Win for the day

I'm sure most parents understand that one of the primary jobs of a parent is to teach our children. A woman that I admire told me something when my children were little that stuck with me:  The phrase educational TV is redundant -- a child is always learning.  Don't ask yourself IF you taught something; ask yourself WHAT you taught.  That concept made a big impact on how I interacted with my children. 

I now know that not only do we teach our children, we learn from them as well.  A few years ago, my youngest started using the phrase "Win for the Day".  He uses it to denote the thing that went really well that day.  I have gotten into the habit of identifying my daily win.  Even on the worst of days, everyone has a win.  Identifying it and being grateful for it helps keep things in perspective.

And just as there is always a Win for the Day, there is also a Fail.  Sometimes it is an Epic Fail other times just a run-of-the-mill Fail.  Whatever it is, identifying it and trying to sort out the reasons behind it helps me grow and MAYBE keeps me from making the same mistakes over and over.

Here's to the Wins and the Fails.  Here's to being grateful.  Here's to teaching children and learning from them.   

The Tuxedo part three

So when last we left The Tuxedo, I had the brilliant (I thought) idea to put darts into the jacket back to take up the extra material at the waist.  Turns out, I am not nearly as brilliant as I think I am.  The back darts were a hot mess.  They made the jacket look like it had a peplum.  Of course, I didn't give up on the idea quickly  -- you could even say I was a bit relentless about it.  I modified the slope and angle of the darts several times but was still unhappy about the way they caused the bottom of the jacket to flare.  Finally, in desperation I took out the darts and did what I should have done in the first place which is to take out all of the excess by aggressively angling the center seam. Below is a picture of that seam and you can see how much larger the seam is in the middle.  (Take a moment to admire my handmade/pad stitched shoulder pads that are showing in the upper corners of the photo)

 Pictures of back seam -- before adjustment

After adjustment:

Unfortunately, once the back seam was fitted, the vent gaped open worse than ever.  I finally just opened up the vent and pinned the material so there was a nice closed center back seam with enough material to comfortably cover what needed to be covered.  I then hand stitched that into place.  After that the fit was perfect but the model was a bit surly about having any more pictures taken.  (In addition to the back seam and vent adjustments, I also pegged the leg of the pants a bit and made the jacket a little shorter than the first fitting).

While I was relieved that the fit was right, I was feeling pressure to move things along a bit faster. Luckily the jacket front vent pocket and the interior pockets went together very smoothly. I structured the interior pockets so they are not an integral part of the lining.  Apparently that is a thing in fine tailoring and I was at least still pretending to be doing fine tailoring.  Foreshadowing -- all pretense would drop away when I hit the buttonhole challenge.

Front welt pocket (which turned out easier than I thought it would be and as far as I am concerned is a thing of beauty)

Interior pockets (prior to lining being added to the jacket)

Large pocket, right front

Small pocket (just the right size for a wedding band) lower left front

So, the worst was over, right?  Just lining and buttonholes to do at this point and then I could go back to finishing the wedding gown and ultimately reach the real goal -- getting back to making clothes for myself.  Turns out buttons and buttonholes almost defeated me.  Later post will provide more details.

A Mind -- It's a Terrible Thing To Lose

I grew up with a mother who was very pretty in her younger years and  with a sister for whom the word cute was invented to describe. So it was probably natural for me to ask my mother at a young age if I was pretty.  I have never forgotten her response: You're smart.  That's better than pretty.  Pretty fades and smart doesn't.  

I have come to the conclusion that Mama was wrong in her assessment of the endurance of intelligence.  It started out a few years ago as just small lapses in memory and cognitive skills.  It would take me a moment or two to retrieve the exact word I was looking for or to remember details of an event.  I could come up with the information eventually, it just took some time.  I told my kids that all the data was still there, my processor was just really slow. 

That was before menopause hit full force.  That seemed to have caused a disc boot failure and some of the information might not be retrievable at all.  I went from being someone who could keep all the plates spinning and effortlessly remember all the details to resorting to looking at my email signature block to find my zip code. (And yet, I can still remember the words to the Gilligan's Island theme song.  Maybe there's just no room for more data?) 

My conversation with my doctor on the subject was a little disconcerting.  Thanks to a medical procedure, she went through early menopause a few years ago and has first-hand knowledge of the challenges.  When I mentioned the mental lapses and suggested that I might have some sort  neurological problem, she was quick to assure me that it was far more likely that this was age-related and could be helped but not completely resolved through hormone replacement therapy (HRT). She  shared with me that she had definitely lost some intellectual capacity.  So was I supposed to be reassured that she really understood what I was going through or concerned that my doctor was not as smart as she used to be?  (I decided to be reassured. ) She then told me that while HRT could help, it wouldn't fully restore what I had lost.  In other words, at best HRT could give me back only 1/2 of the step I had lost.

