Sewing a Hole

I hate sewing machines.  Some of my lowest recorded grades were because I tried to use a sewing machine.  These days I have a sewing room, except I call it a craft room because I keep a lot more stuff in there than just a sewing machine.  I like sewing by hand.  It evolved naturally.

I like mending.  I think that if the piece of clothing is fine except for a missing button – then I sew a new button on and get on with it.  I also like to use obnoxious buttons.  Sometime when you’re around me notice the button holding up my husband’s pants.  It might not be your average button.  The ones I’m using these days are neon.  I know.  He’s such a trooper.

Actually, I mostly started mending socks because I hate it when a perfectly adorable pair of cute socks gets a hole in the toe.  I started sewing them up and I started hanging onto my funny socks much better.  My personal favourite pair of socks I’ve had for ages.  They have suns on the feet that look exactly like the ones I used to draw on my notebooks when I was 13.  I didn’t get the socks until I was in my twenties.  Yeah, I keep those socks.

Yesterday, I had a stroke of genius with sewing.  You must remember that I do not sew clothing from scratch unless I can make up the pattern myself.  Yesterday I bought my daughter a new dress.  It was sleeveless.  Beats me what those monsters are thinking.  We’re Canadian.  We need sleeves.  Anyway, the dress came with a shrug (oddly enough I had an identical one her size in my mending basket).  So, I took the identical shrug and ripped the sleeves off it and sewed them onto her new dress.  It looks fantastic.  The dress now has black velvet sleeves and a black velvet belt. 

I also sewed Halloween costumes for my kids by hand this summer.  Everyone at the fabric store thought I was crazy when I went in and bought the goods.  Who’s crazy now?  This has been the most stress-free October ever.  I also sew stuffed animals and Christmas ornaments.  Today I was sewing a Halloween costume I got a humongous discount on because there were three big rips in it.  Ha!  Those rips were a snap to sew up.

The nice thing about sewing by hand is that I can sit all cozy in my living room with the TV on.  It’s also nice because then I don’t eat when I watch TV.  It’s bad because most TV filmed in English sucks.  You have to watch subtitled TV to watch anything and I’m not too good at crafting while watching something with subtitles. 

Anyone know a good English TV show to watch?