Sewing has made quite a come back in my life lately. I have been sewing like crazy for me, the ballerina-rock star and other little friends. My creativity needs get complete satisfaction from sewing.
I was thinking of childhood games and how they tell of what we have a gift for. As a child in my grandparents village, I remember, I had a little table and a chair that my grandfather had built for me. He would put them out, in the shade of the grape vines. Over there I would work each day on my perfumery of bottles filled with water and flower petals from my grandmother’s summer garden and on making clothes for my little Barbie-style doll. I used to gather all the scraps of fabric I could find to make that doll pants and dresses. It is a memory I had long forgotten–the skinny little doll with a bad haircut, which I had given her on an uninspired day, and all her handmade clothes.
The perfumery passion didn’t turn out into anything later (except that yeah, the love for little bottles and the fragrances within always stayed with me) and I never really picked up sewing again until a few years ago. Now it looks like it’s again becoming a passion. A source of happiness. Why buy a new blouse in the store, as beautiful and cheap as it might be, when the rush just goes away in a short while and the blouse turns quickly back into only a thing, at the back of the closet? I can make that into weeks of planning for the right fabric, making trips to the fabric store, finding the perfect pattern, and cutting, sewing, taking it apart again, cutting, sewing on stolen short moments, for days and days. Letting my mind float and dream many dreams. Until it is finally done. The perfect blouse, uniquely mine, reminding me every time I wear it of the beautiful, peaceful hours of work and excitement that went into it.
And now, after seeing my little sewn things, you can go and take at look at the most amazing clothes that I (maybe you too) have seen in a long time: Handmade Annyschoo on Etsy. I just discovered this shop yesterday and I have been fascinated. I would happily fill my closet with her stuff and not wear anything else ever. In comparison, my sewing creations seem so insignificant (and how much this reminds me of how I feel about my writing!). I wish I could make clothes like that, but, oh, well, I guess I have to stay happy with my simple peasant blouses. They are so cute and comfortable, you know? They bring whispers of childhood and freedom, of a small Romanian village on the banks of Siret river. And they are my creation. That should be enough. For now.