HRT has given me back that half step and I am grateful but I can't help feeling a bit cheated.  After all, I was told that while being pretty might be preferable when you are young, being smart would be  enduring.  Now not only have I never been the prettiest, I'm not even the smartest anymore.  

Obviously there is no do-over coming my way from The Universe.  But do I have to accept the current state of affairs?  If Mama's words did not turn out to be entirely accurate, maybe a favorite saying of Daddy's will be:  It's not that winners don't get knocked down.  It just that winners get up one more time than they've been knocked down.  So I am getting back up and on the horse (I know I have a bit of a mixed metaphor going here but work with me on this).  I have signed up for a continuing education course on Coursera and so far at least am holding my own.  I have downloaded several organization and planning aps to help me stay on track and have also started working more mind-challenging puzzles.  Will I get back the 1/2 step I am still missing?  Probably not but that doesn't mean I am going to stop trying.

30 Years

So yeah, somehow 30 years have gone by. Or as my husband likes to say when people ask how long we have been married: three lifetimes.  We have three children and he has a strange sense of humor.  People generally don't know how to respond when he says that-- it makes it sound as if our marriage has been a triple-life sentence.  Actually, it's been a hell of a ride.  

I look back on the wedding pictures and can't believe how young and clueless (and thin) I was.  Fortunately, as clueless as I was I made a great choice for a life partner.  Even after 30 years, Kent  continues to surprise and challenge me.  We're still figuring out the whole empty nest thing but are rediscovering activities that had fallen by the wayside during the hectic child-raising years (watching college football, going out for drinks) and finding some new activities to share (yoga, gardening, beekeeping).  

The yoga is an excellent example of how he keeps surprising me.  He is a gifted athlete and even at 50+ years was playing volleyball and basketball with intensity until a back injury sidelined him in the fall.  Now, he is taking yoga classes to rehab the back and gamely struggling into postures that are completely foreign to him.   

Of course, his ability to shift gears like that shouldn't have surprised me.  When our youngest went from playing basketball to dancing ballet, Kent went from coaching basketball to playing a role in the Nutcracker party scene without hesitation.  Did I mention that he is a great Dad? 

We have raised three children, refurbished two houses, buried numerous loved ones, grown up, grown apart and grown back together again.  It has been a great ride and it isn't over yet.

The Tuxedo part two

The last post left off with a decently fitting muslin and lots of angst (mostly centered on fitting issues).  After adjusting the pattern (Vogue 2383) based on the info from the fitting, it was fabric cutting time.  I had ordered a beautiful midnight blue wool from Mood Fabrics when I first started planning the tuxedo.  Unfortunately, further research convinced me that in order for the tuxedo to look like the Skyfall tux, the fabric needed to have a sheen.  So the wool went into the stash and I went to a local fabric store Jay's Fabric Center where I found a beautiful silk blend with a black satin-like backing.  Unfortunately, it was a little light weight for my purposes but I decided it would work if I underlined as needed with more substantial fabric. 

I put on some jazz, poured a martini and spent a Saturday afternoon cutting the numerous pieces needed for this project.  Seriously, there were way more pieces than I have ever had for a sewing project (a crotch shield, is that even a thing?).  I also cut silk chiffon underlining along with a heavier silk from my stash for areas where I wanted more body (chest and back mostly).  I happened to have two pieces of silk chiffon in my stash (a lavender and a fuschia) that I had bought to make dresses.  I wanted to use the fuschia for two reasons:  it had a stiffer hand and I had decided the color was too bright for me to use for a myself.  Nimela (the fiance) nixed that idea.  She was sure Kyle (my son) would not wear the tux if he discovered it was underlined in fuschia chiffon.  The lavender really looked like grey once it was put on top of the silk so I went with the lavender.  (On a side note, once my daughter Sarah heard about the availability of the fuschia fabric, she pointed out that the color would look great on her and so that fabric now resides in her stash in Savannah -- sometimes it is not a good thing to have another seamstress in the family). 

