I’m a massive fan of sewing gadgets — things you never knew you needed until you get them into your craft room. Miniature darners? Hem markers? Loop turners? Yes, yes and yes. The only problem is that the UK market seems to lag a bit behind in gratuitous gadgets, probably because everything is so expensive here the Brits can’t afford to be as gung-ho about New Shiny Things as Americans.

But now I’ve discovered Sew-Quick, importer of foreign sewing shinies to the UK! In the finest tradition of UK online shops, Sew-Quick is practically undetectable by Google search. I only stumbled across it while looking for a Perfect Pleater (curse you, Wearing History!). My jaw slowly lowered as I clicked through their product list. Snapsetters! PerfectFuse, stay tape, Steam-a-Seam! Mini vacuums for cleaning your machine! Individual issues of Threads! And a panoply of the delightful little gadgets collectively known as notions.

Fiskars 12-in-1 sewing tool, for when you need to Macgyver that hem

Sew-Quick are located in Scotland and emphasize their customer service and shipping speed — I’ll be interested to see how they stack up against other domestic sewing supply businesses, some of which take several days to dispatch and/or backorder items for weeks without telling you. Warning: Do not compare Sew-Quick’s prices with what Americans are paying.

Another place to waste an hour and £50 is Shibori Dragon, a US online shop that specializes in Japanese sewing and tailoring supplies. Superfine pins (they make ordinary pins feel like nails) and the satisfyingly precise Chakoner marker are available, as are Omnigrip rulers and, oh dear, a whole bunch of Japanese fabrics, threads, quilting kits, stencils and more.

Just won the lottery or looking for somewhere to spend the kids’ inheritance? The Thimble Society sells exquisite antique thimbles, pincushions, needle cases, sewing sets and more. They would probably recoil in horror if you announced you planned to actually use them.

Rabbit pincushion, only £480

If you really want to lose yourself to lust, try Googling “sewing chatelaines”. A chatelaine was an early, feminine version of the Swiss army knife — a metal clasp that attached to a woman’s belt and from which she could hang small, useful items such as thimble cases, scissors, needle and thread holders, bodkins, memorandum books, spectacle cases etc. They started in the middle ages as utilitarian objects, but quickly became decorative. Some could be stunning, like these 18th and 19th-century chatelaines from the V&A:

Complete antique chatelaines sell on eBay for anything up to £1200. You can assemble your own modern-day chatelaine for slightly less from LACIS, Treasured Finds, Buckaroo Bobbins or Simply Scissors.

Where do you go for your favorite shinies?

Whatever happened to the girly tee? For a few years, back in the 90s and early noughties, things looked promising. Retailers, slowly realizing that women have money of our own these days and occasionally buy logo T-shirts too, introduced lady-specific blanks with scoopnecks, cap sleeves and shaped waists. I liked being able to buy a flattering, figure-hugging Elephant 6 or Trogdor tee. It said, “Yes, world! All this and great taste in pop culture too!” But lately — possibly for recession-related reasons — a lot of vendors seem to have gone back to the dark days of unisex, offering only traditional designed-for-men boxy tees, or as I call them, pajama tops. Which is fine if you only want to proclaim your love for a band on days when you’re too sick, hung over or depressed to leave the house.

I have too many T-shirts with great logos but unflattering cuts, and not enough form-fitting base layers. The next logical step was obvious.

To cut down this T-shirt into a camisole I used Jalie 2564, which like many Jalie patterns has received tons of positive reviews over at PR. The nice thing about the camisole is that it has a built-in shelf bra, and both camisole and bra can be cut from one T-shirt with a little fudging. This project was ridiculously easy even for me, with my limited experience of stretch fabrics and total lack of experience of fold-over or plush elastic. It whipped up in a little over an hour. It doesn’t even require an overlocker/serger; I could easily have used my machine’s zigzag and 3-step zigzag stitch instead.

My only quibble with this pattern is a matter of personal taste: I like my camisoles a bit sluttier. Next time I make this pattern I’ll definitely alter the design to make the straps wider-set, the scoopneck lower and the shelf bra shorter for increased balcon effect.

Obligatory Shearwater plug:

I’m loving my first tentative forays into the world of DIY lingerie! However, I am finding stretch lace and lingerie elastics (FOE, plush elastic, picot elastic etc.) difficult to source in colors other than white, black and nude. Tips on where to find these things are most welcome.

