Keely Has Taught Herself To Sew

January 2006

Keely spent the day at home. She is now driving back to Murray, and she should call soon to say that she has arrived safe and sound. As moms do, I worry about her being on the roads after dark.

While she was here, she got out some of her old piano books and tried the freshly-tuned piano. I remembered some of the songs she played from her years of taking piano lessons. She doesn't have a piano to play at school so she's a little rusty, but it will all come back to her when she has a piano of her own someday.

This afternoon Keely and I drove over to Clarksville where Hancock Fabrics was having a sale on Butterick patterns -- $1.00 each, limit 5. We got some patterns for "garb"(costumes for Keely's medieval reenactment group, a college chapter of SCA -- Society for Creative Anachronism.)

Keely was excited when she read the flyer for next week's sale at Hancock. She has a list of McCalls patterns that she likes, and next week, McCalls patterns will be $1.00 each, limit 5. Also, dress trim (lace, braid, rick-rack, etc.) will be 40% off. She announced that she'd be coming home next weekend, and we'd be going back to Clarksville, because she wasn't going to miss this sale.

I'm amused, but pleased to see her become interested in sewing. When she was about 13 or 14, I forced her to make a pillowcase. Not long after that, I bought her a sewing machine, an older Singer that does straight and zigzag stitches only. 

For several years, Keely didn't have much interest in using her machine, but then she got involved with SCA. She took her sewing machine to college and became a seamstress. She sews garb for a number of people in her group, some of whom even pay her money. She has taught herself, and ultimately that's the only way to learn to sew-- by sewing.

She made the suede-y, floppy hat she's wearing in the photo. It's garb, but she was wearing it out and about today. It looked cute on her.