Little Susie Homebreaker

Stash Anonymous

Before I started sewing, I thought a “stash” was a secret bag of illicit drugs. An ounce of pot, two tabs of something psychedelic, the hash oil lint from a Navaho rug... that’s a stash.

Now that I have an an attic, a closet, and the floor under two beds crammed with my guiltiest pleasure, I know differently: Fabric, not weed, is the devil’s worst temptation. Those silks, crushed velvets, buttermilk knits, and bouclé remnants will be the death of me. The cashmere lengths, the chiffon waves. I'm helpless.

I have enough patterns and fabric to clothe the world, open a retail emporium, and hoist a circus tent, but it’s still not enough for me: “My name is Susie and I’m a stash-a-holic.” My hoard of yardage makes my entire lifetime of prescription, OTC, and recreational drugs look like a pitiful bump.

This is how it started: It was all Aretha’s fault, my daughter. We took our first sewing class together, when she was ten. I knew no more than she did; I couldn’t have told you where to plug the sewing machine into the wall.

Aretha took an in-depth look at the pattern books our teacher offered us. “Let’s make mommy and daughter dresses that match!” she said. She was mesmerized with one of those McCall’s Stepford Duo photographs of a mother clutching the hand of her daughter in identical pink shifts, like Balthus Meets Barbie. What empty-eyed phonies!

But when your own child asks you, with stars in their eyes, if the two of you can make matching costumes, to parade through the streets as perfectly-synchronized beloveds, do you know what really happens?

You tear up, you clap your hands with joy, your voice scales up a full octave— “Oh goodie, let’s do it!”

We started combing through the color-fields of cotton prints at our local fabric shop. Aretha pulled out a bolt of tropical and dark green forest leaves, against a black background— a jungle print with a hint of abstraction.

I loved those colors, too— “Let’s get six yards!”

But then, shouldn’t we also have a Plan B, in case we screw up our first pattern? Or what if we change our minds in the middle of the night?

After all, there was a whimsically-Eloise at the Plaza print of pink poodles and Eiffel Towers that caught my eye, that I immediately dubbed “French Bitch.” I can’t resist a fabric with a sense of humor— one of my favorite dresses is made from something called “Rocket Rascals”: an Apollo-11-era design of little boys and girls running around the ether in naughty cunning space suits.

The two of us took no chances; we got everything: the Plan A fabric, the Plan B, and the Plan C. My teacher applauded our choices, as did all the other students. It’s like being in a bar at 6 AM with all your friends. Have another yard!

There are, however, sensible reasons why serious sewers accumulate fabric faster than they can sew it.

Number one is, you are dealing with limited quantities of unique designs that often cost a small fortune.

If you can get lightweight sky-blue linen that feels like heaven in your hands, for under $10 a yard, you HAVE to buy it, even if your sewing machine hours are booked up until The Rapture. You are quite right to think you will never see a deal like that again.

Then, there’s the serious sewer’s tool chest. You’re going to need silk, cotton, and rayon linings in neutral colors— there’s no escape from it. If you buy a pattern simply because it has a unique scalloped collar on otherwise plain bodice, you are saving yourself many hours from drafting that collar yourself. And it’s uncanny how scallops work their way into your life!

You do need tulle— you can’t get through the holidays without it. You’d better grab it in turquoise, as well as the ivory and black. You need velcro fasteners, and 20” zippers in every shade, and polar fleece in every solid color. You do.

What is the most frivolous fabric in my stash right now? That’s hard to say.

My sweetheart just started working in hospitals, where he wears scrubs, and he noted to me that other nurses and techs show up in all kinds of conversation-worthy printed fabrics.

The traditional pale green and blue is completely out of fashion now on the ER floor— you get to express yourself! There’s a great Kwik Sew scrubs pattern that has pockets galore, so I made him an offer; “I’ll get some cotton prints that’ll make you proud, and your patients happy.”

This is what I came home with: Brokeback Mountain cowboys striking soft-porn Tom-of-Finland poses against a rodeo background. It’s cotton! It’s apparently from a whole line of “Village People” prints of hunky dudes vamping around in blue-collar poses. The store was sold out of the construction workers print, and the firefighters. I bought the last five yards of “Do-Me Cowpokes” they had left!

Can Jon wear this to work? Probably not, though I swear it’d give his terminal patients a well-needed laugh. Does he still want me to make them up? Hell, yes! He’ll be able to dine out on this outfit for years.

What’s the most expensive unused fabric I have in my stash? Italian cashmere, embroidered charmeuse silk, and some crazy scarlet faux-lamb-fur that seemed critical one winter. I haven’t used them out of sheer intimidation: “I can’t screw these up, it’s so expensive, one day I’ll be ‘good enough’ to take a scissors to it.”

