Many years ago I had no alternative, but to design and sew fashions for myself. Indeed I did enjoy it, though difficult and challenging work it was. I started sewing at age 8 and continued right through the arrival of adulthood. An increase in income from the development of a career led to prosperity that removed the necessity of sewing for myself. By that time I enjoyed sewing and I was highly skilled, but the time to sew was taken up by career necessities and married life. The arrival of children called upon my sewing skills for clothing and accessories, but once resuming my career sewing fell to the wayside, again squeezed out by lack of time. At this stage of life career has peaked, family has become independent, and free time has increased significantly. All has converged to allow sewing to re-emerge from the shadows to prime my creativity.
Torn clothing, worn out upholstery, and a collection of needed repairs have called up my sewing skills to repair or replace some household items. What first seemed to be a bother and a chore has instead stoked my interest in this long submerged skill. My first project involved repairing worn out upholstery in my car. The drivers seat upholstery was so worn thru that the foam underneath had become mealy and appeared to be sawdust on the seat and floor of the car. That was the straw that broke the camels back. It had to be repaired or replaced. No seat covers I found offered for sale in the stores had fabric that was acceptable, comfortable or a basic plain style and color that suited the existing upholstery in the car. I did not want pink zebra, nor a NASCAR motif adorning my seats, so I took on the project of patching the torn up areas with handstitching, and then making a slipcover for the seat.
The project ended up going more quickly than I anticipated, but it took on a broader skillset than I had anticipated. First I had to prime up my circa 1971 sewing machine. That was a worthess pursuit in the end. My machine is a Singer Golden Touch and Sew machine which was born around 1971. The forty years were not particularly kind to the old work horse. Though I cared for it through the years by cleaning, tuning up and maintaining the machine, the atmosphere and time took its toll. A bit of research has taught me that the feed dog on these machines is made of rubber and it dries out over the years. The older machines have metal feed dogs that continue to work over many decades, but these rubber ones fail to advance the fabric through the machine so that the fabric stays in place and puckers up eventually mounding under the needle in a big lump.
Well, I changed tacks and moved onto another old machine, fortunately it did not have a dried out feed dog, and it worked fine. All of the sewing went well and the project progressed. In fact it grew. All sorts of items that needed repair started calling to me, so under the needle they went. I think I will be taking on some additional repairs and new constructions over the next couple of weeks. Spring is still a few weeks off here, lots of winter left to productively spend on sewing projects. Though we have had some super nice spring days over the last two weeks....they are just bait, making me chomp at the bit for true spring.
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