frugality: Be careful with your money
Diligence: Always find something to do
Silence: Reflect before speaking
Calmness: Words of the wise are stated gently
Separation: Respect in sexual and intimate relationships

In any event, I was able to let go of my original fabric, and to go in a new direction. And Karen and I picked up matching thread and invisible zippers, and headed back to start sewing. I've never actually made a skirt before, and I've definitely never put in a zipper before. On the other hand, I can cut out patterns, and I can pin things together, and I can sew a nice straight line, and I have made a couple lovely garments and hand bags. But I've never sewn a skirt, and I've never installed a zipper. Karen assured me she would help, and that it would be easy.

OK, so one out of two ain't bad. There is no question that she helped. She read instructions in three places -- the skirt directions, the sewing machine directions, and the directions on the zipper itself. She looked at my skirt panels and tried to figure out how to make sense of the directions with the reality of the pattern. And when we both got confused (because installing an invisible zipper is really not easy) she grabbed another one and installed it in some scrap material so she could help some more. All the while, she was incredibly careful to leave the actual zipper installation to me, because she understands the balance between helping someone and taking over someone's project. (It also bears mentioning that she was simultaneously working on her own project, which she extremely patiently stepped away from whenever I encountered a roadblock.)

As I write about this, I'm struck with how being both an ethical teacher and student require patience, equanimity, humility, order, diligence, silence and calmness. Were there times she showed me something I already knew? Absolutely. Were there times I forgot what she had just showed me? You bet. Did I want to finish the entire skirt in one day? Absolutely. Did I also want to take a long bike ride along the shores of Lake Michigan? You bet. And so we did both (what a fabulous bike ride!) and we went for a swim in the lake, and Karen worked on her other projects while she helped me, and we stopped and made corn pudding for dinner, and by the end of the day, I had in fact installed an invisible zipper, and I had made 9/10 of a skirt. All that's left is to put on the waste-band interfacing, to adjust the side seams (because at the moment the skirt is too large for me) and to trim up the hem.

Here are two photos of the skirt in progress. First the back (can you see the zipper? Well, yes, you can a little bit there at the bottom, but I'm going to fix that part by the time I wear it.)



Then the front:



Next time you see it, hopefully I'll be wearing it.

Be careful with everyone's money

Never Done: Went to the Celiac Center

After months on the waiting list, I finally had my first appointment at the Celiac Center. My doctor was an hour late seeing me (I read the New Yorker cover to cover for the first time in months and once again realized how un-funny I find Patricia Marx) but the doctor was focused and attentive and kind when she did see me. She asked a bunch of questions, did a physical exam, and drew blood; I didn't learn much -- the real information will come once the lab results start to come back -- but I felt like I was in the good hands of someone who has a broad knowledge of celiac and also the potentially related issues (thyroid, iron) I'm trying to solve.

This week's mide (middah) is Frugality: Be careful with your money. When I got done with my appointment, Dr. Lewis asked me if my insurance requires that she send to a particular lab. I found her question unusually thoughtful for a New York doctor. When I didn't know the answer, she asked Yvonne, her administrator, to check for me. Then, when Yvonne was helping me make ancillary appointments (endocrinologist, bone density test) she called my insurance company back to make sure she was clear on what they would and wouldn't cover. This all made me think about frugality a little more broadly than the way the mide is framed, and I decided to re-write it: Be careful with everyone's money. Maybe the big banks could take a lesson from these two women who have their hands full with their patients' medical needs, but who still take the time to guard other people's money. And if the big banks won't, then I will.

Pin by pin: I took a draping class

Never Done: Took a draping class

When I was in middle school, or maybe it was high school, we alternated metal shop and wood shop and cooking and sewing (home ec.) I liked all of it, but the teachers didn't all like me. Specifically, my sewing teacher used to make me face the wall because I talked too much, but the injustice of this was that I was usually talking with the home ec assistant, who was assisting me! Nonetheless, I didn't learn too well facing the wall, and consequently, I never excelled at sewing. Adding to my troubles was that our sewing machine at home was old, and the bobbin was forever tangling and causing me great frustration. I was good at needle crafts though -- embroidery especially -- so I was pretty good at hand sewing, and I stuck to that for years.

