Thought processes of a crazy person
When you first agree to sew 36 dance costumes you are optimistic. True, it’s a lot of work and you have a baby in the house and it falls in the six weeks that include two major holidays and lead up to the third, biggest holiday of all. But never mind. You can do this and it will be fun. Your designs will be brilliant! And original! And beautiful! And easy to sew! And within budget! A hush will fall over the audience when your group of dancers takes the stage and afterward you will be swarmed by grateful parents anxious to pay compliments and audience members ready to hire you to create more wonders. So you sit down with your piece of 8 1/2 x 11 paper and your newly sharpened No. 2 pencil and you are ready to design. And you think and you think and then you eat some chocolate. And you check your email and just maybe you get distracted reading blogs for maybe a long time. But then you get back on task and you think some more. And nothing comes to mind except for stuff you did last year. After a few hours of blank, you finally give up and browse costume websites and kinda sorta copy what they have. So the designs aren’t that original, no matter. They will still be beautiful and perfectly made. Then you go to the fabric store and you wander the aisles with your little paper of calculations and measurements. You compare fabric and figure the cost on your stupid itty bitty cell phone calculator because you forgot to bring a real calculator. And you realize that even with the miracle that is the 40% off coupon, your budget is very, very small. Finally you take your fourth and fifth choice fabrics to the cutting table where you weep silently at what might have been while the clerk gives you the fish eye and measures out your yardage. But a day later! Optimism! Again! So they won’t be made from the expensive stretch lycra or the sparkle studded organza, but they can still be fierce. You vow that everything will be sewn right with razor straight seams, perfectly turned hems, and an exacting fit. So you begin to make your 36 perfect, perfect costumes. Then the fabric rolls while you’re cutting it, the needle jams in the machine, and you spear yourself with pins and bleed all over someone’s pants. After a few hours of this you decide you’ll still go for perfect on the outside but allow a few unnoticeable mistakes on the inside. More sewing and you realize that even surface perfection takes time and anything multiplied by 36 is overwhelming. And also, you really hate matching up Velcro. And your standards slip a little more. You start to not care that a row of sequins doesn’t align exactly with the seam line. You don’t worry that the elastic rolled a bit at the edge or that every stitch isn’t the exact same length. You maybe start to think a few four letter words and even say a couple of those words when it’s very late and you’ve sewn the wrong pieces together and have to start over. And after four nights in a row of 3:00 in the morning you start to yearn for that most wonderful of all four-letter words - DONE.
4 Responses to “Thought processes of a crazy person”
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November 26th, 2007 at 8:29 am
*Looks up from reading blogs for maybe a long time*
What? Five quilts?
Two and a half weeks is totally enough time.
PS: Please don’t call me a crazy person anymore.
(LOL!)
November 26th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Holy Cow! You’re my hero!
Now THAT is some ambition!
November 27th, 2007 at 3:18 am
Really good and really interesting post. I expect (and other readers maybe :)) new useful posts from you!
Good luck and successes in blogging!
November 28th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
You’re doing better than a woman I met last Friday. She needed to find 30 yards of red sparkly fabric to make rockette costumes by yesterday with.
I hope you find “done” soon.
Now, back to my projects, of which I have no officially lost count.