Greetings Dear Ones!

It’s been a quiet week at Hermit Hollow. As a beloved Scottish nephew commented when he visited America last summer, “the air is quite chewy here.” It’s heavy, viscous, humid—full of bug breath, sweat, and the syrupy seduction of flowers. Dragging in a lungful makes for quite a meal. One can only breathe deeply a few times a day without getting dizzy. The recent thundershowers and downpours do nothing to dilute it. The garden is happy—the bathroom towels, not so much. Both are growing robust specimens of plant life.

I am grateful for time in my shop. The giant windows face north, and the shadows keep the bricks cool on that side, so the windows let in lots of light but no heat. With the window fan and some rollicking fiddle tunes on in the background, it’s a merry place to hide from a hot, exhausted world.

My shoulder does not let me do too much yet, especially of the repetitive motions involved with mass mask-making, but I am able to do simple things for my few customers. Three people came to see me this week—one to collect clothing she left in February, the other two for dress hems. Neither of them had any idea when they might get to wear these dresses, since they were quite formal, but they wanted them to be “ready” for the future when we can get dressed up and gather in bunches to eat cake and see what everyone else is wearing. When I cut the bottoms off the dresses, there was enough fabric leftover to make a matching face-mask for each dress, just in case.

One day, as I was sorting and stacking my fabric, I came across a sturdy piece of dark wool twill I had always meant to turn into a French apron. My thought was that I could slip it over my regular clothes as I do my homesteading chores and not have to come to work with any hay or animal feed in my pockets. Until now, my choices have been do chores in pajamas, then change for work or change first and hope for the best. (The Best is usually not what happens around sheep who think they are lap dogs.) Neither is it particularly lovely to be getting ready for bed and realize you have sheep turds in the flannel cuffs you roll up because you never get around to hemming your own clothes. I know, the very Clever among you are thinking something reasonable right now, such as “Nancy, why don’t you just wear three separate outfits each morning—change from your pajamas to farm clothes, do your chores, then get into clean clothes for the public portion of your day?” Prudence heartily agrees. All I can say is, you have not been reading this blog long enough to know how truly Lazy I am. I would need to go back to bed again after all that physical exercise (just to get the jeans on and off in this heat is like an advanced Pilates class)—which would require yet another change back into pajamas... Too many decisions to make, too much wrestling with buttons and zips, way too many bad words for the gentle inhabitants of Hermit Hollow—it just doesn’t bear thinking about.

Nope, with a strong set of muck boots and this marvelous French apron I am about to make, I might almost stay clean. Impulsively, I decided to do make it right then and there. Why wait? I spread the fabric out across my cutting table, grab the pattern and the rotary cutter and start slicing. From my calculations, this will take me a half an hour max.

Two hours later, I am frowning into the dressing room mirror and remembering all I had forgotten about seam allowances. Seam allowance is the area between the fabric edge and the stitching line on two pieces of material being sewn together. Since 99% of the sewing I have done for forty hours a week for the last six years has been altering existing clothing, rather than using a pattern to make things from scratch, I have forgotten how much the seam allowance can affect the eventual size of a garment. Naturally, in my haste, I had ignored all the directions. After all, damnit, I know how to sew! Alas, to review: If the pattern designer gave you a 5/8 inch seam allowance and you sewed it as if it was ¼ inch, well, there’s some tricky math involved here that means you just made the thing Too Dang Big. By Far. (Keep in mind that the difference between sizes is sometimes a mere ¼ inch!) It may come as a complete surprise to some (namely, Me) that the opposite is also true. If the seam allowance is a ¼ inch, and you sewed 5/8 from the edge around the whole thing, well…get ready to wire your jaw shut for the next three weeks or donate the item to your local charity shop. OR… take out all that stitching and start over. (Have I mentioned how LAZY I am??)

You would think I would never forget this lesson, which I first learned in high school, when I made a jumpsuit for a friend of mine. She wanted me to make her one like mine so I took the pattern, which was cut to my size, and just added a few inches to all the seam allowances, thinking that would solve the problem. Ladies and gentlemen, it did NOT. Like anything else governed by the laws of physics, seam allowances must be Respected. One cannot flippantly toss them an extra fiver, as if they are a hotel lobby boy, and expect them to do one’s bidding. You don’t alter a pattern from the edges, I discovered--one must alter it from the center of each piece. (Is this not also true of so many other things in Life?) The resulting item was so badly proportioned and ill-fitting my friend was actually insulted. “Is this what shape you think I am?” she asked tearfully, as her breasts flopped out through the neck hole. My panicked giggles and frantic denials were a strain on our friendship ever after.

One of the main reasons for having extra seam allowances is so that fragile fabric, especially if it has a big weave, cannot unravel. Sewing too close to an edge on fabric like that weakens the join. The fabric will give way around the stitching, no matter how strong or fine the stitching may be. The unfortunate result of a seam under strain in such condition is that something resembling pizza dough will make its way through the opening, even if I have not set foot in a pizzeria since the lockdown began.

Allowances are important: Allowances for extra time, extra emotional spaces around transitions, allowances for differences of expectations. (Especially allowances for difference of opinion!) Where one side comes together and meets the other to make a join must include a necessary and sacred Space that allows for fabric integrity and easements around curves. We disregard it at our peril. There is room for adjustments if we pay attention to what we have allowed. They are boundaries that both contain or give, if done properly. Everything from Time Management to Prom Gowns or Relationships will depend on what we “allow” in those margins.

In some ways, the more ragged edges of my life are not exactly coming together as Planned. Though, in some surprising ways, the results of faith and trust are wildly better. I’ll make allowances for that!

Be kind to yourselves and others, my Dear ones! Thank you for your Good Work! May the mending continue….

With Sew Much Love,

Nancy

P.S. I definitely should have allowed more time for this blog!