Needles in white packages are oblong and squared off at the edges. Delivered by the local postal service, they come as a sign that I can see beyond the pattern of personal logic in her hands. I remember the months of confusion and diligence. I also remember trying to save for something with a computerized stitch.
“Get the dang thing serviced before anything else happens,” says she with classroom eyes and nimble buttered fingers to the thread.
Speaking to you in whispers on the side of the house, I tell you I have seen my mistakes pile up in the small plastic garbage can. Little voices ring between my ears ranting on about how I can't sew a straight line. Statements of the obvious all come in the timing after completing the deed. She squeals mocking in my right ear that the tensions to tight with every rat's nests bustled under the long seams. Minding over the thicknesses takes a toll over my index finger and thumb every afternoon until four. The rule has become error always before trial. I learned to go slower, but I cannot even feign the hawk's eye. While from a conversation with her, the suggestion to pathology for work is important, I still cannot commit to the project. The only thing in my mind is that my errors should sit piled high in the large trash can now. Comparatively, her eye is forgiving; while, I toil in hell though excessive demands.
Perfection is the taskmaster that lingered on from my mother's garment construction days. Now the load bears unbalanced on my soft shoulders hinged at the base. One day may the curse break. Freed to do my work, my way, I will not care if it is unorthodox to history and fashion. As a result of the numerous mistakes, my eye, hell, my hand stitch has surrendered to deconstruction. Why? If not but to find a use for the mistakes and the waste. The "all" is now full of tatters and falling away. Exposed is the look tamed with the edges of a hot water washed yesterday. The faulty now looks like charcoal lines of a whimsical drawing hand.
As for purity through handwork, I cannot seem to proceed to unique standards with hands influenced by the wisdom of a machine. I shake, I shiver, I cut too close. I get bored and pull the strand too hard. How can this consciousness of what a machine finish does have the same influence as with hand-finished stitching? Two different possibilities are present. The first highlights the emotions surrounding a faulty machine; for instance, work stoppage, reliability, and transience. The other has to do with faulty personal work and suggestions of a damaged body.
When I apply all this exposure to larger implications, I yield to thoughts of the human body. My biology has begun to dictate age. One fact is apparent, I am falling apart with repeated strenuous use of limbs. Let my hands do what they can and reestablish the boundaries of beauty. I can only do what I am capable of. Perfection is a crapshoot even for the able and highly functional. Even if I were both, no doubt I would find interests elsewhere. As a perpetual healing medium, art seems best suited for the damaged. (On serious contemplation, that would include everyone.) In deconstruction, there is no doubt healing comes with an exposure of wounds.
I am sure I will find fascination and obsessive beauty in disability and aging humanity. Deconstruction never seemed so much the human body in reflection. If so, I will find my sickness in brights, tatters, and antiqued buttons. I will find a cure in a haphazard stitch. Quilting friends say there is no way can I return after this. Fight the call to structure, I will convulse the afternoon between screams over massive waste. Doctor Frankenstein no doubt went through that often. If I can see the beauty in paper discards, the transferrable skill is enough to realign perspectives and dictate a new series; then I can resurrect the dead in fibers and fabric.
Once upon a story, I had two machines, one belonged to my grandmother and the other, my mother. At least for now, the preference is a tradition of Singers that goes on without question. Maybe, talent is in the tools, not the person. Maybe, it is the era of style that permits freedom once thought unorthodox. Maybe its a personal draw to detritus again. I can finally see the method as another way to (re)member the conscious after the pieces stray in falling away.
Needles in packages resolve the fault. 12/80 was all that I needed for the line not to fall apart. The machine stitches without hiccups now. I stopped tearing out seams as well as dark stretches of hair from my neckline. I tucked the 16s away for the day I stitch jeans and stiff polyester folds. Working so diligently these few years, I forgot the seduction of cotton to cotton. I have a proud fabric stash full of mixed fibers, but I am getting low in variety. The lack of sensual tactility is making me antsy with winter approaching. Come November's chill, inspiration usually strikes with a harsh blow.
The new question sits if I can commit to deconstruction with a sound machine. Popping in the wrong needle seems foolish to risk the machine's health. Needles in packages means learning the weights of fabrics and thread. With a little care, I can make the look play with hand stitching loops and exploding seams. Needles in packages and the year plays into the next.
As ever, stay hungry and curious.