Wednesday, November 11, 2020

All You Have To Do

 


Shout out to my non-sewer friends.  I love you all.  But I've learned to take it with a grain of salt when you say, "All you have to do is . . ."

A friend recently brought six pairs of her mom's pants for hemming.  "I've already turned them up.  All you have to do is zoom around with your sewing machine."

Except - if I sew on top of the hem that's already there, making a double hem, it's going to be bulky.  And these are nice department store pants.  I'm going to either have to take out the hem that's already there or, if I'm lucky, cut it off.  And, I'm going to measure at least three times before I cut.

I'm going to use my serger to make the raw edges lie really nice and flat and not ravel.  And then I may, unless the pants have a straight leg, have to adjust the leg taper.  If I don't, there will be puckers and the hem won't lie fat and will look awful.

And four of the six pairs of pants were dress pants, which means they have an invisible hem, as opposed to a sewing machine straight stitch hem.  I'm not great at doing this kind of hem by machine, so I do it by hand.  I could, of course, do a hem like on your casual pants or jeans, but if you bring me dress pants I want them to look dressy when I'm done.  I want your mom to look nice.

There has been no zooming around with my sewing machine.

Big accident very early this morning on the main bridge connecting Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington, Kentucky over the Ohio River.  A semi jack-knifed and another semi ran into the jack-knifed one.  No one hurt, but there was a big fire from fuel.  The second truck was carrying potassium hydroxide, which made the fire burn hotter.  The trucks pretty much melted and have to be removed piece by piece.  The bridge is still too hot to allow inspection.  

Optimistically we're talking days for a shut down in both directions, could be longer.  Water traffic under the bridge is also closed.

Aside from freight and travelers, there are all the commuters who are affected, either because they travel over that bridge or because they travel on highways where traffic is rerouted.  It's a headache right now.  


1 comment:

Joanne S said...

Wow that accident and fire must have been incredible to witness. You didn't mention so I am guessing no other vehicles were involved and the drivers are okay. We have a very old bridge between two Towns going over incoming ocean water. When the bridge is closed- traffic backs up for miles and miles on both sides. There is no easy way to get there from here so to speak.

And the pants. My daughter hands me projects like this- way more complicated than they seem (seam), For my own clothing- I can be relaxed knowing what I don't know how to do correctly. Accepting of the end product. For others-- it's not so easy. Take breaks from it during the work.