Posted tagged ‘sewing’

« home page

“Sewing mends the soul.”

February 28, 2013

Since Sunday it has rained every day but one. That was the teaser day when it looked as if spring was finally poking its head out of the snow, but that was just a single joyful day. Yesterday it poured and today is dark and grim, the kind of day when you know it’s going to rain but don’t know exactly when. Gracie and I haven’t yet done our dump run. It was pouring too much. We’ll go today before it starts to rain.

My neighbor is taking classes to be a masseuse. She asked if she could practice on me. It took me a nano second to agree. Yesterday I got a wonderful massage. She spent over an hour making me so relaxed my limbs forgot how to work. It was wonderful! When I was leaving, she asked if she could practice on me again and give me another massage. You can guess my answer!

The pant leg of my cozy pants caught on the bureau knob and a small hole became a large one. I grabbed my trusty stabler. I do have a sewing kit complete with everything I could have needed to sew the hole shut, but the stapler worked quickly and the hole disappeared. I just hope the staples don’t rust in the wash!

When I was in Ghana, I made my own bedroom curtains, a feat for which I felt accomplished because of my total lack of sewing skills. I could have had them made, but I wanted to give them a try. My room had a whole wall filled with two really large, long windows and another wall with a much smaller window. These windows had screens, and glass pieces like shutters which opened and closed with levers. I measured the length and height of the windows using a piece of cloth I already had as the measuring piece then went to the market and bought a cloth which was sort of a rusty-brown. The cloth had a pattern at the top and the bottom. I cut the cloth into three window pieces, hemmed the bottom of each so the pattern was still there then used string under a top seam so I could attach the curtains to the windows as I had no rods. The curtains looked great and gave me a sense of privacy, a rare commodity those days in Bolga where a white person was a curiosity.

I also made a lamp shade. I used a beautifully colored basket I had bought in the market. Since those days, Bolga baskets can be bought here and are really expensive. They are distinctive with their vibrant colors and handles with red leather. I probably paid a cedi or two and was definitely paying too much as bargaining still meant I’d over-pay. I cut out the bottom of the basket and fashioned a holder for the lightbulb from a hanger to replace the bottom. In my living room I had one light bulb on a long cord hanging from the really high ceiling, and the shade was for that bulb. Once it was attached to the bulb, it looked great though the room was far less bright than it had been. The top rim of the basket made a circle of light on the floor beneath the shade. In the rainy season, the buggy season, that circle light would be black by the end of the night, black with dead bugs.

I didn’t make anything else for my house. Those two, the curtains and the shade, were my only attempts at domesticity.

Categories: Musings
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 14 Comments

“I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.”

August 10, 2012

The morning is dark and humid with thunder and lightning storms possible tonight and tomorrow. Everything is still and quiet. Today is a favorite sort of morning. From the deck, I can even smell the ocean.

I clip recipes from newspapers, magazines and even grocery flyers. I keep them in a folder bursting at the seams. Periodically, while watching TV, I go through the folder looking for something new to try. I make piles of the possibles: appetizers, meats, sides and desserts. This summer I’ve tried different appetizers and just about every one of them was a keeper. It’s fun for me to read the ingredients and imagine how the food will taste and how well dishes will go together. I’m going to be working on movie night’s dinner today.

While growing up I was never interested in anything having to do with cooking or sewing or any sort of handwork like knitting or crocheting, and my ineptitude was of little concern or consequence. My mother did it for me; however, that changed when I got to college. I had to be inventive. I learned solutions for all sorts of problems. Lose a button? Use a stapler. A hem falling? Use tape. Need to make dinner? Open a can, and I was not alone in a total lack of housewifery skills. My friends shared the same ineptitudes as I did and none of us really cared.

The first time I ever did any real baking was at Christmas time in Ghana. I made cookies. They were delicious so I expected a parade celebrating my new skill, but, alas, there wasn’t one. I had to be content with eating and sharing the cookies. The next year I even made pies for Thanksgiving, paw paw pies. I made my own crust for the very first time and rolled it out using a beer bottle, a Star beer bottle, a make-do innovation. The pies were delicious. I was hooked on baking. It seemed I had a hidden talent now brought to light by circumstances like no super-market.

It’s been a long time since then, and I have honed my cooking and baking skills. I can make almost anything and make it well. I love trying new recipes and have enough confidence to make them for company. As for the other housewifery skills, I still need a stapler and tape for those unexpected sewing problems. They’re in my sewing basket, my very large sewing basket.

