An interim photo of the sewing room, clean-up in progress. I've cleared away a lot of the clutter and fabric, sorted the scraps and put away the sewing tools. I need to reorganise the storage though, as I can't get to the cupboard where the strips of fabric are stored, and I need to change that. But there will be sewing taking place very soon, which will be a major achievement, even though it will only be turning the 7 metres of fabric on the floor there into a couch cover for the lounge room. It's on my list of things to do, and it will get that big wad of material out of the room and off my concsience.

Mereth was talking about her 'Never Again' sewing moment in this post; my personal moment was 15 years ago when I was asked to make 17 pairs of 'Happy Pants' for a bowling team, 9 men and 8 women. They were simple elastisized pants, with side pockets, but the material chosen was a wool/polyester plaid in a very large assymetrical check, which meant it was a pig to cut out and match the lines. Then they bought a single copy of a woman's pants pattern, which meant I had to cut out all the larger sizes first, then cut the pattern down for each smaller size, destroying the pattern in the process so I had to get it right first time. And I had to recut all the pieces for the men because they didn't want the waist as high as the ladies pants. I had to measure all 17 people in the lunch room at the bowling club, and taking the inside leg measurement of 9 strange men in public is not my idea of fun. The whole thing was a disaster, and I vowed that I would never again sew clothing for other people.

I thought that the whole incident was lost to everyone's memory, thankfully, until two years ago when my daughter was having driving lessons. She parked outside the house, and her driving instructor got out of the car and said 'You made happy pants for us' and I could have died. Let's draw a veil over that whole sorry episode. Last weekend while cleaning up the yard I noticed something half-buried in the ground under the trees; I couldn't believe that it was a scrap of the revolting plaid from those pants. It's haunting me.