Sewing Demons & Humility

So... I thought I would be a wise-chick and start teaching the girls at the Neddi (girls' training center that I've sworn I would never enter) how to really sew. (Read previous entries on new projects for further explanation.) I've started with a project making a small, white-satin purse out of the materials they use for their wedding/party outfits, called Takshitas. I got the materials donated from local seamstress' shops, bought lining, thread and made a simple pattern. I showed them how to make the pattern with a piece of paper folded in half, measuring everything precisely to make it exact. I was a bit too nervous to just start off with a class, since I haven't touched a sewing machine in a decade. Much less made a purse before.

So here I was trying to be the expert... and then realized why I'd left off sewing years ago. There is little in life that can anger me more than the mishaps of a sewing project. We don't get along. We really don't. The second I come near a machine to commence some ambitious project the demons begin to hover. Needles break. Seams require removing and resewing about four times. My cheeks start to turn red. My plastic smiles melts.

So this week.. I had about 1 hour a day between 3pm (when it opens) and 4pm, when I teach a computer class at the Dar Chebab (youth center). 1) I wait for Lkibira, my host mother to wander in 20 minutes late and open the office where my bag of cloth, pens, machine feet, etc. are stored. 2) Then I realized that everyone had their own needles. I had to borrow a needle. 3) Then I needed scissors to cut the cloth/threads. Everyone brings their own. And everyone's pairs that I borrowed had apparently never been sharpened, nor were intended for cloth. I would have to hold the cloth very tight just to get the material shaped to something resembling my precise pattern. 4) No one used pens to hold the cloth in position when sewing. I searched around forever, not knowing the word for it (in fact, for each new item or action, a whole new vocab list developed and I am constantly dashing to my notebook and jotting a word in it). There was a box of them in the office drawer. I pinned the cloth together. Girls would wander by, "What are you doing that for? We've never done that. Are you done yet?" "Oh, no.." I would choke (not hardly done, not hardly started). 5) Everyone brings their own thread. The girls kindly let me use a machine, but by the time I re-threaded it and then broke the thread, spun a Qanit for the bottom thread (forgot what it's called in English), I was already ten minutes late for the Dar Chebab. I sewed one seam and gathered and returned all the items. And left. That's been the story the whole week.

The process of making my "invisible" zipper was more than I bargained for. First, at night, I'd checked online to make sure I remembered how to do it correctly, so I could keep up the fa sod that I knew what I was doing. Then, there was no such thing as a machine foot that was only one-sided (made specifically for sewing zippers). Finally Amina produced one. However, it was not manufactured well and would not align correctly with the needle. Hence, the needles kept breaking, and I had no pretty, straight seam tight against the zipper, as hoped for. Then, I discovered another frustration: the sewing-machine pedal. It would either not go, or once pressed sufficiently hard with my foot, would zoom ahead. I could find no in-between. Then, after finally making one 8" seam, I realized that 1) one layer of material had creeped into my seam, and the whole thing would need to be removed (one girl, noticing my smile quite removed, asked "is your blood boiling?" ... ummm.. yeah, more than you know), 2) due to stopping and starting, combined with an intended very-tight seam, removing it was next to impossible. No one in the Neddi used a seam-ripper. So I had to use dull fat scissors or bend needles. Today I didn't have to teach in the Dar Chebab, and looked forward to making some progress. Lkibira didn't show up for an hour. So I sat and watched the other girls embroider or experiment with the sewing machine. She arrived. I was still in the process of removing the seam. My beautiful white satin ripped and ruined.

Girls kept coming by and asking what I was doing and where was that purse I had made and when I was going to teach them how to make one. I would laugh, "I'm still working on it, and far from done." Another girl wandered in, "Oh, you're learning how to sew too?" She queried.

"Yes..," I laughed. "I'm learning how to sew."

Development work - at least my piddling experience so far - seems only a constant reminder how incompetent I am. In a 1,000 ways.