Shaela Scanlon

I’m done. I finished the hand sewing on my shorts last night, and this morning I sewed on the button. I’ve even washed them and taken a couple of pictures of them hanging up to dry (including a close-up of the buttonhole). And tomorrow, Mama says she’ll take pictures of me wearing them.

I’m trying to decide what I should work on next. I’d like to start the orange and green pants, but I should probably have Mama’s sewing machine looked at first — it fought me every step of the way when I was making the shorts. (I love that that’s in the past tense, though. “Was making.” As in, “am no longer making, because they’re done.”) Tearing out seams because I’m still getting the hang of making a fly is one thing. Tearing out seams because the thread broke, or the bobbin tension changed without me knowing it, is something else. I don’t want to ruin my orange and green fabric the way I did my red blouse fabric.

Besides, the orange and green pants are part of a suit. I was originally planning to make both a pants muslin and a jacket muslin before I cut out the suit. But now that I’ve finished the pants muslin — that is, the shorts — I’m itching to start the pants themselves.

Well, I can’t start either of them today. I haven’t washed the orange and green fabric yet. I haven’t even bought fabric for the jacket. Or notions for either project. So I think what I’ll do is cut out the patterns for both of them, and make up my mind when I hit the fabric store.

The first time I can remember keeping a journal is during my freshman year of high school. I had an English teacher who thought that timed writing was the greatest invention since the full stop, so every day she’d give us things to write about, and we’d spend fifteen minutes trying to look like that statue by Rodin. Or maybe that was just me. I’ve never been good at that kind of command performance. But by then, I was good at ignoring what I was supposed to be doing, so I actually have fond memories of that journal. I named it Parnassus, after the home of the Muses, and the first thing I wrote in it was Psalm 19:14 — “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.” It’s been almost twenty years, but that still seems like the best place to start a journal.

I finished sewing the fly of my shorts on Sunday — topstitching and everything. It’s sort of a first for me — the last time I tried to make a pair of pants, the fly is where I threw in the towel. I just couldn’t get my head around the pattern instructions. But this time I was smart enough to ask Mama for help, and she showed me how it’s done. (Of course, it still took me a couple of tries to get it right. Note to self: the stitching on the left-hand side of the zipper goes on the left foldline — that is, five-eighths of an inch from the center seam.)

When I was done, I tried them on again, to see if the changes I’d made to the darts had done the trick. Unfortunately, when I showed them to Mama, she didn’t think they looked quite right. I did some research, and it looks like I was supposed to take them in at the side seams, after all. So on Monday, before Mama and I got on the road for Greenville, I tore out the basting and re-drew the stitching lines for the side seams. And then yesterday, I basted along the re-drawn stitching lines and tried the shorts on for the third time.

Unfortunately, they still didn’t look right. I futzed around for a while, and I think what I need to do is take them in a quarter of an inch at the waist, and then another quarter of an inch at the hips. In other words, I could’ve used the same pattern I used for my first sample, and just added a quarter of an inch to the side seams. That’s probably what I’ll do when I cut out the orange and green fabric.

Yesterday I finished cutting out my second sample for the pants I want to make. I started the first one back in January, but part of me knew all along that it wasn’t going to fit. I’m supposed to wear a sixteen, but when I cut out the pattern, I realized that it only had three and a half inches of ease in the hips. I had a feeling that wasn’t going to be enough.

So after I finished sewing the fly, I basted up the side seams and tried it on. And… well, I could just about get it zipped, if I didn’t mind holding my breath. So I’m starting from scratch with a bigger pattern. (I’m also adding an inch and a half to the rise — I’m not sure if the pattern needs more length or just more width, but I figure it’s better to be safe than sorry.)