I’m modeling it at 221B Baker Street, home of one of my favorite literary smartarses.

Although I didn’t realize this until I moved over here, Sherlock Holmes is one of those literary characters who also represent a British type. He’s the posh, cerebral careerist who’s far too busy and important to waste time ogling mere women. Whitehall, where I work, abounds in them. (Perplexingly, they tend to be young; it’s the men over 60 I hesitate to get into an elevator with.) Excuse me, Mr Snootypants? My boobs are down here.

I made the top in creamy off-white 100% bamboo jersey from Eco Earth Fabrics. I needed a simple, light-colored top to mix and match, so I adapted a Jalie pattern to make a boatneck with 3/4 sleeves and a slight drape at the neckline. The bamboo jersey is lovely and thick and easy to sew — I can’t remember how many years it’s been since I could buy a top made of fabric this substantial. It doesn’t even have the usual transparency issues you get in light-colored tops. The only problem is that, as I think Steph also noticed, the fabric tends to relax when worn, meaning that this top gets larger over the course of the day. Apparently it regains its original size after washing, but it’s something to watch out for — maybe next time I’ll opt for a jersey with a small amount of Lycra.

This is a boring top because I need more boring clothes in my self-stitched wardrobe. At last night’s Burdastyle meetup we discussed the problem of impulse-sewing — the habit of making a series of “statement pieces”, all of which may look fabulous but none of which go with anything else. Apparently I am not alone in this tendency. (Of course, Liberty prints are dangerously available in London, which complicates things.) But for now, it’s strictly useful basics.

August was a month of little blogging. I spent most of it in rural Wales, first on a retreat and then camping, which provided a much-needed holiday from city life, from London and from my wardrobe angst. I spent 2 weeks wearing the same 2 pairs of trousers, 3 shirts and 2 sweaters in rotation — bliss.

Camping also meant release from the elaborate grooming regime I seem to have evolved at home. I’ve figured out that in the course of an average day, counting cleansers, toners, moisturizers, shampoo, soap, sunscreen etc., I apply 17 different types of unguent to my body. Seventeen! And that’s before makeup or perfume. This is why I buy fragrance-free. I can’t imagine what would happen if I went with the flow and started drenching myself in the cheap industrial fragrances they seem to put in everything these days — from vanilla and patchouli body lotion to jasmine laundry soap to baby-powder deodorant to strawberry lip balm. Olfactory cacophony, I imagine.

Onward to self-stitched glory!

This dress started life before I was born. As a French tablecloth.

Fashion on the Ration rules allow me to purchase secondhand clothing and fabric items coupon-free as long as they come in below a certain price threshold. The threshold is set low enough that I usually can’t thrift in London, but while behind enemy lines in Strasbourg I picked up a vintage tablecloth for €2. With that print, it was crying out to be made into a classic 60s shift dress. This pattern dates from 1968.

The fabric was limp, had transparency issues in places and didn’t feel particularly nice against the skin, so I decided to give it body and softness by underlining it. I stripped off the back of an old Ikea duvet cover thoughtfully donated by a friend (thanks, Lila!), dyed it chocolate brown with Dylon and used that as underlining, which didn’t complicate things as much as I’d thought because the dress consisted of only three main pieces (1 front, 2 back).

Ease seems to be the randomizing factor in any given pattern. You never know until you pull the pieces out of the envelope and compare them against your body measurements whether a size 12 will actually be an 8, 10 or 16. In this case, the pattern was marked for a 32.5″ bust but, even though I am a 34″, I ended up taking it in rather than grading it up. The ease around the bust was fine for a 34″, but the waist lacked any shape and there was way too much room at the hips. I redrew the waist curves to give a bit more definition and slimmed down the hips by about 2″.

It’s interesting. A dress like this must be custom-fitted to look even halfway decent. That’s incredibly easy for the home dressmaker — this pattern, for instance, has only three seams and four darts — but in RTW, women expect dresses to fit right off the rack, so custom-fitting isn’t really an option. This means the simple dart-fitted dress has become something of a rare bird. When I wear one around London, people register it as unusual without really knowing why. (A massive screaming psychedelic print doesn’t hurt, of course.)

