house·wife
/ˈhousˌwīf/
noun
noun: housewife; plural noun: housewives
- a woman whose main occupation is caring for her family, managing household affairs, and doing housework, while her husband or partner goes out to work.
- a small case for needles, thread, and other small sewing items.
A while ago I realized that there’s an awful lot of sewing that should be happening in this household. Things that need repair, small sewn items that would make daily life easier, so on and so forth. The main issue that’s keeping me from this necessary work is that I generally do such work parked on the couch with the tv running and the sewing supplies are two flights of stairs away. Who wants to trudge up two flights of stairs and then down again when you’re warm and comfy on the couch?
I’ve tried keeping supplies in a Ziploc bag but they’re ugly and plastic should be used only when absolutely necessary. Save the planet and all. But I can’t just leave a needle and thread out or it’ll disappear and someone will get hurt. It’s not a baby or small child anymore I’m keeping sharp, pointy things away from but a not-so-small furry creature. Gregory specifically. He loves to steal sewing supplies. He can unwind a spool of thread faster than a sewing machine.
I thought about the options beyond a plastic bag. There are sewing baskets but none of them really struck my fancy and I really didn’t feel like laying money out for one. There’s the classic Schrodinger’s cookie tin option. Does it contain cookies? Buttons? Sewing supplies? That would be a free option and there are appropriately sized tins in the house but it would all just be thrown in and I wanted a bit of organization if possible.
So I stepped back into history a bit and decided to make a housewife. I’ve dealt with them in collections before. They were usually quickly made for a specific purpose, generally sending a soldier off to war and on the small size. I wanted something a bit bigger, a bit more customized. And if I was going to spend time making something from scratch, the materials used might as well have some sort of meaning behind them beyond being scraps that I pulled from the crafting horde.
Creative projects get jotted down in my big red blank book so I started there with ideas and what I wanted the housewife to actually hold. That led to a paper pattern and playing with the tools that would go in it and how big pockets needed to be to hold them. The next step was digging through the bins and drawers of fabric scraps to find bits and bobs that were the right size and would go together in a colorful, pattern filled way. I had a large enough piece of fabric to do the outside of the housewife and spent many nights doing French knots and beading to make it a bit more interesting and colorful.
Fabric was purchased second hand for the interior lining and binding edge (LOVE YOU ECOWORKS!) but that was only a couple of dollars. I also purchased thread for the binding because one of the things I learned as part of this project was that a well matched thread makes stitches disappear and the blues I had on hand weren’t quite right. I spent less than $10 on the entire project and used up a fair number of scraps that otherwise might have just ended up in the recycling. That’s a good thing.
I also learned that 90% of sewing is actually done with an iron. Every time I considered whether or not to press something before sewing I would hear the eldest in my head yelling at me to go upstairs and spend 5 minutes with the iron. Another lessons learned is that slow and steady makes for fewer mistakes. If it took me a week to get a pocket just right, so what? I also need to go back to kindergarten and work on cutting straight lines. I’m bad at it, even when I’m going slow and steady. When I messed up cutting even using a straight edge and rotary cutter I just had to laugh. It’s either that or scream and I’d much rather laugh.
When I finished up the housewife the other day I recorded it in my red project book. It annoyed me when I put in the end date and realized I’ve been working on it since August. Why the f did it take so long? It’s just a sewing kit. A roll with pockets tied with a ribbon. But then I look at it, use it and it’s so much more. It’s the brown twill fabric that a work friend found and brought in because she knows the eldest sews. The eldest then turned around a made a quilted skirt and dapper hat with the yardage. I bound the edges of that pocket with scraps trimmed from the hem of her wedding gown. The ribbon that ties it all together is from her bouquet. The pocket that holds thread and other notions is made from the same fabric as the curtain that I made for the youngling’s closet. The yellow floral print came from my mother’s fabric stash (c1975) that the eldest used when teaching the youngling how to sew a pinafore. Even the tiny scraps I used to stuff the pin cushion have a deeper meaning. Of course that took a while to pull together.
Recently I caught up my office calendar that deals with creator name stuff. I mark when and what I post about to remind myself of what I’ve done so I don’t repeat too often I could do endless posts about the dumbass way Greg has chosen to hide or what I ate. Trying to ride that fine line between interesting and idiotic and writing it all down helps.
So, the calendar has been flipped to April since April 2023 because I’ve been busy. As I updated the calendar the other night, marking things down I realize that I’ve actually been rather consistent about posting and that a lot of wonderful things happened in 2023.
Finally finished up Tiny Study and it was accepted for a gallery show.
A tiny preying mantis friend made an appearance in my urban driveway before moseying along.
I saw Jupiter from my front porch.
So what it took 6 months to make a housewife. The making was an experience in and of itself and now I get to use it and see it every day on the table next to my side of the couch.
The little things of life can be so heartbreakingly beautiful if one only slows down enough to see it.
