The Couture Counsellor

Have you ever Googled “paralyzing perfectionism”? I did it this morning (not for the first time) and got 18,600 hits. You have no idea how comforting it is to know that I’m far from the only one suffering from that affliction. On second thought, you might know exactly how comforting that is, in which case you and I have something in common other than a passion for sewing. This syndrome is why The Couture Counsellor has been incubating for months. It’s why all-nighters are still part of my work life. And it’s one of the reasons why closets brimming with fabulous clothes exist only in my head. The good news is that I’ve been chipping away at those fears. The closet I do have in my compact city apartment is filling up with clothes I made and love and I’ve started this blog without waiting to get the perfect logo designed, find the perfect blog theme/platform, become a better photographer, learn more about Photoshop, learn HTML, lose 50 pounds, blah, blah, blah.
I approach learning about sewing the same way I approach any research project, which is to say I like to be thorough. Okay, I’m a research junkie. It sometimes serves as my primary avoidance activity.
In classes, when everyone is writing down the technique being demonstrated, my brain is comparing and contrasting what this instructor is saying with what other instructors say about the same subject while my hand is scribbling down the information being given. For a long time, the contradictions threatened to drive me the rest of the way to crazy. Then I realized it just means there is more than one way to do just about anything and our job as sewists is to find the one that works for us, or maybe have a couple of different options available for different situations. Take sewing corners for example. Sew to the end? Pivot 90° at the corner? Pivot 45° and stitch across one stitch? Or is it two stitches? Or three, even? The answer is: It depends. That answer will cause normal people to grind their teeth, but it’s an answer we lawyers use all the time, so I can live with that.
Remember when I said fear of starting is only one of the reasons I have so many more garments in my head than I have in my closet? The other reasons are other demands on my time—working for a living, volunteer work for sewing organizations—and the ridiculous amount of time I spent trying to develop a good set of basic fit patterns. I’ll tell you about that experience and the solution I found at the end of that long, twisty road in an upcoming post. If you are on that road now, I can show you a shortcut. Stay tuned.
The title of this post mentions another fear—fear of finishing. That’s a fear that has become much less of a problem now that my hand sewing skills have improved and I’ve learned how to tackle what I call The Fussy Bits. By that I mean hemming, hand tacking, getting hooks and eyes and snaps in the right place and  sewing all kinds of closures so they look neat and tidy instead of knotted and gnarled. We’ll get to advice about those Fussy Bits in a later post. What I can tell you now is that there is no substitute for getting your hands on fabric, needle and thread and sewing some samples and sometimes some less than stellar test garments. You can read about sewing techniques and watch other people demonstrate them and it will give you a better idea of what to do, but it won’t get you all the way there. It’s like the old joke my father loved to tell about the young person who stopped an old man on the street in New York and asked, “Sir, can you tell me the way to Carnegie Hall?” The man smiled and said, “Practice, practice….”