 © Shane Reiswig
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Salad Days Click to read Click to |
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© Shane Reiswig
|
Salad Days Click to read Click to |
Salad Days
Short skirts are back and I for one am glad. In my salad days, I wore them in
ever-shortened versions (to the rising dismay of my mother). After I got back from a trip
to Europe while in college, I chopped off my hair and adopted a more refined look. My
knees have been hidden ever since.
Oddly enough, it’s the innocence of wearing short skirts that appeals to me; I feel as if a sculptor has carved away the marble, freeing up a French schoolgirl.
I’m sure others will feel they’ve been put in bondage; you can’t take as long strides in these short ones, and anyone with a scrap of modesty will agree that adjustments have to be made in how one sits and picks up things. But long skirts are no picnic, either; you have to lift them up every time you climb stairs. Not so fun when you’re carrying a briefcase.
Yet the true reason I’m glad short skirts are back is that I can start sewing again. For the past few years, when styles were long and wool expensive, it was a whole lot easier and cheaper just to buy skirts. Especially the ankle-length kind with all those tiny pleats.
In junior high and high school, short on cash, I sewed all the time—everything from smocked aprons for my mother to pants and straight skirts. Skirts took a yard of material, a zipper, a couple of seams, and an hour of time. Now that I’ll be adding such grown-up touches as a kick pleat, lining, and a hand-sewn zipper, it’ll probably take me three hours. But what a wonderful thing to be able to buy a wad of material and a few hours later walk out wearing it.
I’ve missed sewing. Missed the hours spent mentally polishing the dream until I could see the garment, the color and weight of the material, and what I would look like in it. Missed the twenty-minute walk to Maxim’s, my hometown fabric store, with hundreds of bolts of material stacked this way and that on dusty shelves. Missed pawing through demure cotton prints, fuzzy pink bathrobe material, slinky satins, and crisp linen until I saw the fabric that matched the vision in my head.
Then came the scary moment of telling the clerk how much I wanted and hoping I had calculated correctly. Unlike shopping in an ordinary store, where you can return an item you’ve bought, once the material is cut, you are stuck with it. Committed.
When I’d gotten back home, I’d wash and iron the material, fold it in half, and line up the selvages (finished edges of the fabric). One of the big thrills was first opening up a new pattern and laying out the thin, crinkly beige sheets on the material.
Next came cutting the material. That, too, was a point of no return. If you put the front piece on the selvage and not the fold, forget it! No skirt. So I always spent a long time chewing my lip, checking and rechecking, before taking that first, irreversible cut.
Compared to the decisions, the sewing itself was almost a breeze. Darts. Back center seam. Zipper. Side seams. Waistband—sewn on the outside of the skirt, flipped over, and hand-stitched down. The final step involved my mother. I’d stand on a chair while she’d measure the hem with a yardstick ("Middle of the knee, dear?" "No! One inch above!")
Slipstitch the hem. Press. Voila! une jupe!
It’s too bad that sewing is not mandatory in school anymore. It teaches some great things. Practical things, like making decisions and living with them. Doing it right the first time: When I got too cocky and roared off without reading the directions, that was when I spent a lot of time ripping out seams and starting over. Creative things: imagining and then creating a piece of clothing that expresses exactly how you feel about yourself.
The time sewing worked best was when I dreamed up the idea of making a bright yellow linen dress—sleeveless, empire-style, with a white collar and a black ribbon tie. I was able to find a pattern and just the right materials, and the dress came out fine. It had an extraordinary impact on the ninth grade boys. Their eyes told me that the wallflower was, all of a sudden, somebody to be reckoned with. Heady stuff for a fourteen-year-old. And all from a needle and thread.
Profile
Someone chuckles.
"Go on," says the indignant one, "laugh at the neophyte sleeping nude in a down bag in the cold—just like you told her to! Dammit, you guys, I’m freezing!"
More sleepy laughter. The next morning, the first of her camping life, Cathy Foster climbs the peak, energized by her battle with the cold and the steep slopes. She delights in the world.
Her fifteen years’ work for The Christian Science Monitor reflects Foster’s perspective—the long, inclusive view and the telling detail. Along the way, she’s interviewed people as diverse as John Updike, Nora Ephron, Peter Jennings, a Poet Laureate, a Chinese theatre director, and aborigines in Australia’s outback.
—Diane R. Hanover
Bio
Catherine Foster
Place of residence: Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Day job: Assistant Foreign Editor, The Boston Globe.
Education: B.A. in English, University of California at Santa Barbara.
Serial publications: New York Times. Saturday Evening Post. Reader’s
Digest.
Favorite book: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner.
Secret desires: Be the next Jane Austen. Sing back-up in a rock ’n’ roll
band.
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