I hand-basted the fabric and chiffon together and then added the sturdier stash silk pieces as needed.  This portion of the project went smoothly if s-l-o-w-l-y.  Once that was all done, I machine-basted the jacket together.  Progress picture below shows the jacket ready for the first fitting:

Luckily, Kyle was going to be able to come home over the Thanksgiving holiday and at Christmas.  That gave me a chance to have two fittings before the wedding.  Below are pictures from the first fitting:

Overall I was pretty happy with the fit.  The chest had a fold by the shoulder that required me to remove and reset the sleeve a little further in but those were the only issues from these views.  But as I had been expecting, the real problem was the back:

The fit across the shoulders was good but the waist had way too much room. We didn't want it really tight fitting but also didn't want there to be enough room for him to wear a fanny pack. I was not daunted however.  I had made tons of sheath dresses over the years and knew what a couple of well-placed darts can do for a waistline.  If you are cringing, you have every right to be. As I was soon to learn the hard way, back darts are not a thing when it comes to men's jackets.    

The Tuxedo part one

It was not the typical Boy Meets Girl story.  In fact Boy, our son Kyle, met Girl, Nimela, in high school and they were part of a larger group of friends for several years.  By all indications, Nimela found Kyle more annoying than anything else during those years.  Of course, a person who can go from being sound asleep in Chemistry class to waking up and correctly answering a question has a tendency to annoy their fellow students.  Fast forward, Kyle leaves the University of Florida and joins the Army.  Along the way, our family noticed that Nimela was occupying a larger and larger spot in his life but Kyle kept insisting they were just friends.  We started calling her NTG (Not The Girlfriend).  Finally, after he finished infantry training, they became official.  

That was almost two years ago.  Last July 4th holiday, he proposed to her and we started planning another wedding.  (Engagement picture above is courtesy of our daughter Sarah). I am making the wedding gown and will write about that after the big event since Nimela wants to keep Kyle in the dark about the details. 

However, the amount of time and effort that is going into the wedding gown is greatly overshadowed by The Tuxedo (it deserves to be capitalized).  Due to Kyle's body shape (large shoulders, barrel chest, small waist, big thighs) renting a tuxedo was out of the question.  I suggested buying one that I could alter for him.  He suggested that a loving mother with some degree of sewing skills could make him a tuxedo.  Oh, and it should be midnight blue and should look like the tuxedo from Skyfall (I don't think he plans on using a gun as an accessory on the big day). 

Did I mention in the previous post I am a mother that tries to help my children achieve their dreams?  Did I mention that I have never made a man's suit before?  I probably don't need to mention that I am a complete sucker for requests from my children.  

So I am making a tuxedo.  I started by reading everything I could find on the internet regarding tailoring.  Sewing and tailoring are not the same thing.  I am now well versed on the differences and have discovered that it does not make for scintillating dinner-party conversation with non-sewists.  I have positively stalked Jeffrey Diduch's blog Made by Hand  reading the entire history twice and getting unduly excited over new posts. I admit I was completely daunted by the craftsmanship of these items and overwhelmed by welt pockets (actually cutting into the jacket front for a pocket?  Inconceivable).   I also researched the Skyfall tuxedo and again became well-versed in a topic that most people I come in contact with find excruciatingly dull.   

I studied and planned and thereby avoided cutting and sewing as long as possible, but there comes a point when you just have to leap and hope for the best. So in late September I actually started working on the beast.  First order of business was to make a dress form for Kyle.  I have an adjustable form (Mildred) that is being used for the bridal gown (and has the wrong shape any way) so I padded out a form that Sarah made years ago to an approximation of Kyle's size.  I named it Johnny (that was the real Mildred's husband's name).  I then cut muslin for the first attempt and when that worked well, I used a stronger black fabric for the practice jacket that would make its way with Nimela to Ft. Bragg in October for the first fitting (and measuring of Kyle since I didn't actually have his measurements at this point and he refused to ask his fellow soldiers with the 82nd Airborne to assist him in obtaining measurements for me).   

Sarah met Nimela at Ft. Bragg to take the engagement pictures (taking engagement pictures is actually one of Sarah's things, link to her website http://www.slowvannah.com/home.html) and assisted with the fitting with me directing everything via Skype.  Overall, the fit was in the ballpark and Nimela returned with the marked up items and a set of measurements.  Since Kyle's December visit might be my last chance for a final fitting with him before the May wedding, I was starting to feel a bit of a time crunch and spent many sleepless hours worrying:  How exactly is a welt pocket constructed?  How am I going to do the waist suppression needed from Kyle's shoulders to his waist and also accommodate his rather large rear-end at the same time?  Am I ever going to lose those 15 pounds I have been trying to get rid of for years (this last one shows up no matter what the night's overall topic of worry is).  

