# 141 SEWING GENIUS? yes!

A few observations just to set the context of this post. First, I’ve always been quite aware I can’t do more than one thing at a time. I have extreme difficulty with he who would try and lip sync or sign something to me while I’m on the phone. I cannot read with a radio or TV on. I cannot write without total silence and non-interruption. I cannot drive while talking on a cell phone. It’s not as if I don’t know.

Now normally it takes no more than a couple hours for me to zip up a pair of slacks. But this time that was not going to happen. To begin with I couldn’t find my standard pattern so I had to use a new one. That meant measuring and some pattern adjustments that took extra time. And then when the sewing just got nicely going, I was interrupted by visitors.

Now I had marked the front pieces in order to separate them from the back as they are very similar but later when I got back to my sewing I couldn’t remember which ones I had marked. Then another interruption, more visitors, and when I got back to my sewing I promptly sewed both pockets shut. Now ripping and tearing to get that corrected. Now we’re finally making good progress when another neighbor stops in for his annual visit to make arrangements for Hub to cultivate his garden.

And now we are on day two of the pant construction and frustration is building. So now I am sewing like a fiend to get the damn things done. Finally I have them completed and go to the bedroom to try them on just to check the leg length. Hub yells from the front room, “Come here, let me see how your new pants fit.”

I strut my stuff in the livingroom and model them for him. “My God,” he says, “Are those ever nice? They fit perfectly in both the front and back which is not always the case when you sew slacks with an elastic waistband? How did you get them to fit so nicely this time?”

“I don’t know,” I said, with a shrug, “I guess because I used a different pattern.”

I returned to the bedroom to remove my pants and that’s when I noticed what I had done. I had sewn the pants together backwards with side pockets attached to the backs of the pants rather than the fronts. You see what I meant about interruptions. This is the damage they do. But at this point, I was far too frustrated to contemplate any correction. I put my slacks back on and examined them in the full-length mirror. And guess what? Hub was right. Tailor-fit, yes.

That’s when I concluded something else as well. Obviously Pattern People (those who make sewing patterns) assume that every woman in the whole wide world has a flat tummy and large buxom buns. But as one ages that is not necessarily true. Over the years and with the passage of time my flat bum has got flatter and the flat tummy of my youth has got quite pudgy. So you see, this is how pants should be sewn when one reaches the other side of mid-life. It was unintentional, but don't you think it was truly a genius move?