Friday, April 16, 2010

stand by me

While I sewed these silly cleaning cloths(above) for Japanese kindergarten I realized what a huge part of my life this machine is. I have spent more years with this machine than most of my friends, and I've known it longer. My first solo project: struggling to sew a pair of bloomers for Odyssey of the Mind, and therefore without human help, for four hours; making a gorilla stuffy for a school fair booth with black fur that shed EVERYWHERE; bobei's blue and purple princess gown now worn for 1 birthday, 1 costume tea party, 2 Halloweens and countless dress up days; the hundreds of headbands stitched in the middle of the night that helped support us on our last legs in Portland before moving to Japan... and oh! the things I've worn that were made on this machine by my mom, me always the concocter of projects.
When I was little - a warm East Coast Halloween black cat costume, a mermaid costume with a shiny tale and foot hole, my stuffed Easter bunny made from an old dress. As I got older - Romeo and Juliet Nurse costume, Joseph tunic, colonial maid outfit(which still fit me for bobei's 3rd birthday!), The Spirit Week CareBear costume project involving all of my friends, sassy tinman Spirit Week jacket, Rolf ears for the senior lip sync, Erzulie skirt, the presto change-o 3-in-1 design for Bonnie in Anything Goes, and my prom dress.

My mom passed the Pfaff onto me when we moved across country. We've always come to her in the late night last minute hours and expected her to come through, in the moments when our creativity has stewed for so long and is finally bubbling over.

I left this lady in the states back in August. What a fool I am. Tonight I uncovered her for the first time since her arrival two weeks ago and we hummed through thick layers of towel after midnight. It felt good to be back together again. I hugged her and whispered, "welcome to Japan."

No comments:

Post a Comment