Simply Sewing is so en Vogue!

Years ago, back when I was in high school, one of the subjects taught was Home Ec. It was taught to the female students primarily and we were taught how to prepare and cook everything from homemade biscuits to yeast rolls to a complete dinner meal. We were also taught sewing. I remember those instructions.

My Mom was an excellent seamstress. Every night I would be working on my sewing homework project and she would be looking over my shoulder. She actually taught me more about sewing than Ms. Bert Johnson. Mother had me ripping out seams and redoing them constantly. But I did learn to sew. I also learned that Simplicity made the best patterns and Vogue made impossible one.

When I went off to college at the ‘W’, one of the things that I took with me was a brand new Singer Touch and Sew sewing machine. It was a graduation gift from Mom. It came in handy many times.

The Touch and Sew finally blew a ‘gasket’ one day and I upgraded for a newer model that had some more bells and whistles on it. I continued to make some of my own clothes for several years and when my girls were little I made some outfits for them. Then alas the dear little sewing machine sat silently within its case, gathering dust in a forgotten dark corner of my closet.

Until last week, that is. Darling daughter Ariel, the college freshman, is in a Social Club. They have to have their ‘official’ red dress for those special club occasions. So I told her that I would make her dress. How hard could it be?

It was back in January that she told me about needing the dress. Every week I would ask where is the pattern and the fabric. Every week I go the same answer. Finally, on Palm Sunday no less, she comes home for a day visit and hands me the fabric and the pattern. It was a Vogue pattern and Chinese red silk shantung. Obviously whomever had picked the pattern and the style of dress AND the type of fabric, had never sewn a single stitch in their lives.

Then she told me she needed it to be finished by Easter Sunday!

For the sewing clueless, Vogue is probably the hardest patterns to sew because they are sized so strangely and silk shantung is the slickest, nubbiest fabric you can encounter. She didn’t have a notion what a notion was so I had to make a trip to Oxford to get the two zippers, the thread, the interfacing, hooks and a new pair of scissors. It seems that some one had gotten my good fabric shears and had cut paper with them.

I didn’t get the pattern pinned on and the pieces cut until Thursday evening. I realized that even tho she had gotten the size she thought she needed, I was going to have to make some adjustments. I had to take her measurements and do some creative cutting to make everything fit properly.

Friday afternoon I started sewing. My audience of teenage girls stood and watched me as I pinned pieces and matched notches and lined up seams and sewed them together. Ariel had to press out each seam as I finished. They were all full of questions about why there was interfacing and why I had to make the darts and why did I have to clip the curved seams.

The zipper was the big determining factor for me. I called dear sweet Mom during one of my frustrated moments and was asking her about a weird sewing term that was in the Vogue instructions. She had never heard of it either. I was on my own. After a shaky start I got the hidden zippers in both the skirt and the blouse. I made the last hem stitch at about 10 pm Saturday night.

The moment of truth had finally arrived. Ariel put the outfit on and lo and behold it fit like a glove. Ever thing was where it was supposed to be….I could not believe that I had actually done it. We went to Mom’s to show her. She didn’t find anything wrong with it so I knew I was home free.

I don’t know what Ariel’s other Pledge Sisters are doing about their short notice dresses. But my daughter is going to be prancing around in the dress that her Mom made. And she thinks that I am ‘Da bomb!’ because I know how to sew. Whew!