A few months after my mother died, I got a real hankering to sew. I'm not sure where it came from, because she wasn't a big sewer, but I followed the impulse, and went to a going-out-of-business sale in Auburn Maine, and bought myself a Project Runway Limited Edition Brother sewing machine. (It's pink!) The first thing I sewed was a gorgeous apron for my oldest friend, Claire. The kind of apron you're supposed to wear over jeans or a skirt, not the kind of apron you're supposed to cook in. It was reversible, with three complimentary fabrics, and I used interfacing and everything. After that I made some handbags (I still owe on to Robin and one to Leigh and I feel incredibly guilty about this) and a bunch of flax seed bags to heat up in the microwave, and even more balsam bags that just smell nice, and some feather pillows, and I have a pattern for a shirt that I haven't made yet because I don't know if it's going to fit me at the waist and I don't really know how to adapt it for myself.

And that's what leads me to this post. About a month ago, a Groupon came through for a class at the Textile Arts Center. I was super interested in haberdashery and shoemaking (who wouldn't be?) but the Groupon didn't cover those classes. So I looked through their offerings, and chose a class in draping -- so I can learn how to make clothes to fit me. My first class was very sweet, like an episode of Project Runway for beginners, with one ringer thrown in. Jamie is the teacher -- a former public policy wonk who was headed for a legal career when she threw it all in, left California, and came to NYC to design and sew; Jeannie -- a 50-something writer and copy editor who kept saying that she is behind the times because her phone doesn't take pictures; Janet -- a retired special educator from Teaneck with whom, I later found out, I share mutual friends; Beth -- a science teacher in a school in Bushwick who runs a sewing and knitting club; and Chris -- our ringer -- a Chelsea designer and filmmaker who used to work for a punk designer, so he "learned to do everything wrong" but seems to know how to do everything pretty right. And me.

Jamie started out with the basics -- the parts of the dress form, selvage, warp, weft, cross grain, straight grain. How to tear muslin. How to block muslin. (You drape muslin on the dress form to make your pattern.) After we took measurements of the dress form, we started marking up our muslin with a pencil. Since muslin is a somewhat loose weave, it's hard to make smooth rounded shapes on it -- the pencil tends to catch, and curves turn into angles. When it came time to mark the side seam on my muslin, Jamie suggested we just write SS -- and so I tried, only it came out angular, looking like the Schutzstaffel insignia, and I actually let out a little freaked-out yelp and then a laugh. Quickly I tried to erase it, and then I rewrote over it: Side Seam, still angular and messy, but at least not fascist.

It turns out I am pretty good at draping and smoothing and pinning muslin. I kept thinking about my years doing carpentry -- which is basically the same thing, only with stiffer and heavier materials. But you measure, you do math, you cut, you figure out how it will all fit together, and sometimes you have to take it apart. When I became a carpenter in my late 20's, I did it because I wanted to become more physically capable in the world -- as a way to combat internalized sexism. It turned out to be one of the smartest decisions I ever made, because I learned that every project. no matter how daunting, is accomplished step by step -- just like Anne Lamott teaches in her wonderful book on writing, Bird by Bird. So there I was, once again, probably the least experienced sewer in the class, but with years of trying new things under my belt, and I just reminded myself that this will be step by step, bird by bird, pin by pin. And one day I will make myself a wonderful dress that I design myself. And somewhere inside, I might have to hide an SS, just to make myself laugh.

What I knew when I was eight

Never done: Shadow post
Tshuve: Hula Hoop
Tshuve: Spinning
Tshuve: Knitting

I did something I've definitely never done before, but it is too private to write about here. (I still don't quite know how to navigate those waters, so I am just going with my gut for now, and keeping it private when it seems like I should.)

It was also a day of returning. First of all, I got my hula hoop back out of storage! I have the most beautiful cloth-covered hula hoop I've ever seen in my life. My good friend Jensi gave it to me for my 40th birthday. It's hand-made in Portland, by someone who called her (now defunct) business Hoopla Hoops. She had an incredible warehouse of hoops and fabrics, and invited people in to mix and match colors. Mine is covered in two fabrics: nubbly grass green and furry black and white cow motif. It's 40" in diameter, and it's weighted, so it twirls very steadily for as long as I feel like gyrating. I find hooping to be incredibly relaxing. When I am writing and need to think for a while but don't want to get distracted, I like to hoop. When my body needs to loosen up, I like to hoop. When I want to show off my grass green/cow motif hoop, I like to hoop in public. People who have known me since I was little know that I have always been a perpetual motion machine. I always liked to balance, be upside-down, roll on things, climb, play with balls.... My dad made me a set of stilts that I walked around on; I jumped on a pogo stick and rode a unicycle; I did a lot of handstands, especially after dinner, which was hard for some people to understand; and my favorite toy was an old cardboard roll -- imagine the cardboard core at the center of a toilet paper roll, and now make the cardboard three inches thick, 18 inches in diameter, and 36 inches long. I walked on it like it was a log in the river -- all over the house. Until one day someone tried to tickle me while I was on it (I have always hated to be tickled) and I panicked, and my foot went through a glass paneled door. A trip to the emergency room for stitches, and no more rolling in the house, which I found to be soooo unfair. Who tickles someone who's walking on a river log? For that matter, who tickles people? (I really hate to be tickled.)