In honor of its bedsheet-and-French-tablecloth roots, I call this the Alain’s Psychedelic Breakfast dress.

Lessons learned:

• Underlining can boost the capabilities of a fashion fabric. Underlining in fairly tightly woven 100% cotton made this fabric much, much easier to work with, gave it added body, hid handstitching on the hem and facings and made it crisp and comfortable against my skin. Excellent for a semi-fitted shift. Top tip: cheat by sticking the layers together with 3M SprayMount before machine-basting them together!
• Determine the fiber content of your vintage fabric before you press. Alongside the vintage cigarette burns, this dress now also features a nice scorch mark from my iron. Whoops! Synthetic!
• Insert zippers on the flat where possible. I can’t remember whose blog gave me this handy tip, but it made all the difference — I inserted the center back zip before I began assembling the main garment pieces, and it was so much easier.
• Resist the urge to overfit. I nearly did my usual and went too far with the darts and side seam shaping. This dress is meant to be fairly straight-up-and-down.

Burda 7517

Why did I decide to sew this pattern? I can’t remember now. It’s a typical Burda design– I’ve gotten all the way through the project and still can’t make up my mind about it. Is it quirky-in-a-good-way or just plain weird?

The fabric went on a long journey before ending up as this dress. It started out as yardage in Ikea’s “Josefin” print:

I decided last fall that this fabric would be our curtains and then, in a totally and inexplicably illogical move I am slowly coming to recognize as classic Susannah, wildly overbought. By now I am sick of the sight of this print, but I’m on the ration and fabric is fabric. And I do love the idea of a dress made out of curtains.

I dunked the fabric in a bleach bath until the color changed from deep teal to pale green, then plunged it into a vinegar-and-water stop bath. Then I overdyed the fabric in Dylon Amazon Green, a color to which I’ve become strangely addicted. The result is a green that goes well with my summer tan and a print that’s toned down but still noticeable.

I hand-sewed yellow ribbon at neckline and hem while watching Cranford and drinking gin. James came home during the last episode and we took turns doing Convalescent Blonde and Soppy Regency Doctor.

When virgins get typhoid, we poo candyfloss!

Gandalf??

You’re a long way from Rome, Octavian! But I digress.

The verdict on this dress: undecided. Like many “easy” sewing patterns, it did go together quickly and fit without a fuss, but the end result kind of reflects the effort spent. It’s fine but not ravishing. Also, if you’re at all the perfectionist type it will drive you bonkers that the arty pleats shift and gape every time you move. Still, on the whole, a good throw-on-and-go wardrobe staple for warmer weather. Crisp, tidy and ladylike.

Lessons learned:

• Unless you wear a crinoline, think hard before buying 20 meters of anything. What was I thinking??
• Test your fabric to make sure unpicked stitches won’t leave needle holes. This is very tightly woven cotton and it’s difficult to steam away the traces of former seams.
• Beginning a dress “to wear in this hot weather” will instantly cause the temperature to plummet below 70°F and stay there.

Most of the garments in my Please Try Harder drawer have needed little more than refreshing and reshaping to bring them back into play. This green cardigan started life as a soft and lovely but rather frumpy thrifted Brora sweater — round-necked, demure and with a bow under the chin. Sweet on somebody, but not on me.

I unpicked the bow, slit the sweater up the front and cardiganized it — stitched a length of ribbon to each cut edge, turned it to the wrong side and worked buttons and buttonholes through center front and ribbon. It’s a fast and easy conversion, but it does require some nerve to take a pair of shears to cashmere. I also reshaped the side seams to be more figure-hugging, as Brora sweaters tend to have a mumsy silhouette. This is a mod I perform on most of my sweaters now — all it takes is a simple straight stitch with a ballpoint needle, and you’ve instantly got a much more nipped-in and flattering shape.

Then there was the beach cover-up I bought from Zara in 2004 and the monstrously unflattering ankle-length linen pants I bought from the Gap in 2006. I lopped several inches off the hems of both, shortened and elasticized the shirt sleeves, reshaped the pant legs and accessorized. Total garments bought: 0. Totally new outfit: 1. Valid grounds for a little smugness.

Next on my list: my new skinny jeans demanded a voluminous top. The Japanese are particularly good at this — until I got my hands on my first Japanese pattern book recently, I had no idea “loose” didn’t have to mean “shapeless”. I decided to convert one of James’s old shirts to a Japanese-inspired smock top.

