Just like riding a bike!

I’ve taken up sewing again.  Well, effectively for the first time.  The other day I dragged my brand-new untouched sewing machine (gifted to me a few Christmases ago by my mother) from the highest recesses of our hall closet, because I finally found a use for it: making Día de los Muertos costumes for our stuffed animals.

Best not to ask, really.

Let me give you some background on me and sewing.  When I was young, my mom’s sewing machine was always set up in the family room and my sister and I dabbled in making crude stuffed animals and whatnot on it.  I own no evidence of this, but I’m confident I was once capable of threading the machine and sewing in a straight line, and even a curved line on some daring days.  But that was a long time ago.

So when I opened this box, I have to admit I was feeling a little trepidation.  It was a daunting beast of a machine, with a really big manual that had lots of diagrams.  (I’m exaggerating.  It was a big book because there were a lot of diagrams, three languages, and painfully exhaustive large-font instructions, such as “Disconnect the machine from the power supply by removing the plug from the main socket!” and “Never drop or insert any object into any opening.”)  Hesitantly I threaded the needle, pinned down my first test scrap, and pressed with ginger care on the foot pedal.

And it turns out, relearning to sew is just like relearning to ride a bike!

See, after I stopped riding my bike in high school I was nervous about getting back on it in college.  But by the end of my first week, I was still wobbly but I was getting the hang of it.  I was even confident enough to take one hand off the handlebar to wave a thank-you to a row of cars that had stopped so I could cross the street—

And my hand twisted and I flew headfirst over the handlebars and my backpack knocked straight into my head and I scraped both knees bloody and totally ruined my good new jeans.  Right in front of dozens of stopped cars full of laughing drivers.  Yep.  Grace personified, that’s me.

So when I say it’s just like riding a bike, I mean that I am comically inept at relearning to sew.  So far I’ve wasted half a spool of thread and a good dozen scraps of fabric and filled my house with more shouted cursing than even the foulest-mouthed sailor would admit to, and all I have to show for it are two disembodied doll-size jacket arms.  I’m just glad Dead Day isn’t for another month and a half.