I realized I hadn’t been writing as I should. I took a break. A break in pretty much everything. First, I went back to school. I teach at Chemawa Indian School and we were due back for training on August 26. We had a plan to teach online and were formalizing those plans by returning to school. The next week, we had a Zoom meeting and it didn’t instill confidence in the idea of virtual learning. By the end of the week, we were working in our classrooms and planning our year of teaching on a screen.
Immediately following our ambitious beginning, our world in Oregon was put on hold by massive wildfires following a windstorm. Then, we got a thunderstorm with rain. Is the world ending? It seems like we might not make it to our wedding.
During that whole series of events, I was in the midst of some personal issues that forced me to put everything into a box for a while. I just couldn’t look at a partially completed wedding dress and have any real feeling that I’d ever assemble it during all that was going on in the world and in my world. That isn’t to say I stopped thinking about my dress. It just wasn’t a priority.
So, while I haven’t exactly gotten everything moving again, I have come up with a few ideas and plans for my dress. For one, I plan to make the outer shell next. I want to begin sewing it and complete it before I finish the slip (or inner shell). I tried to use the sewing machine on the outer material and it actually sewed it with no problems. So that was a positive moving forward.
I have also lost a few pounds, which made me feel better about the whole process. I want my dress to fit properly and also look good, so I felt like I needed to slim down. I ended up going to the doctor for an annual exam and they informed me that I had dropped about 8 pounds since my last visit, which was a year ago. Then, when we went back to school, I found out that our schedule was actually a good one for getting into an eating routine that would help me (specifically) lose weight. And that has been what has worked for me. I’ve lost 9 pounds since I went back to school. That is fine with me!
This is a short post. I dug my first wedding dress out of the closet and will post a picture of it soon. It is very much a product of the 1980’s. I showed it to my daughter and said she could have it because these things always come around again and you never know if it might be in style should she ever want to wear it!
On that note, I am back amongst the world of dressmaking again. And, I am back planning some happy memories!
Said Yes to Making the Dress 