Rationally, I take a dim view of these excuses. If I buy it, I need to have the nerve to cut it out. I learned that lesson after two years. All my most ridiculous purchases were made when I was a new sewer, and my eyes were bigger than my stitches.

Organizing your fabrics and patterns is the first note to the stash-a-holic that they are unequipped for their addiction. I put a floor in my attic to hold my inventory. But how to organize it all? I’ve photographed it, labelled it, and alphabetized— cut out samples and stapled bits to index cards with cunning descriptions.

But my attempts to act like I’m a lady of leisure who can spend every waking hour running a “fabric museum” is a joke. When push comes to shove, you’ll see my legs sticking out from under my bed, stuffing in another Trader Joe’s paper grocery bag of unmarked yardage.

My general system, which has survived my folly, is to use file drawers for patterns. Since most of my office work is digital now, it freed up a lot of hanging file folders for my precious out-of-print Vogues and Christine Johnson’s.

For fabrics, I separated the wovens from the stretchies, the linings and the novelties, the cottons from the wools— just the basic categories— and it really helped. It’s grotesque to go through forty boxes to find one Hawaiian print that burns in my memory, but I can stand to go through two or three. Just don’t let anyone else in my attic, because if they move one thing, my entire mental architecture will collapse.

I took myself off email lists for sales atJoAnn’ s and other fabric emporiums. I don’t let myself web-browse at EmmaOneSock unless I’m sick in bed with the flu. Until I’ve made pajamas for everyone in the Yukon Territory, I am not allowed to buy another inch of flannel, not even the “French Bitch.”

It’s hard... I still remember the innocence of the Mother-Daughter outfit days. When we put on our leafy-green shifts, people gasped, and said, “Oh my god, you’re wearing matching marijuana-leaf dresses!”

I put my hands over Aretha’s ears and shot them a dirty look. We picked our jungle print in the purest spirit of color appreciation and delight at the artist’s tropical spell. It felt great in our hands. We thought we looked so cute. No one can ever take that away from us!

This story is reprinted from Craft 08, where I am the reigning sewing columnist— yes, you read that right. I have a life outside of sexual politics and chicanery. You can see all my back issue of quarterly Craft columns indexed here. I'm working on my Xmas column right now...

Photos, from top:

1. Stitch 'n' Bitch in progress at my house with me, Lulu, Shar, and 'Retha.

2. One of Tom of Finland's "rough riders" which is exactly what this great fabric is based on... yes, I will eventually finish these scrubs and post a photo.

3. Me in skirt made from polka dots and pirate fabric. I can't resist a polka dot.

Keep Your Shears in My Heart

Jonny made a Fimo heart for me to stash my beloved shears. You're in My Heart is carved on the left ventricle. I just wrote about the importance of a good blade in my sewing column for a recent edition of Craft magazine. 

But back to love. For today's theme, I thought of the song that was playing the first time I made love to someone who knew what they were doing. Did I know what I was doing? No. But this really helped:

Photo: Honey Lee Cottrell.

Life's Too Short for Pants

The modern woman endures a lifetime love affair with pants. The tears will come, as well as the joys.

It started off with such a bang. It was in that golden period, between John Lennon announcing the Beatles were more popular than Christ, and the first copy of Ms. magazine appearing on our doorsteps, that something miraculous occurred. Across the fruited plain, in every school, in every grade and class, a voice appeared on the public address system, and announced: “Next Monday, girls will be allowed to wear pants.” Very often, there was a postscript: “Dungarees will not be tolerated.”

The next schoolday— I was in sixth grade— every single female appeared on campus in trousers, leggings, and yes, dungarees (that is to say, JEANS).

“Not tolerated” be damned. This was so much bigger than going bra-less. Can young women today comprehend a time in their mother’s lives when they couldn’t wear pants? How did we ever play kickball in a jumper?

There was only one hitch: It’s difficult to look great in pants. Trouser-liberators like Kate Hepburn were a rail-like exception to the rule.

Jeans were made originally for men to work in, at manual labor— not to sashay down the boulevard. There wasn’t a lot of call for making one’s derriere look fabulous. Most men don’t have much waist-to-hip differential, or would just as soon live with plumber’s butt and jackets that cover it all up. Early tailors never thought about making jean designs that held you in the right places and let you out in the others.

Of course that’s all changed now. You walk into a typical jeans store, and they have walls of folded denim and khaki, with signs directing you to styles like “curvy,” “low rise,” “classic,” “relaxed,” “boys cut,” and the enigmatic “long and lean”— is that an aspiration or a current appraisal?

