Bitch and Stitch

Jason bought me a sewing machine yesterday.  I may have mentioned in a previous post that I was thinking of investing in one.  If I am going to be hand making Christmas presents this year and Jason and the children want Orc wear for the modern family, I am not hand stitching everything.

I hate needlework.

Actually, that’s not true.  In recent years, since I have thrown off the bonds of oppression placed upon me by hideous needlework teachers of yore, I have quite enjoyed my odd foray into needlecraft.

I should say that I hated needlework at school, and it is taking me a long time to realise that nobody is going to clip me up the side of the head if my seams aren’t straight, or if I don’t want to make a school blouse or a dirndl skirt and pretend to be Julie Andrews on a school trip.

I am not naturally deft of hand.  I find sewing quite hard.  I find all crafts that require material quite hard. I knit like I am trying to build a wall.  I have never attempted crochet because of this, and the fact that when I was in the throes of knitting, people would shout: ‘Just RELAX!’ in a way that was guaranteed to make you very nervous and uptight.  I decided that wool work was too stressful.  I expect I might be alright if I could find someone to teach me who was a) relaxed themselves or b) learn it by myself.

With needlework everything seems far too technical. It involves measuring and cutting and darts and pleats and crinkly paper that rips, and pins that try to kill you.  It is a violent art, and don’t let anyone tell you any different.

My first proper needlework assignment at school was making a cushion.  This was when I attended a convent school.  There were only four nuns left in the school who taught. Unfortunately one of them was the needlework teacher, Sister Noella.  Sister Noella was small, round, and Irish.  She was also fiercely and committedly insane.  And a huge fan of unwarranted physical violence.

A slap up the head was a good cure for whatever ailed you, particularly if you couldn’t do back stitch with a rusty needle and thread that had been specially waxed to be extra slippy.

The needlework room was in the grounds of the school and had once been a chapel for the convent.  It was dank and dark and full of louring statues of the Virgin Mary beadily assessing your chain stitch in a very unforgiving manner.

We would be walked over to the chapel from the main building in croc formation, indoor shoes in hand (yes, we had to have brown shoes for indoor wear, black shoes for outdoor wear. V. important for saving of souls and soles), while Sister Noella beat any stragglers around the head with the flat of her hand.

Once inside she would instruct us in her arcane arts.

I realise, with middle aged hindsight that Sister Noella only knew slightly more about needlework than I did.  Hence cushion making for all.  Also her avoidance of sewing machines that were placed around the walls.  We were never allowed to use them.  We had to learn to stitch everything by hand.

I think Sister Noella had been a bad nun, and had consequently been given the needlework class as some kind of divine punishment.  She hated it as much as we did.

The materials we had to work with were legendarily awful.  My cushion sported a brown nylon, silk effect backing with an orange raffia front.  The raffia shed everywhere and was absolutely impossible to sew with any kind of commitment as it would just unravel into your lap as soon as you touched it.

On top of the orange raffia I was required to stitch on purple and blue felt flowers, and then add the stalks in green wool, chain stitch.

It was, as you may imagine, a symphony of delight.

I gave it to my grandmother for Christmas.  She wept.  I suspect that they were not tears of joy.

After that Sister Noella retired and we had two more needlework teachers, both of them fierce and depressed that they were not working for Christian Dior, but were holed up in a dank chapel teaching surly twelve year olds to make blouses they did not want to wear.

Both of them hated me and refused to exhibit my skirt in the second year parents evening display, or my blouse in the third year parents evening display.  Mainly due to the blood stains and ineradicable sweat marks.

I was also banned from the sewing machines after I sewed my finger to the armpit of my blouse.

In the third year, my needlework teacher was also my domestic science teacher.  We had a falling out over the appropriate method of decorating a Christmas cake. She said plastic sledges and snow men.  I said a trillion, billion, edible silver balls.  I won.

She refused to display that at the parents evening either.  It sat in the cupboard with my blood stained blouse. A shrine to my incompetence.

I suspect she would be amazed at my reasonable level of competence now.  I clearly did not show early promise, but that’s probably down to the fact we never made anything I actually wanted to cook or eat and there was very little motivation to progress once Sister Noella stopped slapping us around.

Now though, I am going to explore the possibilities of the sewing machine.  I did not want to do anything whizzy.  I just wanted to sew in straight lines quite fast. Hence the £59 simple model from John Lewis rather than the £400 one which rotisseries chickens as it does your overlocking for you.  My level of ability is underlined by the fact that I am most excited by the knowledge that it is purple.  What does it matter if it only does 8 kinds of stitches, as long as it is purple?

You may wonder how come I am being allowed such a lovely treat, and indeed my new oil cloth, a new brownie tin and a device for poaching eggs which does not involve me burning my finger ends off.

It is because a) I allowed Jason to go out and miss the Halloween party this weekend. b) I also did not say a word when he got back from missing the Halloween party to announce he had only come home for a wee, and was off out to play poker.  But more importantly c) he bought himself an XBox and some new games yesterday and spent all night hogging the telly and shooting things.

I earned it.

 

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