by Ardeana Hamlin
of The Weekly Staff
On one of the few sunny Saturdays during the endless winter, the mood for sewing swept over me with something akin to mania. I’d banish the winter blahs with fabric in a bright color. I’d concoct a lightweight wool jacket to wear when warm weather and the birds returned.
The mood, on that particular day, I am certain, had everything to do with the sudden brilliance of sunlight after so many days of leaden gray sky and crystalline white snow. The light spilling through the south windows of my house transformed the room where I usually sew into an inviting space instead of the ice palace it became on stormy days — so many stormy days.
I retrieved the turquoise, gray and black speckled boucle fabric from the plastic tote where I store woolen cloth. I selected a jacket pattern from my trove, laid the pattern on the fabric, pinned it and cut it. Once that was done, I laid the pieces aside and looked forward to the next day when I would begin stitching the jacket together.
No.
The next day arrived wearing cold, gray armor. And the next, and the next. The days of January passed one after the other in a whirl of swirling flakes and drifting snow. The jacket pieces, the pattern still pinned in place, languished atop the trunk where I had placed it weeks ago.
Eventually, the sun put in another appearance, perhaps it was February, the icy drafts disappeared for a few hours and it was warm enough in my house to take up sewing again. I sewed the jacket darts, the shoulder seams, set in the sleeves and sewed the side seams. I put the jacket on my dress form so I could see how it looked — the sleeves were set correctly, the lapel contours matched. And there it hung for weeks as I waited for a day when Boreas, the north wind, would favor me with another sun-filled day warm enough to cut out the jacket lining and begin sewing it.
Not.
Eventually, March rolled around and I figured that when the spring equinox occurred, the days would grow milder, it would stop snowing and I would start sewing again.
No.
It was the first part April before I laid out and cut the jacket lining from bright turquoise satin. More days passed before I found a day warm enough and light enough to sew the lining to the jacket.
When May came at last, the weather moderated significantly. The daffodils and lilacs bloomed. The down-filled jackets — one weighty enough for Arctic temperatures, the other worn when the thermometer registers more than 10 degrees above zero — went back in the the closet for the next six or seven months.
I have finished the jacket. I wore it one recent warm day, confident that the season of sun had arrived.
Well, no. Not quite yet.