I hadn't done a handstand in a couple years, but as I've been gaining upper body strength back, I checked last week to see if I could do one again -- and I can! It's not without repercussion though -- I think that's what flared up my neck, not spinning -- so I am still going to ease into doing them more often. Speaking of spinning, I took another class (worse music, less interesting instructions, better reminders about form, like using my abdominal muscles, and breathing in through the nose, and out through the shoulders.) I think I will keep going from time to time, but probably not 4-5 times a week like a certain buff and obsessed friend of mine. I am also going to try a Zumba class, if I can get past the tagline: Skip the workout; Join the party! Eh.

But maybe the most important return -- tshuve -- came when I went to pick up soup at Abigail's apartment. Her apartment is full of yarn and knitting projects and a loom. And not just any knitting projects and loom -- exquisite knitting projects and a full-sized loom. At the end of the evening, I told Abigail how good it felt to be in her place and see her projects. I told her that I realized I had lost some of myself, and that starting to spend time with people who are connected to their cooking/crafting/art projects is good for me -- and will help me return to this part of myself.

From the time I was about 8 til 18, when I wasn't hopping and jumping and standing and bouncing and riding, I was embroidering. My mom designed crewel embroidery kits and sold them to Custom House. I used to go with her to trade shows, and I used to love to embroider my own designs. I remember bringing my embroidery to class when my third grade teacher wouldn't give me extra work to do when I finished early, which I always did because I had been in a terrific second grade class (taught by Deb Chabot.) I remember practicing the seed stitch, and the stem stitch, and the french knot, and square filet. I remember tracing drawings I liked and turning them into embroidery patterns. Maybe it was another form of perpetual motion, but for times when I couldn't move my whole body, but I at least kept my hands and my mind going.

My mom was also always a knitter, but I didn't learn until I went to college. But once I learned, I was unstoppable. I knit ponchos, sweaters, skirts. I liked to knit in the round, usually playing with color more than stitch variation. I knit pretty steadily from about age 20 to 30. And then I slowly stopped. Before sitting down to write this, I would have told you that New York made me stop. In fact, I think I told Abigail that New York made me stop -- that I don't have enough space, that I work all the time. But as I write this, I realize that I didn't move to New York until I was almost 40, and I had grown apart from my embroidery floss and beautiful wool and other projects about 10 years earlier. Not to mention all the music I used to play, and don't anymore ... which will be a topic of another post. And while I do think New York has a part to play, you know what else it was? The computer. You can't knit and write email. You can't embroider and check Facebook.

Now, I've also become a much more prolific writer in those ten years, and I love using my computer to write. And it is true that I have to work harder to live in New York than I had to work living in Maine or Oregon. But it's also true that instead of spending my free time sitting with friends making things, I sit with the computer looking at things that other people have made. It's a radically different orientation -- and one that I am ready to shift away from.

Even though that was a great place to end the post, and this post is already long, there is something else to add. After my mother died, I had a strong urge to buy a sewing machine and to start sewing. I have never been a strong sewer, except by hand, and neither was my mother, and yet somehow this was the pull. So I bought a wonderful limited edition Project Runway Brother machine. I made several handbags, a gorgeous reversible apron, lots of balsam-filled sachets and flax-seed-filled bags to heat up to keep warm at night. But I only sew in Maine. I keep promising myself I will sew in New York, but I don't make the time. I have some gorgeous fabrics, and I owe my cousin Leigh and my friend Robin each a handbag, and I want to learn how to put in a zipper and make button holes and sew my own clothes. From now on, I'm going to think about the exquisite pair of mittens in Abigail's apartment, and how she talked about the way those of us who did not grow up in a place as vibrant as NYC, with dozens of interesting things to do every night (and I will add to that, the distractions of the internet) learned how to entertain ourselves. I think I've lost the skill of entertaining myself in this way, and I want to get it back. So I am going to ask myself if I really need to check email, or if maybe I would rather make something out of yarn, fabric, needles, and thread.