Yesterday, I had to hem my choir dress. I don't have a sewing machine, but even when I did I typically did most of my mending/sewing by hand. The sewing machine I had was a hand-me-down and didn't work quite right. I'd love to get a new one and learn how to really use it one day. But for now, my basic hand-stitching works for most things.
My partner, amazing person that he is, put on my choir dress and stood on top of yoga blocks so I could pin it up. Channeling his inner Jonathan Van Ness! Mind you, he's about 6'3". I'm tall, around 5'9" or so, but it was still a little long after I got it hemmed even though I tried to account for the height difference. Luckily, I'm wearing short heels, and after tacking up the sleeves a smidge, I won't be tripping over my dress.
I could have taken the easy way out and paid a lady in the choir to hem it for me, but I'm a glutton for punishment apparently. I also didn't want to invest any more money in the dress than I had to, and I was afraid she was going to try to get me to do all these other alterations to it. Which would be too much, since I may not even be living in the same state as this choir next year.
I was up at 1am last night finishing up the blind stitch on this dress (a new-to-me stitch I learned on YouTube yesterday). My hands hurt today. I have tiny pin pricks in some of my fingers.
The dress is still a smidge long. It's not entirely symmetrical. The fabric does pucker in a couple of places.
It's imperfect, but it's functional.
And sometimes, that's all we need to be.
Functional.
There's a lot of pressure to be perfect, especially when we put a lot of work into something. Or into ourselves.
This is your reminder, to be like my choir dress. It's okay to not be perfect, or have everything you do turn out perfect.
Sometimes, functional is perfectly alright.
-Rosie
