Sally Breslin: My Life: IF I CAN'T GLUE IT, I CAN'T DO IT!

I hail from a long line of talented seamstresses. My mother magically transformed piles of sequins, satin and lace into my ballet costumes when I was young, and when I got my first office job, she made me an entire wardrobe of skirts, blouses and blazers. My aunt sewed everything from winter coats to formal dresses for her family, and my grandmother had the fastest crochet hook in New England. No kidding, if I said to her, "Grandma, I'd really like red scarf," she would have the scarf already crocheted before I even finished uttering the word "scarf."

That is why it embarrasses me to admit I can’t sew a stitch. In fact, over the years, my motto has been, “If I can’t glue it, I can’t do it.”

It’s not that I haven’t given sewing and needlework in every form my best shot. In fact, I was in grammar school when my grandmother first tried to teach me how to crochet.

“We’ll start with a simple chain stitch,” she said, carefully guiding me through each step. I ended up creating a long "rope" that resembled something that could have earned a Boy-Scouts' badge in knot-tying.

Undaunted, my grandmother went on to try to teach me how to knit a scarf instead. I dropped so many stitches, the end result looked as if it had been blasted with buckshot...or attacked by a gang of hungry moths.

Things only got worse when I entered junior high, where sewing was a mandatory subject. The first half of the school year, the female students were required to attend sewing class and make an apron, a tote bag, an embroidered dish-towel and a potholder to use in cooking class, which was held the second half of the school year.

I knew I was in trouble the first day I set foot in the class. The sewing machines looked as if they were at least a hundred years old. The home-economics teacher sat down at one of the machines and said, “This is a treadle machine. You operate it by pumping your foot on this platform to make the needle go up and down.”

I soon learned that getting a smooth, non-jerky rhythm going on those sewing machines wasn’t as easy as the teacher made it look. There were times when the muscles in my calf would cramp up so badly from all of the foot pumping, I’d end up with a row of stitches that resembled Morse code.

I came to dread the three little words the teacher repeatedly uttered whenever she checked my pathetically crooked seams…“Rip it out!” In fact, I used my stitch ripper so often, the tip finally broke off.

All of that “ripping out” also had a negative effect on the attractive lavender linen I’d so carefully selected for my tote bag. Two weeks into the class, it began to look like cheesecloth. I was afraid that if it had to undergo one more command of "rip it out!" it would disintegrate into a pile of fibers.

My friend Janet did little to ease my feelings of inadequacy. Not only did she breeze though all of the required sewing projects with barely a rip-out, she had enough time left to also turn out several extra-credit projects: a broomstick skirt, a blouse, a vest and even a semi-formal dress for the school dance.

Meanwhile, I still was struggling to make my tote bag.

“ I’ll never finish this!” I complained to the teacher when she told me to rip out yet another seam that looked as if someone who'd just played 12 straight games of beer pong had sewn. “Can’t I put this aside for now and try something else? Please?”

The teacher rolled her eyes. “The next project is your apron. It has a bib, a gathered waist, rickrack trim, and straps that will button into buttonholes you will have to make yourself, by hand. Do you honestly think you are ready to handle something like that when you are having so much trouble making a simple drawstring bag?”

Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Well, if you didn’t have these rickety old sewing machines that came over here with Christopher Columbus, I just might be able to!”

I flunked sewing class.

My mother ended up making my apron for me, but solely to spare me the further humiliation of being the only apron-less girl in cooking class.

I have managed to keep my embarrassing failure a secret all of these years, though there have been a few clues that might have led people to suspect the truth. My neighbor, for example, once noticed that it took me over an hour to sew a button on my blouse. That’s because I somehow kept managing to sew both sides of the blouse together on the downstroke through the button. Once, I also tried to taper a pair of my slacks without even turning them inside out. I just stitched all the way down the outside of the pant legs. By the time I was

JODHPURS

through, they looked like riding jodhpurs.

So now when it comes to complicated clothing alterations – which, for me, is anything more difficult than sewing a button on something – I do the wise thing…I take the clothes to a professional tailor.

And just in case a clothing emergency pops up, like a fallen hem, I keep a fresh tube of fabric glue handy.

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