Life Lessons from a Dress Pattern
Recently I decided to make a navy blue dress with a cross over bodice, a wide waistband and a fitted straight skirt. I wanted to make the dress because when you sew you have the option to adjust the pattern to fit your own body shape. A cross over design in the bodice, or top, is very popular right now but when I try on clothes with that design I’m uncomfortable with how much cleavage is showing. I was hoping to adjust the pattern so that I could wear the style comfortably.
When you make a project out of fabric, the pattern shows you where to cut for the different sizes and how to put it all together. I followed the pattern until I got to the part of the pattern where I wanted to adjust it. I decided to cut the fabric at a different angle than the pattern recommended to raise the front of the dress to reveal less cleavage. When I put the fabric together, I found that the angle I had cut had not made a noticeable difference in the overall shape of the bodice. I also found that the pattern didn’t really fit me because I have a smaller than average bust and wider than average hips. Don’t we all have a size that is something other than average? I made a few other adjustments as I put the project together hoping that the dress would turn out. In the end, my sewing skills proved to be seriously lacking. An adjustment in one place affected the placement of other lines and I didn’t adjust all the lines adequately.
My project wasn’t a total loss. I wanted to have the dress, yes. But I also wanted to learn how to make that particular style of clothing that is popular right now. I learned a lot. So let’s see if I can pull out of what I learned something that is relevant to life…
Mothers are like seamstresses. Except that they don’t get to pick the pattern that their children arrive in. While children don’t come with specific instructions, people have written lots of books on general advice for parents. Following the instructions is helpful until you find that you need to make an adjustment for your less-than-average situation. Making adjustments requires thought and some of us mothers are just too tired to think. However, the value of our project, our children, warrants the very best we have to give. Luckily, we have about twenty years to make adjustments until they grow up and sometimes they stop taking our adjustments much earlier. Which makes the early years, when we do have free license, all the more important. When I was adjusting the project I made the biggest change to the angle that I cut. This happened at the very beginning. The biggest adjustments we make as parents happen at the very beginning or our children’s lives. Later in life we can fine tune or tweak it, but the decisions we’ve already made limit our choices towards the end.
Sometimes as mothers we accept a lot of blame for how our children turn out. We have to remember that we didn’t pick the pattern. Some of how they turn out is a result of the pattern they arrived in. I would not get a pair of pants out of my dress pattern no matter what I did to adjust the pattern. I did use the general guidelines or instructions and parents should too. If I didn’t use the instructions, I wouldn’t get a dress at all. I made adjustments to my size and situation, but they required thought. If I had made no adjustments or cared little about the final product than the resulting dress would have fit an average woman – not me. Even though I was not skilled enough to be successful at making the dress fit me the way I envisioned, I didn’t consider my efforts a total loss – because I learned something.
My parenting skills may be seriously lacking just like my sewing skills; however, my parenting results are never a total loss if I can say I learned something. How many of us have made our own adjustments to our way of thinking and character after the age of twenty? My children will work to fix the mistakes I made and their life will be successful in part from their own adjustments. I’m not saying that my parenting decisions have no consequences, I just think that mothers have to look at the big picture and do the best they can.
Andrea Mabey is a mother of six and President of the San Antonio chapter of American Mothers.