A Nun’s (Sewing) Story

My mother always told me that the nuns taught her how to sew.
You know what that means, don’t you? Every garment must be as neat on its back as its front, each running stitch identical. All dresses are lined; every pleat is tailor-pressed. If you can’t make a proper French Knot, you might find a ruler-toting nun placing one around your neck.

But my mom always laughed when she talked about her Catholic dressmaker days. When she made outfits for my dolls, she never got around to putting snaps on the backs. She remarked that my high school Home Ec teacher seemed like “an awful old frump,” and finished my final project for me, drinking a beer.

Was there more to this sartorial nun-training than met the eye? Before my mother died a couple years ago, she opened up on a number of topics, including some schoolgirl memories I’d never heard before.

She grew up, as “Betty Jo,” one of five in a Depression-era, Irish-Catholic ghetto in St. Paul. The church was the center of social life and cultural identity. A nun might be someone a young girl would look up to.

“Not all of the nuns were old, either,” Mom told me. Her sewing teacher was the youngest novice, Sister Marie, who adored— adored!— fashion.

When Betty Jo couldn’t decide on a plaid skirt or a middy blouse, Sister Marie pushed those patterns aside, and pointed to a Vogue magazine cover: “What about this?”

It was a one of those sexy Lauren Bacall numbers, a siren dancing dress.

“Sister told me she had some red silk she would give me, if I would make it.”

“She had four yards of red silk stashed in a convent?” I asked.

Mom rolled her eyes at me. Clearly I had no idea of the treasures secreted in nunneries. “Well, that was in the days when I had a nineteen-inch waist,” she said, as if that was an explanation.

“Did you have the pattern?”

“Oh no, we couldn’t afford that!” She got a cross look, like she might cut the story short because of my stupid questions, but the morphine softened her a little. “No, Sister Marie took my measurements, and drew a pattern from the photograph, just freehand, on old parish newspapers.

“It was like Coco Chanel trapped in a convent!" I said. “She lived vicariously through you!”

“I never thought of it that way, Susie, she was just so sweet.” My mom turned the pages of the photo album I brought to her lap.

“What about these hot pants? Were those her idea, too?” I said, pointing at a black and white snapshot of my mom in a polka-dot two-piece.

“Oh yes! We called those short-shorts! Look at how crooked they are!”

It seemed like every outlandish high school costume had been some inspiration tracing back to Sister Marie. Kitty-cat ears with a tail, massive fairy-tale capes, huge shoulders, peplums, and tight skirts.
“Is she the one who taught you to embroider, too?” I asked. I’d brought pillow cases to mom’s nursing home bed that were in tatters, but they were the roses and bluebirds-of-happiness on white sheeting that my mom and I had sewed long ago, when I was little.

If there is anything that is saved in one’s personal history, it’s handmade garments, or linens, that hold the most sensual memories. When your parents are gone, you’ll sleep wrapped in that cloth and dream of them.

“Yes, she did,” my mom said, answering my question. Her voice got whispery. Our conversations were brief in the last months of her life, and this had been a big one. “She taught me—"

She looked past me, as if Sister Marie was checking her from the inside out. “She taught me... how to stitch... a perfect French Knot.” Her cheek turned to the pillow, and closed her eyes, a little bluebird wing still visible under her chin.

Plasma For Your Sewing Machine, Mister?

The Sewing Machine Guide: Tips on Choosing, Buying, and Refurbishing

I have such a appetite and weakness for sewing books, that I've had to resort to the library so I don't go bankrupt between books and fabric. I wish there was a "fabric library"... where you never get charged until you actually make something!

The kind of sewing book I usually get is one of these two:

= big fancy coffee table book of haute couture, runway porn

= tips about how to tailor your clothes to  make you look like you could be making runway porn yourself.

Since I have exhausted near;y every sewing/fashion book at the Central Branch, I'm getting desperate. Today, I pulled out a slim paperback, The Sewing Machine Guide, by John Giordano. The title made me think, "this is a boring nerd manual." 

The Case of the Missing Curve

There is a secret in the fabric shop. Dozens of people come in all day, mostly women, to purchase soft minky for baby blankets, retro oilcloth for totebags,  and Betty Boop flannel for pillowcases.

But these are not just eager homemakers and doting moms. These are seamstresses who are terrified to make something to wear from themselves. They are hiding out in Home Dec because the last time they made a dress it was such a disaster they’re still trembling with shame.

What was the problem? Why did they never attempt a jacket, a pair of jeans— a t-shirt, even? The answer is in one dreaded word: curves— three-dimensional curves, the diabolical design of the female figure.

Aside from all the adolescent angst they cause, curving bodies present the first real challenge to the home stitcher— you cannot flatsy-patsy your way out of the geometry.