I embarked on this project freehand. After all, I’ve screwed up the classic man’s-shirt-to-woman’s-blouse project enough times with a pattern to feel I could hardly do worse without one. I removed the sleeves, unpicked the fronts and back from the yoke, cut the yoke narrower to fit my shoulders and then reattached the fronts and back, adding some red piping and dart tucks over the bust and at center back to fit them to the new smaller yoke.

My modifications had made the armscyes smaller, so I redrew the sleeve caps more or less freehand, without ease, and stitched them on. This is against all the rules, including mine, but seems to have worked okay; I’m not sure what the moral is here, unless it’s “Don’t sweat the sleeve caps.” Then I cut a new neckline and finished it with bias binding folded to the inside, put on some new buttons, hemmed everything up and voilà! It really was that easy, mostly thanks to the shirt’s check print. I highly recommend using stripes or checks — it’s like having graph paper to guide you all the way. Cutting, pressing, tucking and seaming can all be done with mathematical precision.

In our next installment: dresses from things that weren’t meant to be dresses!

Looking back, I feel like I spent much of my childhood wrestling with shoddy tools. Probably the worst culprits were left-handed school scissors. Other southpaws may remember them: sticky-hinged, rusty, blunt-bladed and with handles that bit into your knuckles. They were so abysmal I eventually gave up and learned to cut right-handed. They also taught me the absolute futility of common ownership of tools. To this day, hands off my Ginghers if you know what’s good for you.

I fell in love with good tools the first time I ever used a properly sharpened chef’s knife, the kind you only have to stroke over the skin of a tomato for it to part like tearing silk. Using it instantly transformed meal preparation from drudgery into flow — a state of pleasurable absorption in which time no longer mattered. I wonder how many people think they don’t like cooking merely because most of their time in the kitchen is spent fighting against blunt knives, flimsy pans and dead stove sparkers.

Similarly, I spent my first couple of years as a home seamstress thinking I had no natural ability because I found it fiendishly difficult to achieve passable results even on seemingly simple projects. It was only later that I discovered many of my difficulties were due in large part to substandard tools — cheap plastic sewing machines, blunt shears, the wrong size needles, flimsy thread. Once I upgraded to good-quality tools, these difficulties vanished. (Which was a relief, but also meant I now had only my own ineptitude to blame when things went wrong.)

The Frister and Rossman Destiny, tool of the devil.

Sewing has a lot in common with cooking in that it requires specialized tools which might only get used a few times a year but for which there are no effective substitutes. A meal in the making can grind to a halt for lack of a grater or roasting pan; a beautiful dress can wind up in the Pile of Shame for lack of silk pins or a bias tape maker. I think this puts a lot of would-be sewers off, and I must admit that equipping a sewing room can hoover up a lot of money and time. But those of us who are even semi-serious about making our own food don’t scruple to equip our kitchens with electric mixers and turkey basters and citrus zesters, so why should we bridle at the idea of tailor’s hams, loop turners or pinking shears?

On the bright side, the tool-intensive nature of sewing gives it an element of magpie glee. You can always make an excuse to stop into a craft shop because there is always going to be something useful in there, usually at the pleasantly justifiable cost of £10 or less. Utilitarian shinies: the best of both worlds.

There are as many sewing setups as there are people who sew. I thought I’d give you a peek into mine. Here’s my sewing room, aka Atelier Catbox. Theoretically, this was meant to be a joint project room, but my sewing and I have almost completely annexed it. (Sorry, James! You snooze, you lose!) I probably should have prettied it up before taking the photo, but this at least gives you an accurate idea of what it looks like after I’ve finished a project: yes, like a cyclone hit it. Craft Rooms it’s not, but it is a happy mess.

Click through for the annoted image.

And here are some of the tools I use.

Measuring and cutting

Top to bottom: PatternMaster, Sew Easy French curve and quilter's ruler; rotary cutter, pinking shears, Gingher dressmaking shears, thread clipper, snips; sewing gauges. And measuring tape, obviously.

