Big Sigh

Well, the re-making of the velvet duster is basically finished, but there's some issue that's bugging me a lot, and I'm trying to figure out how to resolve it. Because so much stuff has been done to the part where the ruffle joins the body (cut off the heavy lace, stitched on velvet ribbon, then this new re-making), it's gotten thick and stiff, and so the jacket hangs as if there's a wire in there. This could be cool, giving it a lot of swing and movement, but it could also be icky in a way I can't quite pin down yet. I still don't know.

OK, so here's what it looks like. Yeah, I should have some pride, I know: take better photos, try to make it look snazzy. I've been cruising on Magnolia Pearl's website (and I'm sorry, but I have to say: that music is so annoying to me that I have to mute the Mac--the least people could do is give a turn-off-the-music option, right?) this morning, and man! Talk about some styled photos. Mine are, um, the opposite of styled. I don't care about styling. Sure, I'd like to have better photos for y'all, but it's not a priority; just getting them taken so I can show what I'm doing and then *get back to doing it*--that's the priority.

And, yeah, this room's a mess. It's got a table set up to hold some of the stuff from the sewing studio (less than 48 hours until Window Week!), and I'm getting claustrophobic already.

I think part of the problem is that, since I don't have a serger, I did a couple things. I sewed the ruffle section on, and then I turned the edges of that seam down and stitched them flat, and then I zig-zagged the edge of *that*--so there's a lot of sewing there in the hope that it won't ravel. But I think I have to cut off the zig-zagged part and just hope for the best--I think that may be part of what's making it stiff. I had some moments last night when I thought I should just rip it all out and start over, but I came to my senses. I hate it when I get like this: on the one hand, I love funky and asymmetrical, raw edged and wrinkled and rough. On the other hand, I *am* my mother's daughter, and this was a woman who would think about something for days before she'd ever cut the fabric, have it all planned out in her head, measure and re-measure, pin and baste and then, when she was done, there wasn't an unfinished seam anywhere. Everything was straight and even and finished and perfect. If not? Duh. Rip it out and do it over. And again, if necessary.

Is it any wonder that she didn't teach me to sew? I learned stuff from watching her, but neither of us had the patience to try to overcome our innate differences to make it possible for her to teach me. (I drove her crazy with my love of hippie style--I was forbidden to wear the things I wanted to because they were too sloppy, too--well, too out there. Things had to be ironed, which didn't interest me. No funkiness anywhere.) I like to get an idea and jump in and make it work, with wonky seams and all. But then, when I'm done, some part of me critiques each thing I've done less-than-perfectly. My sloppy seams and lack of measuring, my uneven cutting and just generally not-perfect-ness. It's driven me crazy all my life, and I've just lately figured out why--that it's what I love vs. what I think I should be doing, all the way back to that day in high school when I first opened Native Funk & Flash and knew that this--this!--was what I loved.

Not that I was allowed to wear it. Or anything like it. But I loved it!

Alas. A gypsy-funky-loving woman who grew up in a tailored-to-a-fare-thee-well home.

No, I don't do tailoring. I never have. It's not that I've ever TRIED to sew that way; it's that I still haven't totally subdued the part of me that thinks I SHOULD.

So I'm at war with myself today. Leave it like it is and start hand-stitching, making it lie better and be smoother. Or rip it out and start over? (No. No, no, nononononononono. it makes me tense just typing that.)

Or something in between?

I think I'll go with Door #3, please, Monty!  I'll be back later to give an update. I hope: unless I drive myself totally crazy over this and cut it all up with the shears.