Ganeida's Knots

Dont needle the seamstress. ~ anon

Last week I took myself over to the mainland & a very nice lady slathered my joints with gunk, rolled her scanner thingammy around in the gunk, poked & prodded & pushed & pummelled my poor shoulder then announced I had a *stiff joint* & how long had it been bothering me?! Makes you wonder about the medical profession doesn't it.


I dutifully took all the pretty B&W pics they gave me back to our own medico, who didn't look at them, merely read the report & announced what I had already told him ~ my shoulder hurts! Yeah, well.... Honestly. Anyway he wants to shove a dirty great needle in there. Serious meltdown on my part but he promises if they can get the swelling down I can go & do something useful like have Bowens on it ~ which is far more my thing than dirty great needles. They always say it won't hurt; I won't feel a thing & it is never true. It hurts; I feel it & I get huge bruises from their promises. I am NOT looking forward to this one, not even in the dubious event I will be pain free.
Erratic as we are, Ditz & I are getting some school work done. The first attempt was as much to orientate me as Ditz. I am not really a sewer & certainly not a confident one. Just reading the instructions is mammoth. I'm an English Lit major & 1/2 the instructions don't make sense. Hence choosing something really, really simple for starters.

Both Ditz & I tend to be *immersion learners* ~ at least for some things ~ so last week was sewing week. We did do other things but mostly we sewed. First we had to decide which was the right side of our material so we could pin that together. I'm blind & Ditz had no idea what her selvage should look like. My mother would have a fit. She thinks it matters but these are pyjamas & no~one but us is ever going to see them [well, you ladies are but you're not going to be able to tell from these pics whether we got it right or not!]. I think we did but as right or not it is the same side out everywhere all's good.

Ditz has decided she doesn't like laying out, pinning or cutting out. I can understand that but as you can't sew without doing those 3 things first it's just tough bikkies. We had waaay too much material. I had a feeling the girl had cut us too much but better too much than too little. We ended up with just 4 pieces & most of that was straight seams.

I carefully pinned the right sides together with the correct components. I did this. I was having trouble with the instructions as it is not the way I would have gone about constructing this garment & as it was so difficult to tell which side was which I was taking no chances on Ditz muddling up the pieces.

We set the machine up in Liddy's room on her desk as everything could be left out & returned to at a moment's notice. Once Ditz got the hang of the machine again she was buzzing along at speed. Managed to not go too crooked ~ mostly.

The crotch, which was on a curve, presented a few difficulties but overall this was a really good first pattern choice. It took Ditz about an hour over three days to finish the major sewing, then another hour for the finishing off which included measuring & threading her elastic, sewing the elastic down along the seams to prevent it twisting in the wash [ thanks mum, great tip! ☺] & snipping off all her loose threads. The finished product is baggy & apparently really comfortable. Ditz has hardly been out of them since we finished them but I have no pics. Her bum really does look big in these!