Dearest Needleworking and Hive Friends!

We have had a week of much upheaval, AGAIN, with a B&B stay to get respite from our crazy rental house, and then having to move back in when it began to rain heavy-lissimo…

And between bouts of coughing, magical improvised dinners from the last of our food before we travel to Italy, and taking oltra-good care of each other, I did a couple of important sewing jobs.

The first was a gifted coat that didn’t fit well, and which I’ve been mulling for some months over how to adjust. It was fine in the earlier winter, but when the days have been frosty, I’ve wanted it to close better.

Closing a big coat like this can be messy: thick fabric and old buttonholes, difficulties in making it sit well in its new calibration… I’ve turned an okay coat into a non-wearable one at least twice in my learning curve years!

But this was fairly easy. I had a bag of zips with me, which I chose from my bigger collection in my Italian sewing room: I had this beauuuuuutiful long heavy duty one, which fit along at least one side of the front of the coat very well.

In preparation for putting my sewing machine in storage (which may be happening today – aaargh!!!), I practised handsewing, ensconsed in the B&B white sheets with the heating on full blast. It took hours and hours! Hundreds upon hundreds of tiny, simple stitches, in a contrasting purple colour. It was a great meditation!

This was mostly all I did to alter this coat: it was fiddly at the top, because the old overlapping structure was much more overlapping before. I opened the coat up wider, to better sit over my winter clothing, and then put this zip in nearer the edge of the front seam. I made sure to take in just a little more at the waist: to lay the zip more inside the coat, so that there would be a slight curve for my middle.

And it fit very nicely! MUCH more cosy than before, when the two buttons were seriously ill-fitting and let in a load of chilly breeze… Now it is a snug coat indeed, and it looks smarter.

My second project of the week, I finished in a couple of hours yesterday: a new pair of knickers/ shorts, which began as a treat for myself, for travelling in – but ended up for my beloved! I rarely measure, so think that unconsciously I wanted to make them for him more than for myself.

It is a similar design to the green silk boxers which I made for Vincent last week: taking an old blouse this time, and cutting a general shape of shorts from the bottom of it, up to the underarms.

This blouse was a particular, wrap-over style, with poppers/ snaps for the wrapped sections. Vincent and I had bought it on the 50c stall, I think, when we were trawling for bird-patterned fabric: this one is extra special, with lovely mock-etching birds on it. If you’ve been following @vincentnijman for some time, you may remember him associating birds with his dear dad, who left this realm two years ago.

I rarely use symbols in fabrics - apart from birds, animals, fruit, vegetables and very particular flower patterns – because I know how powerful symbols are, and I want them to create a healing and positive effect on the bodies that they adorn.

The bird fabrics had been sitting a while, and were about to be packed away for storage in Portugal – but I rescued it so’s to have something to work on for today. Minimal resources, frustrations mounting over how to get our chaos into orderly piles and boxes – and what to pack for the long journey back to the Arthouse…. I know, ‘first world’ problems!!! More than one rant about how I cannot do this, I hate this mess, it feels impossible to pack, etc, etc…

And then another sewing session by the fire, with supportive hugs and chat from my lifepartner... and everything calms again.

But I love how sewing can both calm and bring out the raging complainer in me! Like painting, sewing is a force of expression, of Nature, and a mirror for whatever needs to be released. Coming back to the stark simplicity of a needle and thread, when my ego and mind are racing with what I need to take with me, and what I can afford to leave behind – creativity is the great leveller.

By the time I’d finished the shorts, the fact that these beautiful bird pants didn’t even fit me (they went on, but were not loose enough in the thigh to work as a comfy underwear), wasn’t even an issue. I snipped the last of the ends of threads, stuffed them in my coat pocket, and went off for a walk up the forestry track to find my Love, who had popped out for a long ramble an hour earlier….

I didn’t have to walk much more than a few hundred metres, as I got to a rise and was about to climb up it to see if I could see him – then the sound of his mouth organ came to my ears, and I followed it to find him in the fields below the eucalyptus plantation, hehe! He was suitably impressed, and when we got home and he tried them on, they were just perfect.

Perfectly imperfect: our favourite metaphor for life! It’s nice that we have a similar size of arse/ butt, so we can share clothing like trousers and boxers! It is fun, making adjustments and changing tack at the last minute, our flexibility allowing the right thing to find its right place.

This week has been a good preparation for the big move, and for the even bigger move that will come after this one – after we sell the Arthouse and decide where next…. Instead of this all being a big unknown and a scary prospect, it it feeling more and more like building a beautiful new world together, and knowing that all Will Be Well, no matter what. Mmmmmmmm.

I hope that you are feeling similarly optimistic about life, dear friends, and look forward to seeing what you are all creating!

Great Good Blessings For This New Year!

www.claregaiasophia.com