Saturday, March 03, 2012

a scissor story

Funky Town Brown colorway ( with song to match)
One teeny tiny little detail I left out of my inability to sew story is my relationship with the scissor at large. I have always had troubles with scissors, ever since I could hold a pair. I cannot cut a straight line to save my life. This has always been an impediment. I am the epitome of scissor-challenged.

Here's my theoretical breakdown as to why:

25%: left-handedness
20%: small, crab-like hands with big knuckles
30%: complete inability to cut a straight line
25%: irrational, paralyzing fear


SO... I received some of my fabric from Northcott. The fabric arrived in large, one-piece swaths. I needed to break them down into single yards in order to send the fabric off to people who have the magical talents to transform them into stuff. (From now on, I will refer to these people as genius sewing fairies.)  I dreaded this task. All week, every night, I wondered how on earth I was going to section it out without butchering it beyond recognition. I had no idea how my poor fabric would fare under Kathy Scissorhands.

here's some "Sassy Pink" for ya (with a little sassy pink to go with)
Today, it was time to face the scissors.

I broke out my scissors.
chorus meow meow "Thank You, Dear Scissors"


Unexpected fork in the story road coming up >
I happen to be one VERY LUCKY "unlucky scissor person". I happen to have  am blessed with! cue birds singing!  one pair of scissors I love. They are the only pair of scissors I have ever found that did not punish me for thinking I had the gall to cut with them. They are the only pair of scissors that did not immediately go to "diagonal war" with me, the minute I opened the blade. In short, these scissors love me back. I bought them years ago. We have a great relationship. They opened my world to some genuine scissor harmony. (This post is dedicated to them.)


But of course there is a tiny wrinkle to this happy scissor story. There is a BIG, big difference between cutting a few inches of a ribbon and cutting a piece of 42" fabric clean and straight. So, while my scissors typically come through in the clutch, you don't even want to know what happened the last time I tried to cut such a large piece of fabric. (Oh wait, I did tell you part of the story... But I left out the part where I slowly and savagely scissored the fabric into an assymetrical mess. It was an innocent mistake.. )

 Well...
(REAL end of story)
between my dull, friendly scissors and my dining room table: Guess what? Success!! Lucky for me, my fabric, AND my happy old scissors, there was something else working in our favor. My dining room table features removable leaves! When I separated the table a bit at one of the seams, it created a channel that guided the bottom scissor blade to do a mostly-straight-cutting job! Happily, I did not make any major cutting errors. That's right, each piece of fabric did not end up a jagged, diagonal mess. There will be no asymmetrical hemlines in my future. Thank. God.




NOW...
I will send off my fabric to those Genius Sewing Fairies!

I am SO excited.... I cannot WAIT to see what they come up with!
To see more of Jive Cats collection, please visit my Jive Cats Fabric set in my Flickr photostream.



3 comments:

Stephanie Fizer Coleman said...

I too, am a horror with scissors and I blame in mostly on being left-handed :) But my mom started teaching me to quilt this year so she bought me a rotary cutter and mat and it's amazing. Even I can't screw up cutting my fabric now!

PS-lovely fabric collection!

Unknown said...

Thank you Stephanie! Another person also mentioned the rotary cutter. I actually bought one years ago, but it never worked for me as advertised, LOL. I should give it another shot, buy a new blade for it and try try again. :D

Unknown said...

PS - THANK YOU!! :D :D