My Secret Super Power
Alright, I was going to do the next installment of the Gentleman's guide to buying gifts for women. While I've been sitting here in the shop sewing some new men's aprons I kept trying to think how I would write it and I kept coming back to the original post. I pretty much summed it up already in my opinion. If any men were reading that and hoping for more pointers you can e-mail me and I'll tell you what I know. I do still want to do a post about the worst presents ever received from a man, but so far I've got only a couple responses. So I've decided to make it into a contest to win an apron. I will make a separate post with an announcement in the next day or two.
Instead of trying to rack my brains for more gift buying tips I have been realizing that I have a secret power that was so secret I didn't even realize it until today. I can sew.
Yup, that's my super power. I always thought it was being able to silence a room full of cheery people with a conversational bomb. But I was wrong. (Unless I have two superpowers, and who's that lucky?) See, for the last twenty-five years I've thought of sewing as a craft, a skill, a job, and a hobby. Today I finally saw the light. For years I have been inundated with requests for custom sewing jobs from family, friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers. When someone learns that you can sew, that you ever did it professionally, they believe that you are able to sew absolutely anything. Like magic. They are dissatisfied with their search for the perfect pair of pants (I've been there my friends, I feel your pain) and they ask if I can make the perfect pair for them.
I once tried to make a perfect pair of pants in the perfect color for a gentleman we'll call "Ned" (because I'm still scared of him and who knows where he's got himself to?). This was way back when I was first sewing with Autumn Adamme and we started our custom costuming company called Dark Garden (which she still owns). One of our first jobs was to make Ned a pair of Khakis, in a shade of beige not too green, but not too grey either, a little bit redder than the swatch he brought, but not quite as light. The fit needed to be just so around his tiny little ass and the length, well, you can just imagine the leg had to fall "just so" which is a description people use as though it means something. What it means is that you will make the same pair of pants five times and in the end it won't be the fit Ned hates, it will be the color of the fabric. Ned thought I had magical powers to divine his most intimate pant dreams and make it happen.
We almost had to kill him at the last fitting.
Sewing is magic because I can take an idea I have, I can draft it onto paper, play with seams until I get it how I imagined it (or kick my sewing table repeatedly in frustration) and then I can cut out fabric in abstract shapes that I fit together with thread and when I'm done I've made something three dimensional that came from my head.
I get an amazing amount of requests to make people things they have imagined and can't find. It has often annoyed me. I want to tell people that in order for me to make what's in their heads we would have to have fifteen hours of surgery to conjoin our brains into one, which may not be safe, just so I can see through their grey cells into that vision of the perfect tea cozy they want me to make them for five dollars. Sometimes they just want a mending job. For friends or family lucky enough to convince me to do it (and who have the determination to poke and prod me until it's done), I don't mind them using my super powers for personal gain. But I get especially annoyed at random people asking me to fix something for them. Why don't they take it to an alterations shop? They ask me because they figure I come cheaper. I'll be desperate for work, they'll get professional work for half the price. If I say yes they'll feel like they just got an extra wish from the genie.
A man came in the shop today looking for one of those thingies that you put at the bottom of a door to stop a draft. I told him I didn't have any of those and made a couple of suggestions for other places he might be able to find them. Then he asked if I could make him one. Damn it! I told him as nicely as I could that I don't do custom work. He walked away, as they all do, with the air of a kid whose fairy godmother just got caught in a drunken brawl, the disappointment is palpable. You know, it's not easy being a super hero. These gifts come with burdens.
Max believes I can make anything with my sewing machine just like he believes his dad can fix anything with glue. I think, at six years old, his faith is beginning to crack at the corners. Which is just as well, the burden of his faith is a heavy one. My little guy is not exactly a huge fan of my cooking since I can't cook things into boxes with labels, so I have to confess that it is with pleasure that I make things for him. It's wonderful how much he loves the battered embroidered pillow my mother made for me when I was a kid. He sleeps with it every night. It has all of my family's names on it except for his, because he wasn't born yet. So he told me he wants one that has his name on it. He says this while hugging the sad embroidered lumpy object of love with that sweet sleepiness I find so irresistible. He so earnestly wants me to make him his own special pillow. When I tell him I don't know how to embroider, he looks at me like I'm the slowest person he's ever met and says "Well, why don't you learn, mama?"
And I'll be damned, within a month of that conversation I have learned to embroider.
