Who ever said, "A stitch in time, saves nine?"
The quote may have application for Hollywood costume designers, English tailors, seamstresses or, perhaps, Betsy Ross (in the past), but to me...it's a conundrum, or as the King so often says in the play/movie The King and I, "It's a puzzlement!"
As I was recently constructing my first piece of "garb" (a chemise)--keep in mind I do not know how to sew--wilth encouragement from other members of our Canton, I thought, How hard can this be? I'll just follow the instructions. In doing so, I proved pride cometh before a fall.
Didn't have much trouble cutting out the pieces. I simply followed the diagrams on the pattern's instruction sheet. It was the sewing instructions that often baffled me...especially the instructions for attaching the sleeves.
I was using a soft muslin fabric, so it was hard for me to tell the wrong from the right side of the material.
Of course, I made all the "newbie" mistakes that could possibly be made.
First, as I just said, I lost track of the wrong and right sides. Then I sewed up the seams of the sleeves before attaching them to the armhole...rip, rip,clip. Then, I attached the wrong sleeve to the wrong armhole...rip,rip, clip again. (I have to start paying more attention to notches etc.). I inverted them and tried again.
I felt like I had conquered the scourge of the Middle Ages, the Black Plague, when they finally fit into place. So over-confident was I that I fell headlong into the fray. With abondon, I began heming the cuff end of the sleeves that I had previously pre-folded and pressed flat for attachment to the sleeves. Sleeves that I had just inverted and, yes, you guessed it, in my haste, I had forgotten that I had inverted the sleeves. As a result, my lovely, perfectly straight -lined hemming stitched sleeve edges were sewn on backwards with the turned under edge facing the right side. Rip,rip,clip.
All groaning and grunting, and asking for Divine inspiration, I re-ironed the edges back under. This time I made sure that I had everything in order before I hemmed the sleeve openings. I was not interested in the least in another round of rip, rip, clip.
By the time I had finished this segment of puting this garment together, you could have fired up a kiln with the heat of my hard breathing.
I came away from this experience knowing one thing, for certain. I could apply the observation of the The King of Siam to sewing. To me, "It's a puzzlement."
"A stitch in time saves nine"
ReplyDeleteCenturies older than Hollywood, for that matter, centuries older than Betsy Ross, and nothing to do with sewing specifically.
Origin, British, meaning, a timely effort will prevent more work later. Attributed to English astronomer Francis Baily, in his Journal, 1797, published 1856 by Augustus De Morgan.
From the original Anglo-Saxon "A stitch in time may save nine" Thomas Fuller's Gnomologia, Adagies and Proverbs, Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings, Ancient and Modern, Foreign and British, 1732.
The original "may" save time appears more applicable to your story than the later unambiguous assurance that it will. Great post, glad to read it all worked out.