Sewing As Metaphor for Life

I was listening to the Grandma's Sewing Cabinet podcast on my way home last night. The author, Dr. Julie-Ann McFann, had sponsored a contest on her blog recently and asked her listeners to send her a sewing story from their lives. I wrote a little something to share, not to be part of the contest (puhlllease don't send me another thing to add to the storage unit!), and as I was listening to her podcast, she said my name! She posted my story on her blog last night. She has about 700 listeners on a regular basis, so it will be fun to see if anyone I know hears my name and drops me a note.

One thing Julie said at the end of her podcast grabbed my ear. She said, "Sometimes we have to start over to make things better, to make things the way we want to be."

Anyone who sews makes mistakes. Somewhere, somehow, there's going to be a stitch or two that will have to be removed. You start out calling this "ripping" and the device you use is called a seam ripper. As you get more skilled, you refuse to call it ripping and, instead, you refer to it as unsewing.

I've got quite a bit of perfectionistic blood running through my veins, so I do more than my share of unsewing. I want to be proud of my finished product.

(If you could see the inside of this skunk costume I'm making, you'd say I was crazy. All the seam allowances are whip-stitched in place. The inside is as clean as the outside. But a darling little 18-mo-old boy named Landen is going to wear this costume. I don't care if he only wears it once and then it gets put away forever. I don't want seam allowances rubbing against his legs and making him uncomfortable. No one else may see the inside of a garment, but I see it.)

In another facet of my life, I'm trying to be more proactive in finding friends. Today I learned when the evening sessions of the local American Sewing Guild chapters are held. I will try to go to the Monday night session in Austintown next week to see if there are any women there I feel a commonality with. Then I also have see if there is either an embroiderer's guild chapter or a surface design group nearby.

I feel lonely. Several people have said, "You should meet so-and-so", but are not forthcoming with introductions, so I have to do something myself.

Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing, uprooting myself and starting all over again. And then I remember:

"Sometimes we have to start over to make things better, to make things the way we want to be."

I absolutely did the right thing.