My mom, B.J., as I mentioned before, taught me that if I could read, I could do anything. This was most literally demonstrated to me in my experience with sewing clothes. In About 1972, when I was in high school, I was working for my mom as a bicycle mechanic, salesman, and pretty much managing BJ’s Bike Shop in Brooklyn Park, MN, adjacent to BJ’s Viking Sewing Center, where she sold Viking Husqvarna and New Home sewing machines and Eureka vacuum cleaners.
One evening, she could not staff her shop, so I had to look after both stores. There was a door between them, so I could hear the door chimes on either side. A couple came in to look at a Viking sewing machine. They wanted to see how it did buttonholes. I told them that I had never used the machine and had never made a buttonhole in my life, but I would attempt it by following the step-by-step instructions in the manual that came with the machine. I sat down in front of the machine, turned it on, positioned the fabric, lowered the presser foot, opened the manual to the proper page, went through steps 1 through 5 and made a perfect buttonhole. I was astonished! They were not impressed. They were upset. They thought I was conning them and that there was no way it could be that easy. They felt I had to be an expert, when, in fact, I was a rank beginner.
After that I played around with little projects like making little book bags out old jeans legs and such. My first real sewing project was several years later. It was a pair of rusty maroon jeans. I tend to sew like my mom cooked. Sure, she always read the recipe; then improvised. On that first pair of jeans, I eliminated the outside, side seams. This meant I had to use the pattern to figure out curved darts from the waist band to my hips, where the side pockets insert. It meant I had to configure a whole different layout for cutting the fabric. I also stitched my initials in a sort of double line wave on the back pockets, instead of the boring zigzag the pattern called for. I mean if one is going to go to the trouble of making one’s own clothing, why would one want it to look like it came off of a store rack?
My second project was a pair of faux suede, dark green jeans. This time, I made them fitted to the knees, then straight down. I put a different style “CC” on the rear pockets. One day at Finland Mennonite Church, the man behind me asked me if I would make him a pair, only he wanted his initials on the pockets. His name was Chet Cassel. I said I had to maintain my artistic integrity and I could only sign them with my own initials.
In 1978, I sewed myself a long, flowing, navy kaftan out of shiny, swimsuit fabric. I was working full time and going to seminary full time. A mentally handicapped neighbor came to our door and I answered it wearing it. She said, “Oh, I didn’t know you were a priest.” I told her I was in seminary. Then it dawned on me, that she was referring to the kaftan. In 1982 I made myself a set of Indian style drawstring pants and shirt in green and light green stripes. My friend’s NY Italian father asked her “Who’s the giant cucumber?” when we visited Manhattan. I walked with Bethann and our friends through Central Park, China Town and Little Italy, dressed in them.
In 2014, our friend, Kork Moyer, read about shite shirts and shite shirt nights in pubs in England. He is a rock musician. He said he really wanted one. I felt the same way. So, that August, while visiting our friends, Marie and Pete Mattson, in Lewes, Delaware, we went to Mare’s Bears Quilt Shop to pick up some fabric for twirl dresses. I spotted some beautiful avocado fabric. I love avocados! I use them a lot in my cooking. Then I found a gorgeous bundle of Robert Kaufman fabric fat squares. I persuaded Bethann to let me use my vacation mad money to buy these to make myself a shite shirt. I added to these bits of eggplants, corn, tomatoes, and peppers fabrics for the pockets and cuffs for a total of 15 different fabrics. I used 9 different buttons from Bethann’s stash. I have gotten comments everywhere I have worn this. I have shown it off at a few different fabric and sewing machine shops and received oohs and ahs. They seem to be amazed that a man was able to do such a thing. This was my first project on the serger machine. I also did various fancy topstitches over all of the seams in metallic gold thread to add a little more pizazz. I finished it the evening of September 17, 2014.
We showed my shirt to Bethann’s boss, Kathy, and her husband, Steve. They hired us to make him a short sleeved one. I did the major part of picking out the fabric. I pieced the fabrics together, topstitched the seams. The featured photo above the headline is the fabric at that point. Next I laid out the pattern and cut it out. Bethann assembled and finished it. It was finished on September 17, 2019, exactly five years after I finished mine! I modeled it for photos before Bethann delivered it today. Kathy and Steve were delighted! Steve is a pharmacist. I hope he wears it to work.