Sewing for my Spawn
I resent my business with about equal frequency as I enjoy it. I hate that it takes time away from hanging out with my kid, I hate that it's led to me creating a weird crafty white bitch persona at markets that depletes my personality into a one-dimensional "mom" who uses her adorable "model" for "inspiration," I hate that it's become a defining thing about myself and I don't like at all what that image of me is. It's not me.
I am inspired by the ugly, I love the sweet spot where hideous has looped around to become captivating, where old things mix with new and they hug instead of clash. The careful mess.
Most people have no interest in putting the things I really love on their new squishes, unfurled from the womb, scent unfaded. Most people love creamy, huggable animals with googly eyes floating away in baskets, arms outstretched. Most of the time, I cater to these people. A custom order doesn't bother me. It's that I go out of my way to buy these things I loathe to set out at markets because they sell and I feel like a huge liar.
I make tiny shoes because they're funny. I make all the tiny things because they're funny. Infants are hilarious. Yes, cute, but mostly they don't make any sense. They didn't exist, and then they did, and they don't have muscles and they're mostly ugly and they seem to vibrate when they get excited, no, they do vibrate, and I want to make tiny things to dress them in because I simply adore the disgusting creature that is a new human.
Sewing shit that I know will sell makes me a liar. It's okay for people to like those things, I even bought some of those things for my own tiny thing, but it's not okay for me to compromise myself. I've been saying I don't want to compromise myself, but I've done it in every single aspect of my existence.
Tonight, I stayed up incredibly late to make things for Iris, something I rarely do because I'm so busy lying around, agonizing over ineffective self-created scheduling, all the while depleting calories and failing to replenish them. Two years later, I made a pair of boots and a necklace for her that reused the wooden balls from a teething necklace one of my customers gifted me.
Currently, I feel okay about it all. I don't feel okay about my photo setup happening right now, my camera seems to be crumbling by the day, the ISO sensitivity becoming numb or something and it only takes grain-free shots in direct sunlight with stark shadows.
I mean.
uggh
Get in the corner, little boots. Outta my visual field.
blagh
There were some less infuriating shots I took. Let's all look.
The boots are stinkin cute. I made them with a fabric scrap I've been holding onto for three and a half years. Once, I made a bandana with it and sold it at the market. Instant regret. These fucking boots and huge bead necklace? Redemption.
A few months ago, I learned that I can use all the trash ads that won't stop spilling through my mail slot for some sort of stabilizer for sewing leather. I fish for the RedPlum ad, cut out another set of toe and heel with it, lie it on top of the leather, and it feeds through beautifully! Even. Fucking. Stitches.
A few months ago, I also learned I've been using the wrong size die for my snap setter for three years. Now, I use the right die and the snap sits IN it, not sort-of-precariously-wobbling-and-shooting-out-of-the-press-like-wet-soap. Your snap setter not feeling right? Probably because you're an idiot who should have read the instructions.
These little boots run about 2.5 hours to make, 3 hours including cutting out and ironing all thirty pieces of fabric/interfacing/batting involved. I've been feeling like kicking the price up to $40 is coming, right now they're at $36 but it's an unfair price to pay myself. Current range is $32-$36, and I think $40-$45 would be fair, considering I use interfacing as well as batting, everything is top-stitched, that's real leather happening on the sole, toe, and heel, and these boots feel good. They feel really, really good in your hand. I also am still sending all orders out with handmade bags that coordinate with their items, as I dislike wrapping up things in paper and plastic, which will head straight to the trash or recycling or your kids mouth or even better the floor for two months, lazily pushed around or stepped on repeatedly until someone asks someone else why we don't they just pick up the trash and suddenly they're questioning their relationship of themselves in the universe and in relation to one another and so forth.
Three hours of my life should be worth $40 is all I'm saying.
I think I'll hold off on charging my kid for them, though. She'll "inspire" me by "modeling" tomorrow in the park, where I've promised myself I'll go instead of doing the things I did today which were thoroughly unsatisfactory to her. The things involved Chipotle for lunch and dinner and bingewatching Hannibal. In bed.