Obviously, as a super hero with the gifts I have, I must use them sometimes for the good of others. I decided today that whenever anyone asks me if I will make them something different, I will repress the urge to shout at them that "I don't do custom because it's a pain in my ass!" I will pretend to consider their request (to show my respect) and then I will say no. Unless it's for a friend or family member in great need, or unless it's to benefit the community in some way.
Instead of trying to rack my brains for more gift buying tips I have been realizing that I have a secret power that was so secret I didn't even realize it until today. I can sew.
Yup, that's my super power. I always thought it was being able to silence a room full of cheery people with a conversational bomb. But I was wrong. (Unless I have two superpowers, and who's that lucky?) See, for the last twenty-five years I've thought of sewing as a craft, a skill, a job, and a hobby. Today I finally saw the light. For years I have been inundated with requests for custom sewing jobs from family, friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers. When someone learns that you can sew, that you ever did it professionally, they believe that you are able to sew absolutely anything. Like magic. They are dissatisfied with their search for the perfect pair of pants (I've been there my friends, I feel your pain) and they ask if I can make the perfect pair for them.
I once tried to make a perfect pair of pants in the perfect color for a gentleman we'll call "Ned" (because I'm still scared of him and who knows where he's got himself to?). This was way back when I was first sewing with Autumn Adamme and we started our custom costuming company called Dark Garden (which she still owns). One of our first jobs was to make Ned a pair of Khakis, in a shade of beige not too green, but not too grey either, a little bit redder than the swatch he brought, but not quite as light. The fit needed to be just so around his tiny little ass and the length, well, you can just imagine the leg had to fall "just so" which is a description people use as though it means something. What it means is that you will make the same pair of pants five times and in the end it won't be the fit Ned hates, it will be the color of the fabric. Ned thought I had magical powers to divine his most intimate pant dreams and make it happen.
We almost had to kill him at the last fitting.
Sewing is magic because I can take an idea I have, I can draft it onto paper, play with seams until I get it how I imagined it (or kick my sewing table repeatedly in frustration) and then I can cut out fabric in abstract shapes that I fit together with thread and when I'm done I've made something three dimensional that came from my head.
I get an amazing amount of requests to make people things they have imagined and can't find. It has often annoyed me. I want to tell people that in order for me to make what's in their heads we would have to have fifteen hours of surgery to conjoin our brains into one, which may not be safe, just so I can see through their grey cells into that vision of the perfect tea cozy they want me to make them for five dollars. Sometimes they just want a mending job. For friends or family lucky enough to convince me to do it (and who have the determination to poke and prod me until it's done), I don't mind them using my super powers for personal gain. But I get especially annoyed at random people asking me to fix something for them. Why don't they take it to an alterations shop? They ask me because they figure I come cheaper. I'll be desperate for work, they'll get professional work for half the price. If I say yes they'll feel like they just got an extra wish from the genie.
A man came in the shop today looking for one of those thingies that you put at the bottom of a door to stop a draft. I told him I didn't have any of those and made a couple of suggestions for other places he might be able to find them. Then he asked if I could make him one. Damn it! I told him as nicely as I could that I don't do custom work. He walked away, as they all do, with the air of a kid whose fairy godmother just got caught in a drunken brawl, the disappointment is palpable. You know, it's not easy being a super hero. These gifts come with burdens.
Max believes I can make anything with my sewing machine just like he believes his dad can fix anything with glue. I think, at six years old, his faith is beginning to crack at the corners. Which is just as well, the burden of his faith is a heavy one. My little guy is not exactly a huge fan of my cooking since I can't cook things into boxes with labels, so I have to confess that it is with pleasure that I make things for him. It's wonderful how much he loves the battered embroidered pillow my mother made for me when I was a kid. He sleeps with it every night. It has all of my family's names on it except for his, because he wasn't born yet. So he told me he wants one that has his name on it. He says this while hugging the sad embroidered lumpy object of love with that sweet sleepiness I find so irresistible. He so earnestly wants me to make him his own special pillow. When I tell him I don't know how to embroider, he looks at me like I'm the slowest person he's ever met and says "Well, why don't you learn, mama?"
And I'll be damned, within a month of that conversation I have learned to embroider.
Obviously, as a super hero with the gifts I have, I must use them sometimes for the good of others. I decided today that whenever anyone asks me if I will make them something different, I will repress the urge to shout at them that "I don't do custom because it's a pain in my ass!" I will pretend to consider their request (to show my respect) and then I will say no. Unless it's for a friend or family member in great need, or unless it's to benefit the community in some way.