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The dress was a mass of pale lavender tulle and polyester as Isla tried it on. She waited while I measured, inspected, pinched and pinned. When my son Ben and his fiancée, Elizabeth, had asked Isla to be a flower girl in their wedding, I offered to do any needed alterations to the dress.
Isla’s mom watched as I worked, and we talked about sewing. Lianna doesn’t really sew, but Isla would like to learn.
“When did you learn to sew?” Isla asked me.
“I was in seventh grade,” I said, “And I learned to sew in home ec class.”
They looked confused. Maybe “home ec” isn’t offered in school these days.
“I made a brown dress,” I said, “and I cried a lot and vowed to burn it after I was done. But later I learned to sew for my children, and then I loved it.”
They just listened. It wasn’t the time and place to relive all the angst of being a little Amish girl in a roomful of Minnesota Lutherans and Singer sewing machines, with a radio on the windowsill playing “Blinded by the Light,” sewing a complicated dress while my classmates sewed easy, colorful tops.
So I finished Isla’s measurements, tucked the pretty dress into a zippered garment bag, and left, thinking about how I got to this place where I’m not afraid to alter a fluffy dress for a wedding.
This is what I would tell little 12-year-old me: How things are in seventh grade is not how they will always be.
My home ec teacher was Mrs. Habedank, a lovely woman who smiled a lot and, in her kind sweet voice, required perfection in our sewing. Darts, for instance. You started sewing at the wide end and sewed a perfectly straight line right up to the point. Then you didn’t backstitch but left two-inch thread ends and tied them in a knot.
I suppose I knotted the ends on the darts I made, because of Mrs. Habedank, but I had to rip out all of them at least twice, because they angled like the KOIN Tower in Portland, with straight lines and sudden sharp angles. I had to rip out every seam on that ugly brown cotton dress at least twice, and some three times. I sewed right sides to wrong sides, gnarled the bobbin thread and agonized over the gathers in the skirt.
I resolved to finish the dress, get it graded and then destroy it.
It didn’t help that I had an older sister who had a natural talent for sewing and who said I’m the only person she knows who cries over darts. Or that I was using an old pattern from the 1950s that didn’t have any directions with it. Also, the other girls were sewing cute tops with loose sleeves that were essentially big flowing rectangles that didn’t require fitting sleeves into curved armholes. Life and home ec class were hard and unfair.
More than 50 years later, I’ve not only altered Isla’s dress within the past few weeks but refitted a bridesmaid dress and sewed a fitted two-piece dress for myself in a drapey dusty lilac.
In the last several years, I crafted a wedding dress for a young friend, skirts and dresses for myself, jackets and T-shirts, bags and blankets and tablecloths. Sewing is rewarding and relaxing and fun.
Seventh-grade me couldn’t have imagined, because that discouraged little person didn’t know about growth mindset. I thought I would never learn to sew, or certainly not to enjoy it. But the truth is that almost anyone can learn, step by step, even if it’s not a natural skill. And then you can make whatever you want.
My natural gifts were in math, English and science. Because these things came easily, I felt like I simply couldn’t do the things that were hard, such as singing, cooking and playing sports.
“Phy ed,” as we called it, was daily torture, especially football and basketball. Home ec wasn’t much better, with that dreadful brown dress.
I didn’t know, then, that when I had babies, I would suddenly be motivated to sew. I would buy actual patterns and follow the instructions, slowly and deliberately, step by step, and the little garments would take shape before my eyes.
Skill added to skill until I could mend and alter and design, and I tackled projects as difficult as a wedding dress.
I also didn’t know that my talented sister would be sorry she laughed at me and would sew almost nothing for many years. She would come to me for advice about baby quilts, many years later.
You never know how things will turn out.
You can acquire skills, even if it’s hard. Even if you’re slow, you will have the skill in the end, along with a great sense of accomplishment.
I still can’t play football, but when I was in my 40s, someone told me that, essentially, each team has four chances to move the ball 10 yards. Suddenly I understood the game like I never had in all those years of phy ed.
I eventually took that brown dress home and wore it, reluctantly, because it seemed a waste to throw it away.
Now, I sew beautiful corals and purples in comfortable fabrics and styles.
I love that you don’t stay in seventh grade forever.
