Learn to sew my own clothes!

i’ve been wanting the perfect high-waisted pencil skirt for awhile now. as it stands, i’m probably going to have to make it myself. doing it myself makes a lot of sense to me. i’m already DIY with my art. why not the rest of my life?

obviously, making my own clothes and/or reinforcing what i find is a lot cheaper than buying anything off the rack. when i was little, my mother/grandmother/aunts made all my clothes, unless there was a massive end of the season sale happening at dillards or kesslers or montgomery ward. i can remember going into the singer store and watching my mother looking in a book for a number and pulling those long shelf drawers of patterns to find that just right one. and the endless bolts of fabric and all the things that went with it – hooks, buttons, you name it. if she needed curtains, she made them. that was our way, the southern way – make what you need, whenever possible.

eventually, my cousin leslie and i were sent to a singer store in the mall in charleston, sc to take sewing classes. in time, i got good at it. why did i ever stop? hm. college, probably…

well, lo and behold – whilst traipsing through online searches, i found sewing classes in the garment district. they’re called sew fast, sew easy. and you know what? they are. and affordable, too. wow!

this doesn’t mean that i won’t be raiding those sales bins or on the lookout for beautiful samples. after all, this is new york city. and i’m not giving up my russian tailor, either. but this will make things much more interesting visually.

here’s a question for the ages: why is it so hard to find outfits in primary colors for women? it’s almost as though the entire garment industry has these seasons upon occasion where they would like for all adult females of a certain age to disappear – or at least fade into the background, in camouflage colors like beige or ecru or eggshell. or black.

the longer i live, the more i realize that i’m right to where i was all along when i was about nine or ten: cooking and baking everything from scratch for the entire household; sewing and knitting and crocheting; wandering off into the woods and disappearing into a good book; writing all the time and wallowing in good ideas; growing my very own garden, and surrounding myself with plants indoors. i’m the same as i ever was.

i’m totally going to give this to myself as a birthday present. this should take up a significant chunk of my summer but it’ll be worth it if you see me wearing that pencil skirt before the end of the year.

how hard can it possibly be to make a pencil skirt?

so i fall into a conversation with lauren the wardrobe mistress backstage while the show is up and running and as i watch one of the stitchers repair a costume, i tell her that i want to sew, that i used to sew when i was a little kid, i used to make the most wonderful things. i tell her that i have a sewing machine but i just can’t get it off the ground. and she suggests that i get a pattern and figure it out but i’m like, there’s no pattern centers in nyc—lots of fabric but none of those stores with those big drawers that you open up and pick out whatever you want in the proper size and all that. i can totally remember sitting at my mother’s elbow while she went through bin after bin, looking for the just-right pattern to make curtains or something.

so lauren says, we can go shopping for patterns if you want. we can go whenever. and as God is my witness, it felt just like christmas.

we are going tomorrow afternoon. wheee! she’s starting in on the next show - the king and i (it’s summer stock after all) - and a lot of the cast members are in that show as well. should be interesting to see how the show changes, what with a lot of folks rehearsing during the day and doing this gig at night.

i want an oversized african bag to carry all of my stuff for the day. i want to wear low heeled pumps, pencil skirts and t-shirts with thugged out hoodies for the rest of the year, with variations in vintage diane von furstenburg wrap dresses and maybe some high heeled sneakers and some hot pants to break up the monotony. i want a vintage men’s suit to carry me into the fall. i don’t want to look like anyone else—and as long as i’m true to myself, there’s no chance of that ever happening. now i feel that i can without going broke.

i’m so glad i came up here. i was in dire need of a vacation. everything happens for a reason. i know it’s probably a little ambitious, but i’m going to make something for myself as a birthday present (june 30th).