How sad is that?*

The other night, I decided that my aunt-induced stress levels could only be relieved with wine or sewing (or possibly some dangerous combination of the two).


I started with sewing. I ended with wine.

I decided not to do anything too complicated, since I was already vibrating at a frequency that felt like 2-3 glasses of that wine. I had pre-treated all my Liberty fabrics last week, and I decided to cut out the replacement sleeves for my dress. I found the wad of white batiste that I failed to fold when I put away, ironed it, ironed the Liberty, cut out sleeves and underlining for the sleeves and basted them together.

Then I sat with Mario for a few minutes and picked the old sleeves off the dress. They were cute, but they were a little too fluffy, and I don't do fluffy well. The new sleeves, even with a few gathers, seemed much more smooth and minimal. Sleeves off, pressed the seam allowances flat again, pinned on new sleeves, sewed, finished seam allowances, pressed again.

And then I tried on the dress.

And the memory came back.

Of how I didn't not wear that dress just because of the sleeves, but because it wasn't flattering. It made me look like I had no waist at all, and all the cute new sleeves in the world weren't going to give me one.

Guess what?

I'm making a new skirt out of some lightly worn Liberty fabric that used to be a dress. Photos to come.


* thanks to Andrea for the title of this post. That was her response to my email of what happened in the sewing room.