Sew it goes, embracing wonkiness
When I began these posts in the theme of Little Big Steps, little did I know how small my steps would become, how small the majority of our steps would be. A few days before lockdown, I took the risk of going to my oldest friend’s funeral. The advice on social distancing, at that time, was less stringent. And the sorrow we all felt at losing one of the kindest, loveliest people I have ever known led to grabs of hands, consoling hugs. Then, within days, a brother fell ill, then my husband, then me. Nearly 5 weeks into (probable) COVID-19, little steps are all I can take, still plagued by breathlessness and fatigue caused by the virus piling an extra bag of sticks onto the heavy bundle I always carry due to twenty years of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
This is the longest thing I have written in five weeks. I have had little energy and little desire to write. Some days, all I have written in my journal is the day and the date, trying to keep track of some measure of normality, to know where I am.
My creativity has gone in another direction, towards sewing, a little bit at a time, using remnants given to me just before lockdown, stored in a box that I received from my eldest daughter for Mother’s Day, when we went for a socially-distanced walk along the banks of the River Medway. My last proper outing before self-isolating.
I didn’t learn sewing at home. My mother was a furious knitter, clicking at speed in her armchair whilst simultaneously watching telly. I never got the hang of it, the tension either too loose or too tight, stitches dropped, wonky ‘squares’ abandoned on the needles. But I did like sewing, beginning with cross stitch on those stiff oblongs of fabric with large holes in them, at primary school, appliquéing a felt seahorse onto fabric that became a swimming bag when I was in top class.
Grammar school knocked some of the enjoyment of sewing out of me. Excellence, striving for perfection, that was how it was, for all topics, and I soon learned that you only got help with things if you were already really good at them. Why support the girl who was struggling with sewing in straight lines, the girl who managed to stitch the skirt she was making to the skirt she was wearing? Why help me when there was the brilliant sewer who was performing miracles with an embroidered, ruched bodice and puffed sleeves? That other girl could get an A in O-Level Needlework, whilst I would have the subject removed from my school timetable as exam year approached, along with Music, which I also loved. I would do much better in languages, was forced to do Latin to help with my French and German. After all, at Rosebery County Grammar School for Girls results were everything.
Whilst I had no help at school, rather stern looks and disappointment from the teacher, I took a full-length skirt I was making to Mrs Field, my church choir mistress, who lived in a ‘big house’ and not only had a sewing machine but a sewing room! Mrs Field and her daughter Rosemary spent hours with me, showing me how to convert yards and yards of material into a ruffle to go on the bottom of my maxi-skirt. Long stitches and careful and even gathering made a floor-sweeping triumph when I wore it to the next Irish dance at Surbiton Assembly Rooms. They had patience with me, gave me one-to-one attention, and never made me feel inept and stupid, like I did in Mrs Whatshername’s class at school.
I took up sewing again when my daughters were small. I left them in a crèche at South Greenwich Adult Education Institute whilst I joined a sewing class. I was in my early twenties, and most of the other women were in their forties, fifties and upwards. I learned a lot about the menopause in that class. But, mostly, I learned how to make clothes for my children, complicated soft toys (my Mickey Mouse was a great success, once I unpicked the tail I had mistakenly sewn on his front and placed it on his bum) and made patchwork panels, which were added to quilts that were raffled at the end of each term, a panel or two by each class member stitched together.
Sewing became my sanity and insanity. After the girls were in bed, I would work on ‘just one more square’ of a patchwork bedspread, which led to another, and saw me sitting up into the night. I still have that bedspread, some 35 years on, now a picnic blanket.
These days, my sewing has taken on a free-form aspect. From the years of accurate pattern-following and precision-cutting and stitching of formal patchwork, I have discovered crazy patchwork (quick and easy by machine) and folded patchwork (takes longer by hand, but it is forgiving to inaccuracy and mistakes).
A couple of months ago, I found a book in Oxfam, The Coats Book of Embroidery, from 1978. This is where I discovered folded patchwork, and I am learning new embroidery stitches, techniques like whipping and interlacing, adding different colours to the base stitches. I look at the diagrams, skim-read instructions, make my own wonky way, deciding on what I am making and how to make it, with what, long after I join the first two pieces of fabric. It is a lot like the way I write, never plotting or planning, not knowing how it will end. But it’s a heck of a lot less frustrating than writing. There are no abandoned drafts, though there has been some unpicking and restitching, much like editing a piece of writing. I now feel I can just enjoy sewing without Mrs Whatshername looking down her long nose, over the top of her glasses, when I was in Class 3M at Rosebery. As for making an embroidered, ruched bodice, I don’t care for it, actually. I am making a folded patchwork rainbow with wonky embroidery and experimenting with inlay appliqué, thank you very much. No-one will be marking it or inspecting it for faults. It will soon be hanging in my front window, along with the other rainbows and hearts in the street.
