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Most home sewers dream of a permanent home for the sewing machine and its paraphernalia. To be able to strew pattern pieces as needed over the area and leave them there regardless of meals.
When we moved to Toronto I finally achieved this bit of heaven. The four upstairs rooms were allotted to sleeping teenagers. But the basement was unspoken for. No one wanted our basement.
Now, what constitutes a finished basement? The most minimal qualification must be: not a dirt floor. Well, there you are. We have a concrete floor. Before I found my sewing corner we also had created a room—the CBRA room-in the middle of the open underground space. Canadian Book Review Annual was a book reviewing service for libraries that DinoVino had started before we met. When I moved to Toronto, CBRA was in need of a manager, so I took on the job and we created an enclosed space (called a room) for the desk and the books, books, books that were the basis of the job. But still, even with the CBRA room in the middle, this was not a finished basement by anyone's definition of the term. Except, of course, that it didn't have a dirt floor.
I put up some shelves in a corner of the basement that wasn't the "room", using a door as my worktable and wrapping pressed-wood shelves in a cut-up Indian-print bedspread. I opened up my new Bernina 830, which had been a wedding present from Dino.
While the kids were at school, every afternoon I would sew. I had decided that one way to perfect my skills would be to make the same pattern over and over, in different fabrics, ringing all the different changes offered by the Vogue pattern. Displaying my usual ineptitude at choosing patterns (which pretty much explains why I no longer sew), I had picked a Vogue top with long, full sleeves. It was blousy and was to be worn over the skirt or pants, not tucked in. Full, in other words. The neck was gathered into a narrow band and the opening was a long, narrow placket with nine or ten tiny buttons and buttonholes.
As I write this description I'm thinking "Really? You thought this was the most flattering garment you could make?" I created a black crepe version and several in silky (but not silk) prints. I became very proficient at making that pattern, though it never became more attractive, no matter how many times I made it.
From September to May the temperature in that basement hovered around 50 degrees Fahrenheit—and it still does. After a couple of hours of sewing, my fingers would be so numb I could barely pick up a pin. My feet were frozen solid. But I really didn't care, because I was having a ball. I no longer worked for a crazy-making boss, and a bit of chill was well worth that freedom.
We had no radio in the basement, but we did have an old TV. My principles have never allowed me to put a TV in the living room; the upper floor was all bedrooms; so the basement, cold as it was by night and day, was the only place for the TV. The side effect of putting it there was to make watching it so unpleasant as to discourage the teenagers from parking themselves in front of the television for long couch-potato sessions (also, no couch).
But I, alone in the afternoons, made use of the TV set. It was in the CBRA room, with several walls and corners between it and my sewing space. Thus, I could hear it but not see it. Years before, in Alabama when the children were all under seven, I got hooked on soap operas. They ran in sequence: All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital, and the Y&R. I'm not proud of it, but I watched them regularly in those early years. And now—in the cold basement—I listened to them.
I still remember half-listening to those soaps, identifying (or not) characters by their voices. Though I had once known what the actors looked like, after a few months of audio only I completely forgot their faces (except, perhaps, for Susan Lucci and Luke & Laura). Given the nature of soap operas, it didn't matter if I missed crucial conversations while sewing a long seam. In fact, it didn't matter if I missed several days in a row—or even a whole week. There was never a danger that I'd miss the climactic moment of a plot line, since by their very nature soaps have no climactic moments if by that you mean a coming-to-a-head, a true climax followed by the denouement. A soap just goes on and on and on. If a story-line becomes unpopular or an actor gets a better gig and leaves abruptly, the writers simply drop that plot element or kill off the character. Occasionally a character simply disappears from one day to the next and is never mentioned again.
So that was the background to my sewing. And although I did improve my skills (for example, I got quite good at tiny buttonholes), I never became the talented seamstress that my mother, Eileen, had been. Of course, that didn't stop me from trying. Recently one of my daughters returned to me two wool pants suits that I had made for her when she was in grade 13, some forty years ago. Interfacings, linings, bound buttonholes. Projects that were way beyond my capabilities (and sometimes with fabrics that were too heavy or otherwise unsuitable)—with the result that they always had that homemade look.
Still, if Eileen gave me nothing else, she taught me to go for it, to keep stretching myself forward.
I made a disastrous prom dress for my other daughter. She chose a bias-cut slinky Vogue pattern and a pale-pink silk fabric that was probably too light-weight for the purpose. The draped bodice, suspended by two spaghetti straps, had no underpinnings. It turned out to be considerably more revealing than it should have been for a girl of 18, which was, I think, due to the pattern and not to a failure on my part.
The only way for me to choose a pattern is to try on a version of it that someone else has made. Otherwise I have no clue what it will actually look like on me. Buying off the rack is definitely a safer bet.
Them days is gone forever now, along with the teenagers. Now my workhorse Bernina sits in an actual bedroom upstairs, a room that is sequentially a sewing room, crafts room, computer room, exercise room, and guest room. But at least it's not 50 degrees. And I haven't looked at or listened to a soap opera for forty years.
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
