Dearest Needlework Friends – I missed you these past two weeks, where we’ve been settling back into (more harmonious!) Natural Law at the Arthouse: foraging and cooking, unpacking and washing, juggling technology and internet, visiting the 50c stall at the market (HEAVEN!!) again, and planning epic new projects – individually and together!
We are almost two weeks back in Guardia S., Italia, after a VERY LONG JOURNEY here again, and me now without my sewing machine (though I do have a serger/ overlocking machine/ taglia cuci) and labouring ever so slowly over my first new project by hand.
Actually, I already made one lovely purple tartan phone protector (matching mine!), which 
It took longer than usual, though as you may know about me, I often opt to sew manually rather than setting up the machine. But having to sew by hand rather than choosing to, is a different matter; seeing the whole project in front of me, paced out by single stitches, is rather more of an endeavour than taking up the mechanical needle whenever it gets laboursome.
And this is where the ego comes in, with its whining and complaining about relatively inconsequential matters. It did this time too, as an entire day passed with only a leg and one cuff finished… It felt like the job was definitely taking too long.
Then I reminded my ego, who does NOT run my life, that time is relative, and that my own time is a choice, and a great-good freedom: I am not beholden to anyone – not even my own ego – to labour if I do not want and choose to. Every moment is a chosen one, to make, do, create, experiment, learn, grow, expand, and more.
The unfolding of this garment, like with others, has been a joyful and pleasurable one, once I got over the ‘poor me, this is such hard work, I miss my old Brother sewing machine so much, wah wah waahhh!!’ mantras.
Settling into the natural rhythm of it taking precisely just as long as it needs to, I let each stitch appear and appear – one after the other, in red and yellow threads, harmonising and contrasting, holding firm along the seams, making these new, never-before-envisioned pair of trousers.
The cuffs for the ankles were particularly satisfying to make. I left my wee pale zips in Portugal, but managed to find these small black ones in a left-over drawer in my studio. They needed to be cut shorter, and then the ends had to be finished up nicely, before they could be put into the new trouser-leg-ends.
I love this detail! At first I was going to make an extending border on the trouser-legs – a contrasting wool colour, to enhance the already quite eccentric blends – and to leave the legs flared and flappy, like a wide palazzo pant. However, the end product came around after I was tripping over another pair of wide trews, which in our medieval quarter can be quite impractical on the super-steep marble steps; I decided that a leg cuff was infinitely more comfy.
Plus I love this style of baggy comfy trousers, but a neat ankle. I again used the fabric of the shawl for the leg cuffs, and knew that they’d require a significant closure, so as to keep the neat shape of the leg when they are on, and whilst also giving space for the foot to get through. Because the wool/ acrylic mix is not at all elastic, I opted for the zips – even if this is a LOT of extra work; it is very much worth it for the final overall effect.
The zip adjustment was a bit of a stretch for my mind: calculating by eye, the width of my ankles/ a typical size of ankle, and then figuring out the tightening taper of it up into the calf of the leg. And the zip: laying it first against the vertical edges of the cuff, then sewing the length of each side of each zip, so as to have it be sufficiently solid in place on the working legs of the trousers.
All that remained, once the zips were in place, was to attach cuff to leg: for this, I pulled in the bottom of the legs with a neatly stitched gather, then pinned, then sewed. Nice and straightforward, even if it is a bit of an effort to sew such a bunched-up fabric, into a neat and uniform gather. And our visit to the market in Telese allowed me to find the perfect wee yellow button, to replace the visible red button at the waist of the trouser – finishing off the trews in quite magnificent style, at least in my eyes!
Yummy! But what do you think? It took several days to make these breeks, and it hopefully won’t be long before I get another sewing machine, so that I can finish the next pair more quickly (even contemplating investing a good chunk of my crypto assets in a more modern machine!)… But I also am fairly darn grateful for this time without a machine, as it really is making me feel more conscious about how I sew – AND I am getting VERY good at more straight and uniform stitching by hand! As ever, I am loving this beautiful mastery journey; getting more and more proficient by doing - and by loving the practise.
