Readers,
Yesterday I started a quick project to make a skirt to match my blue and white linen 1930s jacket. So I pulled my pattern, supplies, and voluminous notes on the six skirts I’ve made from this pattern in the last three years.
Readers, I don’t know how this happened, but a sad cat got into my notes and rewrote them.
Here are some excerpts.
Dear Diary: I am determined to sew a skirt although the authorities are doing their best to thwart me. Follow the instructions as written? Ha! What do they take me for–a fool?
Dear Diary: The pattern calls for a centered zipper application. Centered zipper applications are topstitched. Topstitching attracts attention–right to the center back seam. How vulgar. I will use an invisible zipper.
Dear Diary: The authorities don’t line this skirt, either. This is outrageous. But what can you expect from people who want the back seam of your skirt to scream “Homemade!” I have standards.
(Sigh.) I will line the skirt.
Dear Diary: After reading the instructions in Pants for Real People and watching the It’s in the Details DVD sixteen times each I have subverted Marta Alto’s evil plot and successfully installed an invisible zipper.
Dear Diary: I am on the very edge of madness. There is bulk in the zipper seam at the waistline. Bulk is not couture. How I suffer. But I carry on.
Dear Diary: I am following instructions called “Quick lining a skirt with waist facings” in Connie Long’s Easy Guide to Sewing Linings. “Quick”? “Easy”? Don’t make me laugh.
The authorities are unwilling to face the truth. Would “Painfully slowly lining a skirt” from Difficult Guide to Sewing Linings sell fewer books? Perhaps.
Dear Diary: The lining went in without a hitch. Yet another scheme foiled. I feel quietly triumphant.
Dear Diary: I have now made six skirts from this pattern. They all look good.
The running dogs have been defeated. Again.
Thanks, me.
Shall I tempt fate and make another skirt?
Better sleep on it.
