Joann’s, a local fabric/craft store, sends me coupons via email just about every week. They also send coupons in the regular mail. Though I am inundated by their marketing ploy, I’m not an innocent victim. I signed up to be harassed, scribbling my name and address on a little post card (which guaranteed my inclusion on a mailing list) as I hurried through their checkout line one day a year or so ago. Why? Because the coupons, in a sketchy, ephemeral way, seem to offer escape. Or I pretend they do.
It will take me awhile to elaborate. This may be a good time for the reader to make their own escape—to Tolstoy, perhaps. Or Steinbeck, or Hemingway. J. Alfred Prufrock. I make no apologies for my obscurity, inconsistency, or nonsense. If you’re ok with that, take a ride with me on my unsurveyed, trackless linen road.
Coupons are a ticket to fabric, at cheaper prices. I love fabric, irrationally, passionately. For many reasons; today though I’ll explore just one. How about this: Fabric is a ticket to otherwhere. I finger the folds draped from the bolt, sample the “hand” (its weight and fall), envision a dress, no, not just a dress, but something breathless and limitless in its elegance and simplicity, something that Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelley or Nicole Kidman might choose, but shaped for me. Vintage style? Yes! Sheath dress. Pencil skirt. Narrow trousers. Beret. Peasant blouse. Accentuating my best, eradicating my worst. The fabric is (this time, if we’re talking Audrey Hepburn) linen; it feels as if it has been hand-washed in sparkling river water by knowing aunts for an entire sun-filled season; it manages to be crisp, soft, opaque, transparent, worn-looking, and graceful, all at once. There are tiny hints of creases everywhere in it; that is what linen does. And in the psychology of its handwashed-ness, and little wrinkles, and textile-harking-back-to-the-
No. Not something other than myself. Be a latent, buried, mostly-forgotten, native self.
Yes.
At any rate, with or without coupons, I have managed to stuff one of my dining room linen closets and two scrappy (vintage!) dressers in my studio with fabric. Enough fabric to make… I don’t know. Somewhere in the vicinity of 30 articles of clothing? Safe voyage to 30 alternate realities? What am I thinking? I’m forty one. There should be enough to make 41 articles of clothing, to take 41 voyages.
But the sad thing is, while coupons really do deliver fabric at diminished cost, the fabric isn’t actually a ticket to a better place. I make from it a dress. I put the dress on. It fits; there is nothing more to do, no seams to take in or let out, no more garnishes to add, and here I stand in unpainted toes, looking at myself in a mirror stationed in a suburb built on Utah swampland. The dryer buzzes, the sump pump turns on, and I have no idea what to fix for dinner. Also, I don’t think I have any shoes that match.
Fabric isn’t even a ticket to super cool clothes. It is only a preliminary investment; neck-tense hours with pins, scissors, thread, and sewing machine yield actual passage, if I persist and if I am lucky (my odds at successful sewing has slowly improved over the years). And then it’s only passage to hopefully cool-enough clothes.
Neither is fabric an illusion, nor an enchantress, nor even a little white lie, though my stuffed closet and dressers might imply that fabric has deceived me, that I am fabric’s dupe. No, fabric just is, either on its bolt or tucked in rumpled wedges in my closet, saying nothing, promising nothing. Perfectly capable of gathering dust and fading, it doesn’t pretend it is anything other than woven fibers.
I do.
And so (are you still with me? Then congratulations!), my linen road brings me (or do I take it) to this crossroads: the tension between the heavenly pull of all that I wish I could be and do, and the abiding reality of who I am, where I’m at, what I struggle with. And somewhere, somehow with me, all along, is that hidden, latent, native self. Raising her eyebrows? No, I think she is serene and patient, waiting for me to get it. Waiting for me to acknowledge her. Waiting to be unveiled.
Maybe that works (for sure, in James Thurber’s half-blind, delirious world).
We’ll see. Meanwhile, I use the coupons, cash in my tickets. Bring fabric home, put it away. Some does gather dust, the fabric on top of the pile. Some of it fades. And now and then, every blue moon or so, something in my real world requisitions my sincerest attention and effort and I rummage purposefully through my piles. Maurya wants a formal. Or my sister, Andrea, needs a little black dress to wear to a wedding. Or an anniversary trip with Frank approaches. Oh, yeah, I’m on it. I not only get the fabric home (or out of the closet), I cut it out. Yes, neck tense. Yes, hours with scissors, thread, and sewing machine. (And then, in Andrea’s case, we learn, gradually, that she is pregnant, morning sick, a little rushed, can’t make it to a fitting; she of necessity buys a quick black dress off a more local rack and I put away the linen project almost finished…it will be her birthday present, next year, when I can make the final alterations, when it fits again). In the end, I have something wonderful. A moment. A gift. My care and vision, my work holds inanimate fibers to a lovely shape; I draw my breath in, sharp, momentarily ecstatic. There is something in the lines of what I’ve made that is slightly reminiscent of Monet’s cathedrals and bending stalks of sun-ripened wheat. I hold it in my hands; I made it with my hands! And my unpainted toes wiggle happily on the wood floor of my own home.
(post script: I haven’t sewed much since Andrea’s abandoned dress, other than a couple of hems and some simple but rewarding alterations on thrift store finds. Blouses that fit exactly, post-baste. I did buy a pattern around the same time that I was immersed in black linen; it is for a retro ensemble: 1940’s, wide-legged trousers with a narrow and high waist, with a lovely fitted jacket. I can almost see Katharine Hepburn raising baby in them. I also bought a small brown tweed for the trousers and a slightly bolder tweed for the jacket, same colorways, different textures…brought them home, tucked them in my closet. Today I got them out again, not just to dream, but to begin. Deferred the beginning because Ez had a choir concert tonight (his school-issue costume in sad need of drastic alterations). I am resolved however to make something wonderful for myself before Thanksgiving. Meanwhile my dear friend Steph is asking for help with a Christmas party dress… and I have her permission to post pictures here. Stay tuned.)
