Last night, after some friends from church came to visit, I felt inspired and energized to tackle the ever-increasing piles of fabric in "my" sewing room. I hit the serger hard, almost completing 1 pair of pajama pants (I just have to do the leg hems and the elastic casing) and serging the raw edges of another pair of pajama pants, a skirt, and a dress. Then my ankle got tired because I was sitting on a high stool and my foot was at a weird angle, so I walked around a bit before digging through my zipper box for a zipper so I could finish the skirt after discovering that the tension is off on the sewing machine which means one of us needs to take it in for a check-up. I of course chose to do a lapped zipper, which isn't my favorite thing to do anyway without being as tired as I was. I think it turned out well, but I (wisely) decided not to attempt the planned rolled hem or waistband binding (since I decided that I will just bind or face almost all my skirt waists instead of putting in the stiff and uncomfy waistbands because of the very scant distance between the bottom of my ribs and the top of my pelvis/ribs).
It felt good to be sewing again, and I hope to have a pretty new dress (the rose-colored damask is FINALLY cut out and serged around!) for a friend's wedding on Monday, and my sister will FINALLY have her red, flannel-backed satin pajamas that should have been finished in December. *shame*.
As for the things that are shifting, I'm mentally composing a post for my introspective blog about what has led to the following decision: I am applying for a core fellowship position to study weaving and silversmithing at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. I'd been searching for a graduate degree program in textiles and have been discouraged by the sheer expense of it, not to mention the blank wall of death that rises in my brain at the thought of taking the GRE. It hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks a few weeks ago that I was looking for the wrong thing and should, instead, be looking for crafts schools.
So I did.
And I will say that, when I read the description of the core fellowship at Penland, I felt exactly the same way I felt when I registered for a workshop during the Taos Wool Festival last year--a mixture of familiarity (hard to explain), excitement, the urge to cry from unexplained happiness, and a little bit of fear--which means I need to somehow do this. I don't know if it's going to pan out they way I hope, but I know I have to try. The deadline to submit the paperwork and 10-item portfolio (which is the part that makes me the most anxious, as I haven't done a lot of fiber art at all) is October 1st.
Ack.
Pray/sacrifice/cast runes for me.