I did manage the waist suppression (took a couple of tries) and proclaimed victory over the welt pocket  -- but not the weight loss.  Details of the next phases of The Tuxedo will follow in another post.  Pictures of first steps below:

Johnny wearing one of Kyle's T-shirts

First muslin

Practice jacket

Wedding Sewing

Growing up Florida-Cracker poor (you're poor but everyone around you is too so it's okay) in rural NW Florida, our family was blessed to have gifted seamstresses in the family.  My Aunt Betty and my sister Carole could take a piece of fabric and make it into a work of art.  Of course, I didn't always see this as a blessing.  Especially when the same bolt of cloth was used to make identical dresses for several of us.  This meant I got to wear the dress once as my dress and then a year or so later as a hand-me down from my older sister, Debbie.  My niece Lisa got the worst of it, she had her dress and hand-me down versions of the same dress from Debbie, me and my niece Vicki.  Lisa has several years worth of school pictures all taken in the same dress.  On the plus side, we had an in-house source for glamorous party dresses -- no outsourcing in our family. 

Once I left home, I dabbled in sewing.  I didn't have the gifts of Aunt Betty or Carole but was contrary enough not to not like the limited options of RTW clothes.  I taught my daughter Sarah to sew at a fairly young age.  Turns out that it does skip a generation -- Sarah is a wonderful seamstress.

Even so, I never thought we would attempt to sew a wedding dress until we went shopping for one.    My sister Bobbi (Sarah's MOH) cried every time Sarah came out of the dressing room in a wedding gown.  Bobbi also cried every time anyone else came out of the dressing room in a wedding gown.  She even cried for a young woman trying on prom dresses.   Crying (or squalling as Bobbi calls it) is her thing. 

Sarah didn't cry but she also didn't find a gown that truly suited her.  So the rather insane idea was floated:  why don't we make one?  Actually there were lots of reasons not to make one but one overwhelming reason to try:  my daughter had a vision of what she wanted and I believe as a mother one of my duties is to encourage and assist my children in making their dreams a reality. 

Sarah and I learned a lot about sewing, about ourselves and about our relationship during the year it took us to design and sew the dress.  Sarah even learned to tat so she could make lace to add to the dress as a homage to her Grandmother Gwen who tatted.  It was one of those experiences that you get to the other side and think "I'm glad I did it but I wouldn't want to do it again." 

Apparently I am a slow learner because I am now making a wedding gown for my son's fiance, Nimela, as well as a tuxedo for my son, Kyle, for their upcoming wedding. (More posts to follow with details of garment construction.) 

Even though Aunt Betty, Carole and Grandmother Gwen are no longer with us, their talents still inspire us and make us push our own limits.  I am grateful and recognize what a blessing it is to know people who can make art from the most basic of materials. 

Why?

Why start a blog?  That has to be the first why and like so much in life is  both simple and complicated.  Simple:  my youngest son while laughing at my description of a hot yoga class told me I should be blogging.  Complicated:  he actually said vlogging not blogging.  (Is communication between parents and children ever simple?).  Since vlogging (for those of you, like me who don't instantly recognize the term) involves posting videos of yourself on YouTube and I only have three good hair days a year, vlogging is not an option.  Therefore, simple solution:  blogging it is.

Why PleasantlyRelentless?  I am a commercial property manager and love working.  I am old enough to remember when secretary was the only office role available to women.  I am grateful to those women who worked to change things so I could have the opportunities that have come my way.  I feel strongly that I have a responsibility to mentor and help younger people (male and female) grow in their careers.  Developing those mentoring skills is the reason I took a seminar recently about women in the work place.  The keynote speaker's main point was that women should always smile and remain pleasant no matter how much bullshit is thrown our way (the wording was different but the meaning was the same) or in other words "remain relentlessly pleasant". I was offended.  I don't think staying pleasant is always a woman's best option.  In fact, one of my strong suits is my ability to be pleasantly relentless.  That relentlessness has carried me through more than one crises and I won't dampen it down just to make the presence of a female in the workplace more acceptable.

Anyway, that's the whys.  The whats would be what do I think I can contribute to the blogging community?  I guess I at least have a good story about a hot yoga class.  Seriously the teacher kept proposing alternate postures to make it more challenging.  We are taking a class that lasts

1 1/2 hours in a room that was supposed to be heated to 104 degrees (she didn't watch the thermostat and it got to 109).  Just breathing was challenging enough, thank you for asking.  Beyond that, I have a rich Florida Cracker heritage that is always good for a few laughs, am a semi-competent seamstress working on my second wedding dress for a family member and first tuxedo (separate entries about those later), have a job that requires me to spend hours discussing the merits of various paper towel dispensers and a husband and family that challenge, teach and enrich my life every day.  Maybe I won't contribute a lot but I think it is time to at least join the conversation.