Made by loving hands at home
I was in 7th grade at the tail end of the ’70s, just before the academic world changed. At the time, 6th grade was the end of elementary school, 10th grade was the beginning of high school, and the three years in between were called “junior high.” Within a few short years, the 9th graders got moved into the high school, the 6th graders took their place in the junior high building, and those in-between years were dubbed “middle school.” Oh, and both Home Ec and Shop became electives.
In my day, though (she said, cursing those young whippersnappers on her lawn), they were a required part of the 7th grade curriculum. Sure, it was end of the ’70s, so a handful of boys signed up for Home Ec, just as a handful of girls signed up for Shop, and we all sang “Free to Be…You and Me” together. (Okay, kidding about that.) But we had to take one or the other. Since I had already discovered that I liked and was fairly good at cooking, I figured I could coast through Home Ec. I was wrong — because cooking was only half the class. The other half was sewing. And instead of coasting, I very nearly failed.
Oh, I learned how to hand-sew a button back on when it fell off, a skill which I’ve managed to retain to this day. But cutting out a pattern, threading a sewing machine, and actually attaching the fabric according to the directions all escaped me. I chose the simplest pattern imaginable — a top essentially made of four squares of fabric stitched together at the corners — in a loud pattern (hey, it was the ’70s) that would hide any mistakes. I worked on it assiduously for days and days. And I could not get it to look anything like something a human being could wear. I think I must have ripped out every seam at least half a dozen times. I got an F; only my good grades on the cooking part of the class allowed me to pass. Oh, the shame.
This scarred me for years. YEARS. In the last 15 years or so, as I watched various friends learn to knit sweaters, sew dresses, string necklaces, bead earrings, and crochet adorable caps with kitty ears, I contented myself with the thought that since other people made perfectly good clothing and accessories, I really had no need to do it myself. Part of me wanted to be crafty, to put my own handmade stamp on my wardrobe — but the rest of me remembered that humiliating semester in 7th grade and shied away from the very thought.
Then, last week, I was contemplating getting rid of my two favorite sweaters. Both are cashmere/wool blend v-neck pullovers, identical but for color, and they’re the softest, lightest, coziest things I’ve ever worn. But one of them had an unrepairable hole under one arm, and the other had a stain just below the point of the v-neck. I started searching the Internet for ways to salvage them, and lo, I found something I could do with even my minimal domestic skills.
I started with the stained sweater, since it was otherwise intact. I washed it in hot water and dried it on high, which shrank it from boxy to snug and felted the yarn so it wouldn’t unravel if I cut into it. Then I sliced it right down the front, from neck to hem. I stitched on some buttons bought at the local fabric store, snipped small buttonholes (the felting saved me from needing to know how to sew a buttonhole), and voila: a cardigan, with one button conveniently hiding the stain. The buttons are unevenly spaced, and it gaps a little bit unless I leave the top button open, but even though it’s an obviously hand-crafted look, it’s not half as amateurishly ugly as I was afraid it might be.
The next one is going to be a little more challenging. I’m going to cut open both side seams on the body and restitch them shut a little more snugly, thus making the sweater more fitted while hiding the hole under one arm inside a seam. I’m not sure if I want to sew it from the inside to make the seams invisible, or use embroidery floss to make visible stitches on the outside. If I do that, I may have to figure out how to make decorative stitches around the neckline, too, just so it looks planned.
It’s a little intimidating, but I feel like I’m finally laying the ghosts of Home Ec to a long-deserved rest.
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