I'm writing on Sunday morning from my kitchen table, with a cool breeze clearing the house air, birds twittering merrily outside, and immensely looking forward to welcoming some Hive friends to Guardia Sanframondi later today!
I've got the last - I hope! - phase of my Jesu dress on the table with me, next to my Twinings Breakfast Tea: two long strips of white silk cut from the edge of a big square scarf: I'm relatively-clumsily rolling the cut edges of it, before I fold it in half and make the THIRD attempt at solving the waist... The other two attempts were a medium-thickness elastic (I'd sewn the seam too close joining the top to the skirt, making the cavity too tight for the strip of elastic), and a long red silk cord (made from strips of a not-very-attractive chamisole). Both were way too clunky.
Often I am aware when working on a big project like this - where I'm very excited to make the garment, to complete it - that things can kind of bottleneck or get tangled near the end. My over-excitement makes me rush into the work and the decisions around solutions. Like every job is a microcosm of the macrocosm: listening more closely can help me feel into where I need to slow down, focus, grow up.
I love this learning process, of recognising how every stitch is an expression: it is like a small reading of what is happening in my mindbodyspirit - and it guides me to realign, bring my attention in. Even the poise of my body can reflect where I need to rest more, calm my mind, or get more motivated.
In all honesty, I do often find it difficult to fully motivate; sometimes a heavy weight of I-don't-know-what feels present, and makes it hard work to move my imagination. I try to meet this weight where it is, and allow it to express before doing anything about it - but often it just sits too long, and I have to accept its company.
Being conscious that all things reflect all things, I concentrate and make my stitches more even, and when the thread gets tangled I stop and breathe more deeply, stretch my spine, get up and shake off any stagnancy. As the garment comes closer to refinement, I feel more in harmony with everything.
This dress is a special one, as every garment is for me, but this is another of the pushing-through-neuroses pieces that is profoundly enriching to my confidence and sureness of being on the right path. I had the feeling for it right back when I bought the 'Heileges Herz Jesu!' table cloth at the 1 Euro stall a few months ago. The combination of religious kitch, the strong script, the powerful red on white symbolism and the delicious fabric of thin white cotton; together these qualities made me instantly imagine a dress coming from it.
But I held back, thinking it'd be too eccentric and might trigger folks here - even if they don't speak German: just the symbol of the sacred heart might be a tad over-the-top for Guardia/ south Italy. After doing my last project of the stripey dress, and getting such consistently positive feedback about it, I decided to jump in though!
It has been relatively straightforward in terms of construction to make it: just needed a very particular weight of cloth for the back part, which I made from an old petticoat which I opened up and attached to the front 'apron' of the Jesu cloth. I ruched both parts and added pockets from scraps left over from my cross-stitch dress from a few weeks ago. I love these wee scraps and was waiting to add them as pockets somewhere special.
I did quite a bit of selecting in finding the right top-half of this dress; again, it needed the correct weight and shade of cotton, and I ended up cutting sleeves off of a blouse and turning it upside down, to make the waist. The two sections sat very well together, with a temporary elastic on top of the ruched skirt - but I really wanted a dress rather than separates. So I took out both of the elastics - and then ensued a great tangle of thinking and over-thinking which made me run through the 3 different options for the new waist: not thinking them through first, but practically actually making them and trying them, at great expense of time-energy-attention-effort!
At the end of the project, I recognise that this is a good learning process; I shouldn't get hung up on 'time wasted' or criticise myself around not working 'efficiently' or 'masterfully' enough! I can simply allow what needs to be learned, to unfold in its perfect timing, according to the Natural Law of unfoldment. :-)
This is a beautiful practise.
So on I go with the final - I think and hope! - stages of the belt-like silk cord, which I anticipate will run nicely where the elastic of the top previously was: think I have the other seam nicely aligned and filled - and this will compliment how I've added a less-tight elastic to the front of the dress waist and a tighter one to the back of it- the cord will add a kind of complimentary tension of a rope that closes alongside the elasticated part. Fingers crossed!
Clare.
PS I am creating this post by an amazing feat of technological juggling between appliances, in a coffee bar in Telese Terme: I hope you can make sense of the order of the images, and I will correct the layout when I get on laptop internet back in Guardia!
