Archive for May, 2013

Sewing Sunday: May Edition – Alteration Adventures

Shirt ruffle pattern

I have a confession to make.  I didn’t actually sew on a Sunday this month.  In fact, I just got May’s project done today under the wire.  (Phew.)  It’s been kind of a busy month, and I found myself without any free Sundays to sew.  Next month’s looking better.  The unfortunate byproduct of waiting until today to finish my project is that my second floor has just about reached inferno conditions due to the heat wave and the fact that I’m stubbornly not putting my air conditioners in until it’s at least June–not ideal for sewing and using a hot iron.  But I persevered, and now I’m happy to say that I have a new(ish) shirt.

Ann Taylor blouseThe reason I say new(ish) is that I decided to dive into the world of alterations this month.  I’ve had this shirt for eight years (shown at left) that I really like because of the pattern on the material–very organic and kind of art nouveau-y.  It came from Ann Taylor, and it’s a well-made silk shirt, but apparently it was no match for my under-arm perspiration.  (Seriously, what is in that stuff?  Pure acid?  And why does it turn some of my t-shirts’ armpits bright orange?  It’s gross, really.)  This winter I noticed that it had developed some holes in the armpits (in addition to, despite my best eco-friendly dry-cleaning efforts, some lovely discoloration).  Saddened by this development, I was trying to figure out a way to keep the shirt from the landfill since I knew I wasn’t going to be able to donate it with holes in the pits.  Then it dawned on me that perhaps I could turn it into a lovely summer blouse, since I have a shortage of those.  Problem solved.

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Arts Festival Aftermath

TAAF Booth

This past weekend, I participated in the Trenton Avenue Arts Festival.  It was an experimental endeavor, for sure, and my friend and fellow artist, Beth Nentwig, agreed to participate in the experiment with me.  My mom also contributed some very cool bracelets that she’s been making for the last several months.  From a sales perspective, the event was an abject failure.  I sold nothing.  Not one thing.  Not even a single hand-printed linocut card.  Needless to say, it was disheartening.

In the 24 hours following the event, as I reflected on the festival, I figured I had a couple of ways to approach it.  I could take the defeatist approach:  “This is proof that the things I make have no value, and therefore I should just give up making them and trying to sell them.”  But that’s not really my style.  Plus, one data point hardly seems like enough to draw conclusions about the value of one’s work or whether exhibiting at future art festivals has value.  I could make excuses (some of which might even be valid):  “The festival goers were cheap.  The rain kept people from making last-minute purchases.  The audience wasn’t right.”  That might make me feel a little better about myself, but it really doesn’t prepare me for future sales endeavors.  And it’s not really my style, either.

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Lost

The Woods

Something hasn’t felt quite right for the last several weeks.  Life has felt especially hard, which I know is difficult to believe for those of you who subscribe to the notion that there’s “Wittchen Good Fortune.”  (I know you’re out there.)  But really, it’s been like the universe has been conspiring to make things trickier than usual.  I don’t expect things to be easy–in fact, I often find myself falling prey to the spurious notion that if it’s not hard, it’s not worth doing (see also: why I went to engineering school)–but I do believe that if things become too hard, they may not be meant to be.  (It’s a weird dichotomy of thought, I know.)  I’ve been having trouble focusing and motivating myself to do almost anything, and several initiatives I’m involved in seem to be going through rough patches.  I feel like I haven’t been doing enough, and then I’m not entirely sure what I should be doing.  I’ve been feeling paralyzed by the fact that I have so many projects that I want to start, but only a small handful of them offer an immediate financial benefit.  In short, I’ve been lost.

It all came to a head last week when I did something supremely stupid–I deleted my website.  (Yes, this one.)  It’s a long, technical and boring story how I did it, but for someone who self-identifies as being meticulous and careful, it was a real blow to my ego.  Right in front of me was the electronic manifestation of how I’d been feeling but couldn’t put a finger on.  Not only was I metaphorically lost, but now a big part of my electronic life was literally, well, lost.  I wanted to throw up.

I’ve gone through these directionless periods before, and almost always there’s a little signpost along the way that tells me that I need to do something different.  The signpost usually comes in the form of doing something that’s uncharacteristic for me–something that challenges one of my own internal stories.  You know the stories–the ones we tell ourselves about who we are, who we’re supposed to be and how we’re supposed to feel and act.  Sometimes those stories are helpful guides for how to live our lives and other times they’re just…stories.

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