This apron began all
the way back in 2018. It was my second
project out of the American Duchess dressmaking book, and at that point I hadn't much
experience with hand rolling hems, and this apron - well, this apron had a lot of rolled hems. There were 3 yards in the apron body, 6 yards up
one side of the ruffle and 6 back down
the other side. Just thinking about it,
I needed a fainting couch and a handsome gentleman (yes, Mr Tabubil -
that IS you) to sponge my temples. At my slow, painstaking rate of rolled
hemmery, 15 yards of hem felt like miles.
I started with optimism - mostly at night, in front of the
television, where I didn't have to think of the miles and miles and MILES of
hem (the estimate grew, exponentially, with every stitch) and I worked on it
on and off, and on and off, and on, and
on, and ON -
I came to think of it as the Infinite Apron : when I was feeling down and
like life had no meaning, I'd pull out this horrible apron and confirm that I
was right.
Then 2020 happened. Circumstances saw me stuck outside of Chile for 18 months, where I sewed - and hemmed - other things. Uncertain, unmoored, waiting for vaccines and badly missing Mr Tabubil, I sewed for my sanity's sake: caps, fichus, mantelets, wrapping gowns, petticoats - I seamed, I gathered, I whipped, and I hemmed -
Practice brought experience, and eventually
expertise, and somewhere in the middle of it all - rolled hemming changed from proof
of the dreary infinite to something that was fun.
When I finally made it home to Chile in 2021, I pulled out the
horrible infinite apron and found that as a project, it had become
benign. It had become something almost small.
So I finished it. I took that heap of
half-hemmed voile, I unpicked my laboriously bungled whip-gathers, and then I
sat back, cracked an anticipatory grin -
I re-whipped my ruffles. I tacked them down. I stroke-gathered the waist to a band, and then I stopped, and looked
for a bit, and I took some vast and
serious pleasure in the formal, measured beauty of the strokes.
This apron had become metaphorical as hell. I felt existential whiplash with every step.
Here's an apron. Take two. I can HEM, you see. I hemmed around the world and back. Sometimes, looking at those lonely, drifting 18 months, I feel
like I hemmed my way home.