The Bleeding Edge: Scissors 101

There is no more important tool in a sewing basket than a fine pair of shears. You can find thread anywhere, or settle for a ball of twine. You can hand-sew the rest of your life without a machine. But you CANNOT cut cloth— or slash to a perfect point— with a butter knife, or your greasy thumbs.

One perfect pair of scissors is not enough, either— you need a brood. Cost is beside the point when it comes to shears. Sell plasma if you need to. If you can’t cut out a design to your satisfaction, your sewing career is screwed. Big, little, serrated, rotary, pinking—even the Swiss Army should be part of your repertoire.

I’m not kidding about the last item. The two most important family firms in Switzerland—in my estimation— are Bernina and Wenger, and this past year they made a 111th Anniversary Jubilee tool, which they call a “Lady’s Knife.”

Ha! It’s a complete sewing kit in a pocket-knife format, with seventeen different tools including a special rotary knife, awl, and hem-measure. This sucker will never get past airport security, and yet every passenger should be carrying one. The tools it employs could get you out of any scrape imaginable.

Next, you must cultivate a sharpener. Like a lover. This is the person who keeps your shears braced for a lifetime. See him often. Dedicate your life to him. Are there “lady” sharpeners who live in rolling caravans with their tools?  I’d love to meet one.

What Must Be Sewn

I just barely managed to finish a wrap dress today (that's a dress with a surplice bodice that crosses your breasts in a hopefully seductive and brilliant way). In the beginning, I  looked like I was modeling a frumpy  bathrobe. Now, I'm starting to look like I'm a foxy Russian Cossack. Improvement!

I have a couple recommendations for the budding, intoxicated Coco Chanel in all of you:

Patternreview.com

This is an awesome place started by a 29 year old software developer named Deepika...pictured on the left. She is a wonderful host. Members post photos of themselves in our newly made garments, and tell you the gritty details of how we made it all come together. I have posted two reviews under the name Quesie. The first  is a vicious rip on bad pattern by McCall's. It was more evil fun than writing a critical book review. The other one is about making  sexy cherry dress. It was fun for me to force myself to write in a G-rated manner about something so obviously seductive. And yes, this site is G-rated! I have never felt more wholesome and satisfied.

Sewing patterns have something in common with porn movies for sale:  you look at the pretty cover and have NO idea whether it's really any good. This site is a godsend because it exposes the duds and reveals the brilliant designs. I wish there was something this honest about sex movies.

Sandra Betzina

This woman is famous in the sewing world, and it's not only because of her talent, but also her integrity. If someone ever called me the Sandra Betzina of Sex, I would be so honored. She is dedicated to demystifying a lot of the quackery of fashion, and creating a real joy of self-expression in style and beauty. She could not care less about all the phony stuff, and she just loves women. Loves them. My idea of the perfect vacation is... sewing with her for a week. Now you know my most decadent secret.

BUST

Some of you may know that I quit writing my sex advice column for BUST, but I like to write occasionally for them about my sewing adventures. I found a kindred spirit in editor Debbie Stoller, who has revolutionized the knitting craze with her Stitch and Bitch books. She knows that being a sex maniac, a feminist revolutionary,  and a crafty bitch are quite complementary.

Dressmakers with Dirty Minds

"Most likely to end their friendship after a sleepover during which they got into Susie’s mother’s peach schnapps, Susie got a little handsy and they both got uncomfortable tingly in the pants feelings."

Yes, dressmakers do have dirty minds! I just found a blog that seems tailor-made for my warped (and darkly woofed) humors: Threadbared.

This site has nothing but photos of old-time sewing patterns that vibrate with perverse second readings.

There's the all-cracker family wearing knitted sweaters of "pickaninnies," a hospital gown pattern for the woman who has nothing better to do than sew her own shroud, and some terribly gay trouser tissues. I got a good shriek out of each one.

I'm beside myself that they don't sell the patterns they satirize, because I'd kill to make my own "L'Apron"— a  pair of frilly bottomless chaps. His-and-her sizing, no less!

Threadbared's authors are "Mary" and "Kimberly," southern belles who introduce themselves by saying, "We combine our fondness for vintage sewing patterns with our need to be bitchy and mean and cruel."

They also claim that they don't know how to sew, but I don't believe that for ONE SECOND.

"Nancy, Go After That Man!"

Yes, I just bought 3 yards of Nancy Drew, Girl Detective fabric.

It's cotton, and as you can see, it's in the design of a grid of some of Nancy's most memorable incarnations, and breathless bits of dialog. 

"I only hope my masquerade will bring results!"

I especially like the profile of her where her hair is blood red. I can never get that color.

So what should I sew with this? I've seen aprons, PJ's, and pillowcases. But I want to do something glamourous and subversive. Any clues?

By the way, if you've never read any of the Nancy Drew parodies, may I suggest, The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse?