Last summer I discovered this great book, Sew What! Skirts. I was just getting back into sewing, and hadn’t touched a pattern since Home Ec class with Mrs. Fernald. (She used to give me “speeding ticket” warnings and demerits for sewing too quickly. On a side note, she was the faculty leader for my high school’s Future Homemakers of America club. And that was only 15 years ago!) The premise of the book is that it explains how to take proper measurements and then how to turn those measurements into custom fitting skirts. Ideal for a craftster like myself who can never find the perfect fitting garment off the rack.
After deciding on a couple of patterns to try, I remembered that there was this great fabric shop just a few blocks away from my friend’s apartment in Northampton, MA. So, the next time I was in NoHo, (after spending half of my drive outrunning a torrential summer thunderstorm) Valley Fabrics was my first stop.
Sewing is new for me all over again, so as I was inquiring about how much fabric to purchase for two different skirts, the woman behind the counter pulled out the exact skirt from the book that I was interested in making. Same fabric, same everything. Hmmm. She played with me twice more like this. Talk about slow on the uptake! The woman who wrote the book in my hands, owns the shop. What providence!
After Miranda and I had our daily allowance of fabric we dashed through the warm, driving rain to our cars and made our way back to her apartment. Clothes dripping, we found her neighbors out on their porches, enjoying the downpour and each other’s company because the storm had knocked out the power. I love summer storms!
[...] straight “Polka Dotty” skirt was the first garment that I sewed with my Grandmother’s sewing machine in twenty [...]