Categories: Musings
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 8 Comments

“If bad decorating was a hanging offense, there’d be bodies hanging from every tree!”

March 30, 2012

Today is beautiful, sunny and bright. A few white whispy clouds give the blue sky a bit of character. A strong breeze is shaking branches and whirling bird feeders. It makes the day feel a little bit cooler than it is. I’m glad to see the sun.

I have never been one for domesticity. My house is always kept clean, but I don’t always make my bed. I never learned to crochet or knit, and I’m sorry for that, but I can do crewel and needlepoint but haven’t for a long while. Sewing a button is about the best I can do. In most situations, tape or a stapler work just fine. I do love to cook, and I sit and look at recipes imagining menus and how the foods fit together, and I’m good at it. I am a utilitarian dresser with comfort being the over-riding factor. What goes best with what is way out of my fashion zone. My house is a hodgepodge of styles and I think I did a good job of putting everything together. The walls are bright with color. There’s red, pink, lilac, blue and yellow. This room is the only one untouched. It’s too filled with so many collections like books, DVD’s, hats and so much more which makes moving everything to paint the room an almost endless task so I live with the drab white wall. I think my house is cosy, and I love dressing to match it and leisurely taking in the day.

My house in Ghana had four rooms inside: two bedrooms, a living room and the eating area where the fridge and kitchen table were. All the furniture came with the house. In the living room I decorated with posters from home. The bookcase was the same sort we all had in college: bricks and lengths of wood. I made a bed spread which meant buying enough cloth to cover the bed. I did get fancy and make matching curtains. I measured the wall of windows, cut the cloth the right length then cut string a bit longer than the cloth and finally sewed a hem so it covered the string. I tied the curtain from one side of the windows to the other. From the outside it looked better than from the inside. My lightbulbs hung down from the ceiling and weren’t all that attractive so I made a lampshade from a Bolga basket for the living room. You can now buy Bolga baskets from catalogs, and they are pretty expensive. I probably paid a cedi (like a dollar) or less for mine so cutting it for a shade wasn’t a big deal. I’d probably do it again if I lived in Bolga now as the baskets there are still cheap, but I’d give the curtain job to a seamstress or I’d bring my stapler.

Categories: Musings
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: 4 Comments

” If bad decorating was a hanging offense, there’d be bodies hanging from every tree!”

November 12, 2011

The dampness has gone and so have warm days, but nicer weather will be back later in the week. This fall has been beautiful and really doesn’t deserve a complaint just because today is seasonably cool, but it seems weather is always worth a complaint or two and a piece of most conversations. It’s either too hot or too cold, too windy or too damp. Today is too overcast.

Yesterday I was rummaging around in the eaves and found a bag filled with Ghanaian cloth and a few smocks, called fugus, all of which I had brought back forty years ago. One piece of cloth reminded me of a few dresses I had had a seamstress make for me. In Ghana my style of clothing wasn’t in the sort of dress but in the patterns and colors. The cloth market was one of my favorite places. I’d roam through the lines of sellers looking for just the right piece of cloth for my next dress. The cloth was sold from carefully built piles composed of rolled cloth, each rolled piece usually being three yards and placed in the pile first in one direction then in the other. The colors were easy to see, and it was easy for the seller to retrieve a single roll.

I am not a seamstress yet I made curtains for my bedroom in Ghana. I figured out how many yards I needed and bought the cheapest cloth I could find. It was brown with patterns in beige, pretty enough for curtains but never for a dress. I cut the cloth to fit across the three windows about halfway up then turned over the edges and hand sewed them. I then threaded strong twine through the edges and tied the curtains to hooks on the windows. They looked far better from the outside than the inside.

I even made a lamp shade. The one light in my living room hung down on a long wire from the high ceiling. It looked pretty ugly so I went to the market and bought a basket. Similar baskets, called Bolga baskets, are now sold for big bucks in the US., but in Ghana they were and still are fairly inexpensive. I took off the handle and cut a hole in the bottom of the basket then used pieces of a metal hanger to make a holder for the lightbulb. It worked wonderfully except during the rainy season when it became a bug magnet. In the morning, below the lambshade in the same size circle as the bottom of the shade, was always a pile of dead bugs. No big deal in Ghana.

I learned so much when I was in Ghana but I don’t count home decorating as one of them.

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: 10 Comments