Now and Then
by Iris Winston
A loose button remains loose for too long in my house. That’s because sewing of any kind tends to be pushed to the bottom of every to-do list I set up.
It’s been that way for a very long time. My difficult relationship with a needle and thread began early. My mother, who was a highly skilled seamstress and creative dress designer, despaired of my pathetic efforts and clearly found them painful to watch. She did try to show me what to do at the beginning, but soon gave me up as a hopeless case as far as any type of needlework was concerned.
From the first attempt to thread a needle, through trying to follow instructions to aim for small, neat stitches to avoiding attaching the wrong pieces of material to each other, I was a dud in every way. I lacked patience with the intricacy of guiding thread into the small slit of the needle. To keep threading to a minimum, I chose to have a long, long thread, thinking this was a way to avoid rethreading as often. In fact, it usually meant the thread tangled and slowed me down. Then I would try to speed up the process with long stitches, resulting in less effective work on a hem or a generally untidy look to anything I put together.
Frequently, the end result was a sigh from my mother, and a promise to take over.
I didn’t take much convincing that sewing and I were incompatible. Other factors carried me along the same route. Students in the British grammar school for girls I attended were streamed for some subjects. While I was busy with Latin, French and German classes, for example, a different group took domestic science (home economics in North America), which included a large sewing component. Even physics, the academic class I found the most challenging, was preferable to wielding needle and thread, never mind trying to run a straight seam on a sewing machine. Therefore, sewing and I never met in school.
However, a few years later, after a well-meaning friend gave me her old sewing machine, I decided to try to conquer the needlework mountain. Armed with a simple pattern and material recommended by a knowledgeable salesclerk, I began. It did not go well. I quickly found out that I had to unpick and redo more often than sew. And, when another friend visited and observed that I was trying to sew, I acknowledged that trying was not accomplishing much. I cut my losses and disposed of the machine, accepting that we weren’t on the same wavelength. There was no way I would ever either sew for pleasure or be good enough at the task to make the blood, sweat and tears along the way worthwhile.
I was fortunate to have a body shape that fit into ready-made clothes of the right size, so there was even less reason to stagger along the homemade route. In any case, it was much more fun to search for bargain items on sale than to waste good quality material in producing items of clothing that I knew would never see the light of day.
From here on, I chose to keep sewing to the bare minimum of turning up hems, sewing on buttons and mending, when there was no alternative. That remained my policy during the family years. I did keep basic sewing tools in an unobtrusive spot in the basement. On the few occasions when I couldn’t avoid attempting to fix a dropped hem or securing a loose button, I would do it as quietly as possible, because I knew that, once alerted to the rare event of Mum with a needle in her hand, there would be a lineup of husband and kids waiting with items that needed mending.
Another task in my negative column is anything to do with gardening. The deal soon after we married was that I would deal with household tasks indoors and my husband would take care of the outside work. Eventually, his many health issues make him unable to fulfill the original agreement. But he dropped the ball long before that. I was fine with such outdoor jobs as snow shovelling even when we lived in Edmonton and there was a huge amount of snow, but not with the outdoor jobs of summer.
Although I love having vases of fresh flowers in the house, I am just not into planting and tending them while they are growing. The problem extends to house plants, which rarely stay looking healthy on my watch.
Many years ago I was given an aspidistra. I had heard that this type of plant, known for its hardiness, was virtually indestructible and that it could be split in two. The result when I tried it was that I had two aspidistras dying in two parts of the house. I know when I’m beaten.
So I will continue to avoid sewing and gardening.
