Stitches

My cousin sews a mean seam. She selects gorgeous fabrics, makes her own patterns and sews stunning clothes. I am in awe of great seamstresses.

Unfortunately, I did not inherit the family gene for sewing. Early in our marriage, my husband gave me a sewing machine as a very special, surprise Christmas present. The real surprise turned out to be how ill-suited this machine and I were to each other.

The instruction manual for my sewing machine was positively frightening. Plus it was written in a strange hybrid language best described as Japanese English. No matter how hard I tried to follow the directions, bad things always happened; big loopy stitches, puckered up stitches, very wavy lines of stitches.

I quickly figured out that putting a garment together also required accurate measuring. My preferred method of measuring has always been "eyeballing".

Fortunately for me, sack dresses were in style at that time. I actually managed to sew several large rectangles together with a drawstring on top. Fashion was on my side.

My sewing machine and I parted company one day when I was mending split seams. The bobbin had turned itself into a piece of tumbleweed. I yelled to my 10 year old son for help. He took a long, hard look at what I had done to the machine.

"Just go do something else," he said. "I'll do the sewing for you."

Through the years I have inherited two more sewing machines. I immediately put them out for adoption.

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