The Smock Mockup

 

My massage therapist was wearing a really cool apron. I said so.

"Right?" she said. "I got it at a vintage store. I wish I had a bunch more!"

"Shoot," I said. "I can make you a pattern."

There are three parts to it, plus apron strings and a pocket. Just trace it out and put it together. How hard can it be? Well. How hard can I make it?

She had already whipped it off and handed it to me. Jeez, I've been sewing for 55 years. I'm no stitchery genius, but you cut out shape A and shape B and slap them together and stitch, and before you know it you have most of your private bits covered.

I don't know if I ever mentioned it before, but there are a number of aspects to your standard IQ test, and the parts that involve visualizing two-dimensional things in 3-D space is where I pitch into dangerous territory. Basically, my verbal ability is what has kept me out of an institution.

What you really should do, especially if you're not wieldy with the three dimensions, is carefully rip all the original seams to spread the individual pieces out, trace them onto paper, and you have your pattern.

This apron is old. This apron was pieced together by candlelight using scraps from Granny Mae's Sunday-go-to-meetin' calico. It has now been worn quite a bit by our ace massage therapist and is saturated to gumminess with fragrant oils, and if a modern person raised on hormone-infused dairy products and hybridized wheat so much as breathes on it, it will fall into lint. Also, it is piped. Narrowly. A raw edge is covered in 1/4-inch bias tape, and it will spontaneously unravel in direct sunshine.

I'm not going to carefully rip anything.

So there's some guesswork.

The contestants of Project Runway throw these things together in a few hours. They have a model, they have imagination, experience, and three-D imaging skills, and if you ask them to produce a bustled bridesmaid's gown on a Nigerian theme involving a marsupial, using recycled plastics and an inspiration from Dickens, they will churn it right out.

I would like to note at this time that they will do so only after pitching God's own fit and wailing to the heavens. Someone will disappear and return only after having cut themselves until they feel right again. Others will have to introduce ruching to cover over the fabric shrinkage from their tears. These people are as delicate in temperament as they are talented.

I made a pattern and decided I needed to do a test apron before my friend spent any money on fabric. I found an old sheet I used to love. It's soft as a baby bunny. I'd put my toenail through the bottom sheet and bought a new set. I cut it all up and began to sew.

It feels like silk and sews like it too. Which is to say, squirrely and aggravating. But what really screws things up is when you finally get the whole thing put together and put it on and the place where you sew the back straps to the bottom is completely wrong. You have made an apron for M. C. Escher. There's a righteous Moëbius twist in it. So you have to rip it out. You can do that maybe once. Your sheet was no match for your toenail, so it certainly can't survive multiple rippings.

And yet, it must! I took out the two offending seams and put them back together, after pinning and double-checking, and guess the hell what? One of them was right, but the other still wasn't! I'd sewn it to the correct side this time but still twisted it! There are three ways to get it wrong, and I got it wrong all three ways, and one of them twice. It is possible that this brain deficit is what gives me compassion for people confused about the apostrophe.

Nothing like this ever happens on Project Runway. Actually, it does, but those contestants disappear in mysterious circumstances, followed by public service announcements about mental health.

"I can make you more aprons just like this!" I recall I said.

At minimum wage, they'll run a couple hundred bucks each. Good thing I work for free.

It's Not Fitting

I couldn't bear to drive all the way to the fabric store for only four buttons, so I bought a shirt pattern and some yardage too so the gas wouldn't have been wasted. (This is true.) It was a simple style. I've made a couple hundred similar shirts for Dave and although he and I have way different topography, I thought this should be a snap.

I'm no whiz. My least favorite part of sewing is the cutting out of the fabric pieces, followed closely by the sewing of them.  Sewing is a straightforward process. My mom taught me. All you need is a machine, a seam ripper, and a few choice words I didn't learn from my mom. I opened up my pattern and pulled out the instructions. Oh, crap my pants.

This isn't a simple shirt. This is a "3-hour perfect fit shirt." In other words, this pattern is going to ask more of me than I ask of it. And three hours won't even get me to the fabric cutting. Did I ask for a perfect fit? I did not. The deal is, you buy the pattern, you sew the shirt, and if it gaps weirdly in the front or bunches up funny, you hang it in the closet and give it away in twenty years.

"First, buy the right size," it says in the instructions. I always review the measurement table for the various sizes, just for drill, but I'm invariably on the cusp. Or I suspect I am: I haven't actually measured myself since I was an adolescent wondering where it would all stop. Then I give up and pick Medium because it seems the least controversial.

To find your right size, it says here, you measure your high bust.

I've never heard of such a thing, but I know I don't have one. Nothing on me is at all high. If I even have a bust line, my bust is nowhere near it anymore. That bust line is more like a chalk outline in a murder scene. My body parts have gone nomadic. There's no point looking for them where I remember seeing them last. They could be anywhere by now.

So. Medium it is.

Then the instructions get peppy. "Don't waste time sewing a garment that doesn't fit!" it chirps, without suggesting anything better to waste time on. Four pages of alteration possibilities ensue, for women with broad backs; with square, sloping, broad, or narrow shoulders; with a full bust; a hump; advanced osteoporosis; skin tags; a third nipple; an alien. In order to determine how well or badly the basic pattern fits your private scenery, you are to cut the pattern tissue, pin the pieces together, and stick it right on your actual body.

Good one! Pattern tissue has the integrity of a moth wing and it will tear if you so much as look at it crossly. Not to fear: you are to iron the tissue, cut around your pieces, and then reinforce the seam lines with tiny lengths of Scotch Magic tape (in the green box, it says). You're going to want lots of little pieces of tape, and then you snip the tissue to the tape in a sawtooth pattern, and then pin all the pieces together and try the thing on, and see if (for instance) the center front actually achieves your own personal center front or comes up a little shy, in which case you consult the alteration lines on the tissue and then there's more cutting and taping, folding and pleating, slicing and dicing, and a strategic introduction of dart lines.

If done correctly the tissue should have a confetti look to it. Carefully transfer the ribbons of tissue to the fabric, close your eyes, and start cutting.

We're a week into this now and only just getting to the part I hate the most: the beginning. It's like opening the pantry for a peanut-butter sandwich and finding a bag of peanuts and a tray of wheat starts.

But it all worked out. Fabulous, in fact, with a kicky two-tiered ruffled peplum, Juliet sleeves, keyhole neckline, side slits, and a hammer loop! And there's fabric left over for fringe.

It was supposed to be a camp shirt, but done is done.