Fruit From My Hands

I must be the McGyver of sewing. I’ve learned to take whatever is available and adapt it to my needs at that moment. Lack of resources, both financially and geographically, have always dictated that I work with whatever is on hand. This is a skill that is lost on the younger generations of today, by the way. Therefore, I do not always use the proper tool. I make do.  This weekend, I made the decision to buy myself the proper tool for sewing and alterations: the seam gauge. Wow, what a splurge!  The ultimate decadence–to drive to the sewing notion store and shamelessly purchase the proper tool without consideration of the financial burden to my family, the effect on the environment or the starving children in Africa!

I’ve been sewing for 40+ years and I’ve never owned a seam gauge.  I vaguely remember one at the age of eight in a Girl Scout sewing kit but I must have lost it shortly after possessing it. What possessed me, you ask?  I have several requests to teach an alterations class in writing the lesson plan, I keep coming back to the use of a seam gauge.  As I gathered up my tools, I was embarrassed to see what I have been using instead:  an old plastic 6inch ruler supporting the Future Farmers of America, an old plastic 12inch ruler from a food salesman with the Kraft brand on it, a similar ruler from the AMAX coal company, a child’s ruler left behind at Vacation Bible School and yes, on occasion, I have been know to use a dollar bill.

Who knows what I will be able to accomplish with the “proper tools”!