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.