I’m trying hard to be self-reliant. Being my own cook, baker, dishwasher, gardener, and now a dressmaker-in-the-making! All this atma-nirbharta is partly in response to our dear leader’s call, but mostly because tyrannical tailors have left me with little choice. Years have I spent, and miles have I wandered to find a tailor who would fulfil my simple needs, i.e
- A) Understand what I wanted,
- B) Make it in my size,
- C) Have it ready on time.
The coronavirus pandemic was a great teacher. I earned my stripes as a general duty odd-job woman and was promoted rapidly to head-of-all-domestic-chores in a matter of months! Bursting with confidence, I decided to expand my repertoire further by learning to stitch my own clothes. Here’s my first-hand experience as a dressmaker-in-the-making, with particular emphasis on the pitfalls that awaits the unwary beginner!
How to stitch a simple dress
The wonderful thing about learning something new in the modern world is that you don’t need to step out anywhere. The tutor comes to the tutee. Accordingly, I turned that repository-of-all-knowledge in today’s world – YouTube, to look for a tutor. And typed in my search terms: ‘How to stitch a simple dress’.
Of course, it was all wrong. Because the digital world, being somewhat stuck in the concrete operational stage of a ten-year-old, requires you to be precise. You need to cut out a pattern before you can stitch it, and draft it before you can cut it, and measure yourself before you can draft it.
Determined to do things correctly, I plodded back to square one/step one/lesson one.
Measuring
Having scrolled down about a dozen sites, I found one which demonstrated how to measure oneself. Half an hour of combined gymnastics and calisthenics later, I can vouch for two things with complete certainty – one, sixty is not a very supple age; and two, tape-measures simply cannot be trusted. That impossible number it displayed could not possibly be my waist measurement!
drafting
Having corrected these blatantly inflated figures (much like a government reconciliation exercise), I moved on to step two. Drafting. It entailed more complex maths than I had envisaged, and fractions were never my strong point. Put fractions and decimals together in one equation, and let inches and centimetres intermingle freely and a disaster awaits. Sample these complex equations. One-fourth of waist measurement plus two; one-sixth of bust measurement plus 1.25; half-armhole minus 0.5 for small, 0.75 for medium…….
Here I had to go back to lesson 1 to find out if I qualified as small, medium, or large. I returned unenlightened but decided to opt for medium – statistically, it was the likeliest.
Pattern cutting
Onwards to lesson 3 – the crucial step of pattern cutting! I found the perfect step-by-step guide for beginners. Pausing the video every 20 seconds I folded, pinned, and chalked out shoulder, armhole, seam allowances, length and hem as directed. Having checked everything a second time, I took a deep breath and plunged in the scissors! This was verily the point of no return. I unpinned my paper draft and unfolded my fabric. It was perfect. Except for a missing neckline.
Life is never as simple as a b c, or in this case as 1, 2, 3! In a bid to keep my aging neural networks agile, step three had been cunningly subdivided into steps 3a and 3b. The bright young thing asking me to like, share and subscribe to her tutorial assured me that there was a link to the neckline in a subsequent video. I looked and I searched. YouTube thoughtfully send me two dozen videos. Step-by-step tutorials to blouses, halter dresses, wrap dresses, kurtas, …. lesson numbers 5, 10, 12, 40, 32. But alas, lesson 3b was not to be found. It had escaped the clutches of the gigantic search engine!
My dress remains unfinished, for want of a neckline. And sadly, I continue to remain a dressmaker-in-the-making. But I’m confident I’ll complete my dress as soon as I can locate lesson 3b, thereby qualifying as a full-fledged dressmaker. Till then, I am destined to remain at the mercy of my temperamental tailors.