Found Object

I found this little nest on the driveway. The centre part is lined with the softest bits of hair and fluff. I'm sorry the picture doesn't give an idea of scale, but it's about as big as my palm. All my years of rural living and walking in the forest and this is the first nest I've found. It must have been blown out of the big maple in front of the house. I didn't see any little birdie bodies, so I hope the nest wasn't being used any more.

I thank the Goddess for allowing it to fall at my feet. It is a work of simple beauty, so soft and ephemeral. Maybe in my next life I will be a mama bird and make nests. It is working with fibre after all.

*****

However, as far as this life goes, I am happy to report progress on the red tuxedo. Thank you all for your suggestions. I ended up having to mark on the right side of the fabric in chalk - nothing else worked. Even the thread tracing was a bust - it left black marks on the front of the fabric where fuzz from the interfacing got pulled through.

It was amazing to experience the amount of trepidation about how to proceed on the jacket. I was so worried about making a hash of it, never mind that I have made suits before. It really is true that the older one gets, the more one knows how much they don't know. If I was in my blithe 20's I would have just sewn it up, no worries.

But sewing this fabric is like working with Teflon. It has no drape, and can't be shaped and molded with pad-stitching and steam like wool. It is supremely unforgiving. After slavishly beginning to follow the instruction sheet, which starts with the welt pockets on the front of the jacket, I had a bit of a panic attack. I took a time out with a cup of tea, and a brainwave came: Why not make the pants first? That would give me a chance to practice the welt pockets where they wouldn't be quite so noticeable!

This idea proved to work remarkably well, and I now have a nice looking pair of pants with only the waistband still to do. I actually really like the process of making a fly front on men's pants, it just goes together so smoothly, unlike the mock fly front one finds on women's pants.

But I'm all with Damselfly on pattern instruction sheets! I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, and an experienced seamstress. So if I can't figure out what they mean, pity the poor beginner! (The pattern I'm making, by the way, is Vogue 2383.)