Becoming a Daring Seamstress

Matthew 9:16 "No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse."

Wednesday morning, the morning of Halloween, Corey, daughter number three, came downstairs to discuss with me the costume she might wear that evening. Daughters number one and two had had a party on Saturday to which costumes were worn and Corey had worn a beautiful black Renaissance like dress, and I had suggested that she wear that on Halloween. She said nothing, but I could see that she meant to come up with something new.

About a half hour later she came down in an absolutely adorable new costume. It was a black dress with a dirndle skirt, fitted waist, short puffed sleeves, and a fairly low scooped neckline. The front of the skirt had beautiful white embroidery on it, looking very Central European. On her legs were black and white striped stockings, and she had on her feet very cute black tee-strap flats. The the final touch was a pair of dainty black wings. After hearing my enthusiastic affirmation of the costume, she said that she needed to go take a shower.

Well about a half hour later she comes down with the dress in her hands. It seemed that in the process of getting undressed the zipper had broken, and she could not get it to budge. She wanted to know if I would sew her into the dress. Well that seemed like a terrible idea to me. The dress was tight fitting and I figured I would surely stab her multiple times in the process, and I wasn’t eve sure it would work. So quickly putting my thinking cap on I came up with the idea of attaching a button placket to the dress and sewing on buttons. The dress is black, and I was sure Corey would have some black material in her room.

I had a appointment and had to leave for an hour, so I told Corey to cut a strip of black material 2 inches by 22 inches, sew it up the long way and across the top at one end and turn and press it. She was to the turning part before I left, and I could see she hadn’st a clue. I told her to go get a knitting needle, and use the unpointed end. Eventually she and I quibbled a bit about the pressing, as I wanted it done dead on, so you couldn’t see the seam at all. And then I asked her to hand sew the other end closed. All in all she did a fine job. But all this fretting began to seem quite pointless when I couldn’t get my sewing machine to make a decent button hole. I’ve made dozens and dozens of buttonholes on that machine, a Husqvarna, so what was going on how. Eventually I had to almost literally bash on the buttonholes. Thank goodness I was working on black material.

I had Corey cut open the buttonholes for me. I forgot to mention that I was dealing with a very active 13 month old while this is all going on. But I sewed on the placket, and it turned out rather well. I hand the dress to Corey and go to try and get Emily to take a nap. By the time Corey had three of the 12 buttons sewed on I could see that she was getting quite worked up emotionally. Turns out she had wanted to go to her work place to show off the costume. So I told her to go upstairs and get ready and I’d sew on the rest. Sewing on 9 buttons to what is essentially the zipper placket is no easy task. My finger tips are still hurting. As soon as I was done, Corey put the dress on, and we buttoned it up. It was perfect.

That was my first time ever to changed a zipper placket into a button placket. You could not tell that the dress had a zipper in it. And Corey, by the way, was the cutest little fairy I’ve ever seen. I looked at fairy pictures on the internet, but for the most part they look like sluts. Corey didn’t look anything like that, she was simply an adorable fairy. And by the way, I dressed as a Audrey Hepburnesque witch. Black capris, black knit top with three quarter length sleeves, little black flats, and a little black witch hat. My daughters said I looked great.