I mostly cut out garment pieces with shears on my living room floor, saving the rotary cutter for straight edges or small pieces, because it’s tedious trying to cut out anything larger than the cutting mat with a rotary cutter — you have to shift the mat underneath fabric and pattern, which invariably rucks everything up. The 24-inch quilters’ ruler is very useful, as it’s gridded and includes angle guides for cutting on the true bias, but I suspect it’s not 100% accurate. The Sew-Easy French curve I can’t honestly recommend for drafting — the edges feel like they’ve been hacked out with a handsaw. The PatternMaster is more useful and accurate, and comes in metric and imperial. The Fiskars snips (with gray and black handle) are excellent for clipping curves and snipping notches into seam allowances.

Pressing

Foreground to background: Sleeve board with cotton lawn and silk organza press cloths; tailor's ham; point presser/clapper; travel iron for small surfaces; spray bottle; iron with Teflon plate; feline assistant.

Pressing is a huge part of sewing, which is ironic (see what I did there?) because I have always avoided it whenever possible. I have a lot of pressing equipment, and I have to admit, grudgingly, that it makes all the difference. Sleeve boards and tailor’s hams are the kind of thing many sewers put off buying, but they are extremely useful for achieving better finish on garments. A tailor’s ham, for instance, can cure the Pointy Nipple Syndrome caused by bust darts. The spray bottle is for pressing linen or wetting press cloths; I don’t use steam from the iron very often as it’s hard to control. When I do, I fill my iron with bottled water because London tap water is so hard it can bork an iron completely within 6 months, turning it into a spluttering, limescale-spitting demon.

Marking

At left: Clover tracing wheel for use with carbon paper. Top to bottom: Hera, fine-point water-soluble marker, Chakoner chalk wheel, Sewline erasable marking pencil.

Different projects require different marking tools. The Chakoner chalk marker is probably one of the most useful sewing gadgets I own. About the same size as tailor’s chalk but much more accurate, it’s heart-shaped, refillable and fits easily in the hand, drawing a very fine line of powdered chalk using a rotating wheel. The chalk brushes off (usually). The Sewline pencil is a close second to the Chakoner; it handles like a mechanical pencil and the marks can be erased either with the eraser or with plain water.

Sewing

Bernina 830 in Horn cabinet, found on eBay. Cabinet open, sewing machine in operating position.

Cabinet closed, sewing machine lowered and stowed.

My knees literally went weak when I found this on eBay after eight months of waiting. The machine was a classic model I knew and loved, refurbished to near-mint condition. The cabinet had an airlift to raise and lower the machine, a custom insert for flatbed sewing and innumerable trays and drawers for notions. When I won the auction for just over half my maximum bid, I ran up and down the flat squealing. When the buildings across the road caught fire and we had to evacuate the house, it was harder to leave the Bernina than to leave the cat. It is my baby. (Sorry, Audrey.)

Some favorite gadgets:

Wrist pincushion

Why do I feel instantly more competent when I put this on? Who cares. No more groping for pins at a crucial moment. Constantly useful.

Scissors onna chain

Where are my scissors? James, did you take my scissors? I just had them. Goddammit, you put something down for one second in this house and… I already looked there. Are you sitting on them? Where the hell are they? Now I’m going to have to get off the couch and — oh, here they are. On this chain around my neck.

Fine point tweezers and seam ripper

Needle-nose tweezers. Good for pulling every last stray thread out of that seam you screwed up and had to unpick.

Vintage Singer hem marker

Menfolk like to pretend they don’t know how to use pins. If you haven’t got a reliable sewing buddy, here’s a good way to mark your hems accurately yourself. Adjust the red thingy to desired hem height on ruler, hold rubber bulb in hand, stand in front of marker and turn slowly in a complete circle, squeezing at intervals. The red thingy will puff a line of powdered chalk all the way around your skirt to mark your hemline. Sorted. (Avoid the Dritz/Prym hem marker as it is worse than useless.)

Simflex expandable gauge

If, like me, you are crap at getting buttonholes, tucks and pleats evenly spaced, you need one of these. It expands like an accordion to allow perfectly even marking. Watch out for pinched fingers.

The humble thimble

When I slip this on and pick up my needle, I feel like I’m taking my place among the billions of women, most of them nameless, who have stitched their way through the course of human history. Thimbles are sturdy, practical and utterly feminine. There are worse things to be.

Tell me about your tools!

