Needle, thread aim for just good enough
Ihad no idea that having a child would turn me into a seamstress.
Sometime, when I wasn’t looking, elementary school became art school. It seems like every week brings a new artistic endeavor, courtesy of Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp.
While I feel vaguely confident helping my son with projects involving paint, poster board and glue, I really end up swimming in the deep end when it comes to the sewing projects.
This week, for the sixth-grade performance, I had to help my son craft a cape. Not just a simple red or black cape we could have bought off the rack during the lead-up to Halloween. No. This had to be a glittery, silver cape.
Apparently, there is a role for an Elvis lookalike in the sixthgrade performance of “Taming of the Shrew.”
Last year was much easier. He had to be a pirate for the play, and we were able to outfit him right from the department store Halloween aisle.
Two years ago, we had to come up with a donkey costume. Now that was a major production — a gray sweatshirt, foam rubber and enough material to make a tail, and a fourth-grader became a farm animal.
Unfortunately, my maestro performance on the donkey costume has turned me into the designated tailor in the Clark household. Now whenever there is sewing involved, my wife just steps out of the way and turns the project over to the boys to handle.
I’d like to say that I actually know how to sew, but that would be too lofty of a description. My training came at a young age, when I found that I could sew on my Boy Scout patches faster than my mother could get to them.
The benefit was that they were so poorly held on that I could easily remove them in time for the next camporee or Klondike Derby. There was absolutely no need for a seam ripper when I did the sewing.
I carried my lack of sewing skill to my Navy career, saving untold tens of dollars sewing my uniforms, rather than paying the tailor in the base exchange. I found the key was that the patch or hem didn’t have to look good for a week or even a day. The stitching just had to keep together long enough to stand for one inspection.
I’ve even employed the creative use of a stapler over the years. But that seems like cheating somehow.
With all this dubious experience, I figured a silver cape couldn’t possibly be that hard. I’ve read hundreds of comic books over the years and seen Superman and Batman on the big screen enough times. Surely I am qualified to design a cape.
A quick wander through the fabric aisle and we were outfitted with 10 feet of silvery cloth, silver thread, heavy duty needles and a vague idea of how to proceed. At $30 a cape, no wonder Superman has stuck with the same old costume for most of the past 70 years.
Little did I know that they actually sell these things called patterns in sewing stores, which would apparently have made all of this much easier. Instead we went with the trial-and-error method of cape design — cut, sew, model the results, then repeat as needed.
My son’s costume looks like a lopsided, alien spaceman pretending to be Elvis, but he seems happy with it. And it only has to last one performance, right?
Then we can throw it in the back of the closet with the other sewing projects. I figure we’ve got too much time and creativity invested to just throw out these misshapen masterpieces.
Who knows? Maybe next year, the school will do a performance of “Shrek.” We are all set to take the stage as a cape-wearing, pirate donkey, should the need arise.
John Clark is online editor at therepublic.com. He can be reached at jclark@therepublic.com or 379-5769.
