The ultimate fate of the matronly jacket threads… not quite Bohemian Opera (whatever that is…)
Remember the jacket, pictured on my dining room table a few entries ago? The jacket that I indicted as matronly and sentenced to dismemberment (“off with its arms! and its collar too!”). And then abandoned while I soliloquized about opera. Which was fun for me, but probably did nothing for the jacket.
Well, eventually, I left off music and philosophy, and picked up the threads of my thrift store jacket project. I did cut off the arms and collar. The seamstress version of demolition. Extreme measures, and I have to admit that once they were taken, I experienced momentary remorse and panic. But I got past it. I realized that really, I had nothing to lose. Nothing to lose, what an adventure, and I was still in a chopping mood. So I cut up an old pair of my husband’s jeans, making long strips (most of them unnecessarily biased), still trying to come up with a coherent strategy. Inspired by the ruffles and roses and raw, frayed edges I’d seen when I ventured into an Anthropologie recently, I experimented. I foraged. I made messes. I worked sporadically, bemusedly, sometimes wretchedly, sometimes with tentative delight.
I knew how to do roses, and ruffles are all about gathering, shortening distances, bunching up, pulling threads. So natural. I layered flattened ruffle on the armholes first (at which point I realized I’d have to cut up another pair of Frank’s jeans if I was going to do the collar too…mistake to try to make bias strips out of jeans), tried the vest on, and despaired. It looked Star Wars, not Anthropologie. I could play Han Solo’s stepsister in it. The project lapsed–almost died, but in the end, I was too curious. Couldn’t leave it alone. Would it look better if I just finished? Sometimes paintings go this way for me—they’re looking really awful and hopeless, and then I throw off my inhibition and splash something (preferably paint) on the canvas, and they’re all happy and promising again. I spared Frank’s second pair of jeans and tore up one of my own old denim painting smocks instead, found some contrasting fabric remnants for the roses. Did a raw edged flattened ruffle around the collar, played with the roses (in the waiting room at the doctor’s office), connived a belt with barely enough fabric remaining. Had fun again. Put it all together with my daughter’s input.
I admit that I’m not absolutely-without-a-chink-or-crack confident about my finished vest (is that Darth Vadar, waiting breathily for me in the laundry room?). But I feel great affection for it. I think my aunt summed it up well. I wore the vest to a family party. When she saw me in the vest, she smiled and admired and exclaimed– Where did I get the idea? And where did I learn how to do roses? What imagination! How clever! And… I am so brave to wear it. I told Frank about my review, and he laughed and asked me if I felt complimented. I reflected before I decided that yes, I do. I so want to Be Brave, and I’m ok with Being Different. A little bunchy and gathered and frayed and floral. With a nice, happy splash of paint.