Strasbourg was brilliant. It’s the mittel-European analogue of my American hometown: part well-heeled university town, part hicksville. (Up to and including dodgy mustaches, pickup trucks and local talent roaming the streets on tractors.) But because this is France, it’s also full of beautiful and lively public spaces, civilized bars and good restaurants. I got to eat one of these!

Strasbourg is also a cyclist’s paradise — honeycombed with safe, well-maintained cycle paths, endowed with a subsidized bike-hire scheme and consequently teeming with girls in fluttery dresses riding city cruisers and gentlemen in suits on sit-up-and-begs.

Save us from this socialist nightmare!

This made a nice change from London, where people make awfully heavy weather out of cycling, kitting up in hi-vis and lycra, going gung-ho with the toe clips and pounding the pedals with red-faced, joyless intensity.

Because I refuse to treat getting to work as an Exxxtreme Sport, I’m happy riding the defiantly unsporty contraption I call the ladybike — a hand-me-down Dawes pimped out by a former tank mechanic named Thor. It has upright handlebars, a basket homemade from a paint scuttle and, best of all, an onboard stereo for sexy tunes. (Kids! Riding in headphones is not recommended!) I try to make it clear to other road users that speed is not to be expected. And what better way to do this than by cycling in a skirt?

This skirt… wow. Therein lies a tale. This skirt just did not want to be made.

I bought the fabric — a to-die-for Kokka double gauze called Girly & Bitter — a year ago. I got serious, sweaty-palmed lust the instant I saw this fabric. How can you not love it? It’s got everything. A waist-to-hem border print… little birds… hand-drawn swags recalling the princess dresses I drew as a girl…

Candlesticks… scissors… parrots in top hats… milk jugs… bunnies…

Choosing a pattern appropriate to your fabric and vice versa is one of those many little sewing finesses you can only learn, it seems, through trial and error. Instead of being smart like this person and this person and using a really simple pattern to showcase the fabric, I decided, unwisely, to use Butterick 5029. The project tanked — it was a mediocre pattern, the style was unflattering and the design didn’t suit my fabric — so on to the Pile of Shame it went. Then, a month later, I took it out again and cut the dress down into a gathered skirt. For a bunch of reasons, mostly involving my inexplicable love of freestyling instead of actually thinking when confronted with sewing challenges, that didn’t work either. Back it went on the Pile of Shame. Then I tried a contour waistband. Back on the Pile. Then back out again. Etc. All the time the skirt getting smaller and smaller. I ought to have called it a day after Fail #4 … but I couldn’t.

Finally, one year later, I returned to Girly and Bitter for the last time. I decided to use what fabric remained to make the absolute simplest gathered skirt I could think of, with contour waistband. Even then it was like armwrestling with Beelzebub. Apart from the hand-rolled hem, every seam in this skirt has been sewn and ripped at least five times. It isn’t that the fabric was difficult to work with; on the contrary, that was what made my difficulties so infuriating. I kid you not: at some point during the many, many hours I spent wrestling with this fabric, I honestly Googled “girly and bitter curse”. Nothing came up. Unsurprisingly, the problem was me: my inability to pick a plan and stick to it, my passion for impulsive shortcuts and my total lack of design forethought. I cannot picture how something will look ahead of time — I have to try it, hack it up, restitch, try again, etc… which is why my projects get so many iterations that by the time I’m finished they tend to feel grubby and overworked.

I wonder a lot why I keep sewing when I’m obviously not particularly good at it. Part of the reason has to be that it is strangely, deeply satisfying for me to do something I’m not very good at, and nearly miraculous to feel myself getting slowly and painfully better. This is what I call “the joy of suck”. It’s a kind of torment, but it means I’m learning — not just acquiring new knowledge, but developing a completely different set of skills and abilities. Staying human.

This is a necessary battle to fight. If the angsty perfectionist in me had her way, my life would be a perfectly clean white room with nothing in it, except perhaps one perfect bowl of flowers. And like one of my favorite poets pointed out, this would not be enough.

Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
Pink and white carnations. The light
In the room more like a snowy air,
Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations—one desires
So much more than that. The day itself
Is simplified: a bowl of white,
Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
With nothing more than the carnations there.

Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one’s torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.

There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

Lessons learned:

• Matching pattern and fabric is half the battle.
• Make any design changes before cutting if possible.
• Pick a plan of action and stick to it.
  
• The imperfect is our paradise.