Well that did not happen. Life is busy, I hate sewing, and priorities got shifted around. We re-tiled the kitchen, had a deck built, finished the trailer, cleared a lot, had a laneway put in, etc. etc and our poor little couch (actually not so little) sat there throughout, getting holier and more and more grungy. I have been afraid to wash the cushion covers in fear that they would disintegrate in the washer, so they were getting a bit gamey. The stuffing was popping out of them and the middle cushion was held shut with safety pins, a victim of the last time I tried to wash it. I’d taken to covering it with various jaunty tablecloths to ‘freshen it up’ and hide the injuries. It was overdue for a re-haul.
Enter my mother, who started fabric shopping for me in my absence. She is a seamstress/dressmaker/fabric expert/designer by trade, and informed me that she would take on the project. I was saved.
We hit the mondo fabric shop in town last Saturday, where we found not one but two options for a slipcover. The first was ok, the colour was not perfect, but it was really sturdy and the price was right at 10 bucks a yard. The second was the absolute perfect colour, but twice as expensive and not as tough. We went with the former - $10 a yard enabled me to justify buying a really gorgeous contrasting fabric for cushion covers. At the cutting table we learned that though the chart said we’d need 13 yards to cover a sofa like ours, the roll only had 9.5 on it. We decided to take it anyway; it was extra-wide and Mom said she’d make it work.
And make it work she did. I got a call at work informing me that she’d finished cutting it all out, and had ONE INCH of fabric left. Hubby calculated that to be a 99.7% efficiency rate.
And now, not even one week later, I have a new couch. The colour (as it turns out) is more than perfect, and goes with everything else in my living room. Behold:
Is this not the most beautiful couch arm?
My mom is a wizard. She could teach a class at Hogworts.
In honour of this most recent and resounding success, I thought I might highlight some of her other major successes. She is good at everything she touches, my mother, which is tough to live up to but damn handy to have around. And I wasn’t going to make my own wedding dress:
How many hours of hand-beading did that take, mom? Like 100 or so? How much bad t.v. did you have to endure while working on that puppy?
Her skills have plenty of industrial applications too. My brother recently needed his free dirtbike pants to fit, but since they were free they were the wrong size – way too small. Mom added sporty swooping panels of tough fabric, cut out of an old hockey bag, and now you can’t even tell that they weren’t bought that way at the store. Also, she made an awning for their boat. Hemp curtains for my living room. Slipcovers for my easy chairs. My ski pants. My cousin’s wedding dress, my other cousin’s wedding dress, my cousin on the other side’s wedding dress, my aunt’s wedding dress, my girlfriend’s maid-of-honour dress (sight unseen – she sent in the measurements. It fit perfectly) and the wedding, prom and bridesmaid dresses of nearly everyone in our area. At my prom, four or five people had dresses made by my mom. She had her own line of clothes for awhile too, and once in a while a coworker would turn up wearing one of her pieces, or I’d see one walking down the street.
I would feel like the next-generation-failure, but I take heart in focusing on the few things that I can do better than her. There aren’t many – she cooks better, she knits better, she bakes better, she reads tons of books, my dog is nuts about her, she can build things, she makes great potatoes, she cuts hair, and even though she’s 25 years older she’s way hotter than I am – but I think I have her topped in three departments: the first is pottery. And only because I have been at it longer. If she’d taken four full rounds of pottery classes she’d probably have made an ornate bathtub by now. The second is computers. I am by necessity better with computers than she is but I suspect she’s catching up (hi mom!) The third is…. um…….maybe there isn’t a third. Finding tiny things? I’m good at that. Skiing maybe?
I guess the one disadvantage of being good at everything is that everyone always asks you to do stuff for them. Whether overtly or passive-aggressively, which is my preferred method. By simply NOT slip covering my couch, and forcing her to look at its grubby, slouchy, hole-covered, faded shell, I subtly maneuvered her into doing something about it. Sneaky eh?
Anyway, I have a supermom. Me and Alexis Stewart should get together and commiserate. Alexis, if you’re reading this, call me. I know how you feel.
Not that your own moms aren’t all great, but I know that you are all secretly a bit jealous. Hands off! She’s mine.
It’s difficult because so far, she doesn’t wear shoes (though I have my eye on 
