Kimono sewing session number 2

Yesterday I had a fun afternoon with Marlene and Mrs. Waki.  We went to Mrs. Waki's to work on the kimono dress.

Though I have been in Mrs. Waki's house years ago, I have never been there with the express purpose of using her sewing room.  I was just so floored by Mrs. Waki's sewing room and I don't mean to be rude, but I was surprised because it was so small!  Remember, she is a professional seamstress and sews suits and clothing for a women's high end custom-made apparel shop.  And yet Mrs. Waki gets along with so little space!  The room itself isn't very large and on top of that Mrs. Waki only uses one side of it for her sewing...  But everything is SOOOO organized and perfectly laid out so that she can do all she has to do with the minimum of movement.  Everything is within finger's reach and a smart turn of her chair!

I have drooled over some of my blog friend's large airy sewing rooms because I consider my own room to be rather humble.  No place to lay out quilt blocks, no place to have basting tables and shelves of fabric and books.  Mrs. Waki certainly has more equipment than I do (though maybe not as much stash fabric!) but everything is stored and placed with efficiency in mind.  My sewing room is rather hodgepodge and things get piled on top of other things until I can't find anything!  And I have so many different craft items in different places.  Embroidery floss here, knitting needles there, quilt pattern over here, QUILTS over here and here and here, yarn in a cupboard, tatting threads next to paper crafts and beads. 

Mrs. Waki is a seamstress and she makes clothes in this room.

And this is corner where she just swivels her chair from sewing machine to "ironing board" which is actually a folded piece of cheesecloth.  She's got her cell phone, her house phone, her TV, and her iPad all there for whatever she wants to tune into.  The iron is there, and her baby lock machine.  The three colors of Japanese basting thread hang so that she can just pull a thread at a time without unraveling anything.  She said depending on whether she is working on the back or the front of an outfit, she uses different colored basting thread so she doesn't get pieces mixed up.  She's got a great low hanging light that lights up the whole corner brightly.

She's got bins of thread!

And this is Mrs. Waki's sewing machine!  She said that it is her second machine and that she's had this one about 20 years.  Yes!  It is a Singer treadle sewing machine and she says the preciseness that the pedal gives is important to all her sewing.  (Her hand made sign taped on the machine says, "Turn off the iron!"  Anyone working in a sewing room has this problem of leaving the iron on I guess.  I certainly do!)

Mrs. Waki had texted me a couple of hours earlier to say that we might get as far as actual sewing this day and so I should bring my sewing machine with me.  Unfortunately I got the message after I'd already left for the preschool in the morning so I didn't have my sewing machine with me this day...   Still, there was some basting for me to do...  But not much!

Mrs. Waki had already cut out the dress pieces, placed the embroidery and joined it to make a perfect flow of flowers, and she'd lock edged all the pieces and put stabilizer in the shoulders and marked all the seams and notches with different stitches of basting thread.

"Tanya, why don't you baste the shoulder seams here and here.  And then you can baste the center back seam."

I can do this!  How hard can basting be?  I baste quilts all the time!  But actually, basting a quilt and basting a silk dress is very different.  The seams have to be exact.  The stitches have to be small (or at least Mrs. Waki said, it depended on me how precise I wanted to make my basting.)  And the silk slips away from me as I sew!  It actually took me a very long time to baste three places on this dress!  In the meantime Mrs. Waki started planning the lining (using kimono lining) and Marlene took care of photography.

I love it!  I love it all!  The marking, the pinning, the sewing!  A beautiful dress is coming together before my eyes!

We took a short break as I marveled at Mrs. Waki's sewing space and asked about the time she spends sewing.  I'm so nosy!

Mrs. Waki does most of her sewing late at night!  So, what does she do during the day?  In the morning she likes to sit in her sunroom and care for her cacti and other plants!  Did you notice the pretty flowers in Mrs. Waki's house?  Not only can Mrs. Waki sew, she has a green thumb too!

Mrs. Waki loves pruning her plants, repotting things she has grown, starting new cacti from older cacti leaves.  She is just itching to get out into her very wide garden to plant and putter and add new and different flowers and plants and trees.

And Mrs. Waki GUSHES about her cacti that she pots and repots and repots again.

"Aren't they cute!  Aren't they just the cutest things you ever saw?!"

She talks of them like her children...

A proud gardener and part of her "brood".

Okay.  We went back to sewing and as I had finished basting but hadn't brought my sewing machine, Mrs. Waki offered to let me try sewing on her treadle machine.  This will be a first for me!

Of course she demonstrated....  I was surprised that there aren't two pedals because I was expecting something like an old pump organ.  No.  There is only one wide pedal and it has to be pushed back with one foot (the right) and then pushed forward with the other foot.  That shouldn't be hard to do...

Hah!  The three of us were doubled over in laughter!  I couldn't keep the needle going in one direction.  I'd push with one foot and the needle would go forward two or three stitches, but by the time I'd push the pedal back, the needle would have lost its momentum and it would stitch backwards!  After about 10 minutes I finally sewed one straight line but my sewing was nothing like Mrs. Waki's!

When she sewed her machine went...

"Tucka-tucka-tucka-tucka-tucka-tucka-tucka-tucka."

When I sewed, the machine went...

"Tucka-tu---  Tucka-tuc--- Tu-cka-tuck  Tucka-tuck  Tucka-tu---"

And why would I include this odd photo of my back?  I am concentrating on pumping the foot pedal and sewing a line of stitches.  And every time I pushed the pedal, I pushed myself back in the rolling chair!  Mrs. Waki had to hold the chair in one place or pretty soon I was a foot back from the machine no longer able to reach the machine nor the foot pedal!  See how Mrs. Waki is leaning into the chair so that I don't scoot too far from the machine!?

"I guess that's our answer.  You are not going to have enough time to learn how to use this treadle machine.  Please bring the machine you are used to next time."

We ended our first sewing session drinking tea and looking out at Mrs. Waki's garden. 

"Oh...  I forgot to do this this morning..."  and Mrs. Waki went out to her garden with a Tupperware of bird seed.  She filled her homemade bird feeder and within seconds the sparrows that had been sitting on the telephone wires and on a bush nearby were swarming at the feeder!  The birds know where the good stuff is!

Another of Mrs. Waki's great joys is to look at her pretty garden and watch the birds that visit.  I got out my camera again to photograph the sparrows but they all fluttered away even though I hid behind a rain gutter....  Finally retreated to the house again and took pictures through the window.

Mrs. Waki and her sewing and her beautiful garden and her birds.  Now I want to put up a bird feeder and organize my sewing room again!  I don't think I have enough energy for a garden though.