I have been a little unsettled the last week and not able to focus my attentions on sewing. This seems to happen a great deal. I have thought about sewing. I have a project cut out and ready to go; it will not take long, but I diddle about with other things. After guests leave I always need a couple of days just to wander about and kind of re-connect with my space. It is not like anything really changes, but all the extra fuss and stuff, and disturbance, gets me off balance. I suppose I am too solitary and too much of a homebody. I certainly can sympathize with Miss Cat when she comes home from boarding – she has to wander about and look at everything, try all the napping places, kind of get resettled.
A VHS tape arrived today showing the fall Carlisle Collection and I started to look at it. There was nothing spectacularly interesting there: some interesting trapunto stitching on one jacket, one nice suit made of a lightweight boucle with coordinating charmeuse piping and a pretty skirt made of boucle with godets of the same charmeuse. It looked like a pleated skirt or a “car wash” skirt with the charmeuse behind it. There was certainly nothing I was tempted to buy and very little I was tempted to make. The whole thing was so boring that I had to stop the tape half way through as I was falling asleep. I think I am better off just looking at the designer fashion show photos on the web. I still have the Armani CD I got two years ago and I would love to get a Ralph Rucci CD as well, but have to recognize that I simply don’t spend enough real cash with these designers to ever get on their CD lists. I am sure that Carlisle is trying to lure me back to the fold
When I look at clothes now I am most prone to saying “I could make that”, except for a few really special designer garments where sometimes I am taken by the workmanship or unusual design. I will admit I sometimes just fall in love with the fabric. Then there are the garments I look at and say I would have to make that, those that would be difficult to fit on me from ready to wear. I could make them look good but there would be a good bit of pattern preparation beforehand. They fill my head with ideas and inspirations, often with plays of cut, color combinations, and design I would have never come up with on my own.
Of course if I don’t shop and I don’t sew I will have to live in brown paper bags – that will not happen. I am just more in knitting and landscaping mode than sewing mode right now.
Truthfully part of my general sewing malaise stems from the entire fit issue (again). I have had trouble standing up straight lately–I list forward or to either side. I don’t feel any pain, I just look funny. If I try to stand up straight, that’s what hurts. I feel as if my hips and my back have somehow become disassociated from each other – I know that is not what has happened, something has settled, that is just how I feel when I try to make them work together. The good news as there is nothing new or major wrong, I am able to do most things, sometimes more slowly than I used to, and I have far less back pain than I have had in years. The bad news is it is hard to get clothes to fit. The dress I made for Neil’s wedding looked terrible when I tried it on last weekend, but it looked great when I made it, or at least it did the one part of one day when I was pretty upright. The problem is in the middle, the waist area, where the bodice and the skirt have to meet – it pulled on one side and had a big buckle. That was due to the way I was standing.
In desperation I tried on the dress I made for Adam’s wedding last summer and the good news was that it was now to big through the hips, and easy fix, but it had the same pull and buckling through the waist. Separates work better because top and bottom can each just go their own way. I wore a pantsuit to the wedding, a nice one, but some part of me feels that weddings are for pretty dresses.
I think the fit issue has been a large part of why I haven’t bothered sewing anything particularly complicated,. The separates I have made lately have fit well and have become favorite outfits. Even they fit better on some days than others. Matilda is a much better model as she consistently stands straighter than I. I suppose I am just not ready to reconcile myself to the bent over life – I am convinced that new exercise and stretching routines can help, and am giving it a go. The new routines, and training help, take a lot of time and cut heavily into my available sewing time but the long-term payout should be worth the effort. Improvement so far has been slow but I am hoping it will increase with time. If in the end, I need to alter my fitting skills again and adapt to a more angular existence this is a manageable fate. I’m just not willing to give in without a bit of a fight.