More on the "W's" of my sewing

I've always been told, "never start anything with an apology." Well, don't you just love rules?? I'm sorry if this isn't a seamless transition from the first installment, but if it were i'd have to pay myself for doing this. Oh and seamless, is just a word.

The one question i get asked over and over again is how i got started sewing. While this is a fairly easy question it is also fairly involved. However, as with most things, it is a story.

As many of you know, i grew up in the weeds of West Texas. My hometown is more open desert than urban sprawl and even moreso thirty years ago. When I'd go out to play, most days, I'd end up crawling between strands of barbed wire or sliding down piles of crumbled boulders. On others, I'd hike up the dry creekbed that ran though town or ride my bike along the railroad tracks that ran away from our town in three directions. With all this, i could take a new pair of jeans and reduce them to something torn or relatively crotchless in an afternoon. Given what jeans cost, it wasn't reasonable for my folks to keep replacing jeans and repairing them became the norm. Not to mention, back then they didn't make stone or acid washed jeans and it takes forever to wash a pair of jeans to the right color and feel. At any rate, somewhere along the way mom got tired of fixing my pants and made me responsible for my own stuff. So, someone, probably my grandparents, found a sewing machine at a garage sale and when i got home that day, i got a sewing machine and a book. Along with the machine i got the advice to read the book before i tried to sew anything.

The first few repairs i attempted were less than laudable, but over time i got to where i could do well enough that i rarely noticed my jeans were always fixed. I can still mend a pair of jeans and even hem up a pair of new ones without losing the factory hem. Now that's self-aggrandizing....lol

From these humble beginnings, i moved on to seat covers for pickups and friends cars. Most of my friends in the next town over knew i could sew, but it was a closely guarded secret in my hometown. The last thing i needed was for someone to find out i could sew. I was a terribly wimpy boy back in those days and took quite a bit of hazing for it and knowing how to sew would have just fueled the flames.

After i left my hometown, i didn't sew for a number of years. It was like one of those transient hobbies you have only while you live where you picked up the habit. I didn't have a need for it, so it never occurred to me to get another machine. At least until i decided to marry the most contemptible woman on earth. She wanted a dress well beyond any reasonable budget, short of the guy who owns the country of Dubai, maybe. Here is one time my big mouth got me in deep. I went from a slip of the tongue about knowing how to sew, to yards and yards of taffeta and slipper satin in about twenty hours. I would love to come clean and say it really was over weeks, but it wasn't. It was less than a day and for the next three or four months i made a wedding dress. It was an experience to be sure. When we divorced, I petitioned for the dress, but... i wasn't the bride the judge said.

About fifteen or so years ago i started sewing stuff for me, pillows, quilts, shirts, or anything else i wanted. Sewing had blossomed into something that was part hobby and part obsession. Now, it's arguably all obsession.

My favorite things to sew are probably Martha Pullen heirlooms and quilts. I am asked to sew anything and everything. It seems the more outrageous the request, the more i enjoy the project. All in all, I think i just love seeing the results of what i do.

I'll post a few pictures next time.

Y'all be cool, D

P.S. I also knit, crochet, embroider, cross-stitch, and do leather