Mad Skills

When I was in high school, Home Ec. was a graduation requirement for all students.  Most kids took the general Home Ec. class, usually as a freshman or sophomore to get it out of the way.

I, being a sophisticated young woman with career aspirations beyond being a housewife (oh, Fate!  You are so very, very funny!), I put off taking Home Ec.  I think my actual goal was to find a way to get out of having to take it at all. 

That goal didn't quite work out for me, thankfully, and as it turns out, taking Home Ec. proved to be incredibly beneficial to me.

I didn't take the basic home ec. course.  It's a very long story that revolves around my having been an Army Brat and moving into a new community as a high school freshman, but having earned some high school credits in junior high school, and discovering that those credits would not transfer to my new high school, and then, attempting to retake those high school level classes - for the credits I had already earned - but discovering that my school would not allow me to retake a class that I was very much too advanced for.  Like I said, long story.

The short of it is, basically, I had a open slot in my schedule.  I needed Home Ec., but the only option for me at that time of day was to take an advanced Home Ec. sewing class. 

And that's what I did. 

I didn't, particularly, want to learn to sew, but it ended up being one of the most valuable classes that I had in my entire four year high school career.

When I started college, my great-aunt gifted me her sewing machine.  I put it to good use sewing my own maternity clothes. 

Later, I used the machine to sew Christmas gifts and make clothes for my kids. 

After a few moves and some life-altering events, the machine got lost in time, but then, Deus Ex Machina's grandmother gave me her old machine.  It felt like being reacquainted with an old friend.

I've made a lot of things on that machine, including costumes for the Theater, where I am now employed. 

My most recent project is making face masks for friends and family as a layer of protection against this COVID-19 outbreak when we are out in public.

Prepping is not just about food and "survival" supplies.  At its core, prepping is a little like fortune telling - and the ability to look at something for its potential.  The result, for me, is that I have not had to purchase any materials for our masks, because, as a prepper, I have kept old clothes and bed sheets over the years, because those things are fabric, and fabric has dozens of uses:  rags (instead of paper towels); rag rugs; feminine hygiene products; quilts; other clothes.  In the future, those old tee-shirts  are very likely to become "family cloth" (to take the place of toilet paper).

As I mentioned in a previous post, 1/4" elastic is hard to find.  One of the things that I've kept over the years is elastic - from worn out pairs of panties. 

I kept the elastic, because it's elastic, and because over the years I've used a lot of elastic in the clothes I've made for my children (in particular, pajama pants).   It seemed wasteful to be throwing away this perfectly good elastic, and then, purchasing more of it so that I could make things for my kids.

I have also kept old flannel bed sheets.  The fabric is great for all sorts of projects, and as it turns out, flannel is one of the preferred fabrics for making the face masks. 

After I started making masks, I realized an additional benefit of having saved all of those flannel sheets - elastic!  The fitted sheets have 1/4" elastic!

I've used at least a yard (one yard = three feet) of elastic in the past week on the masks I've made, and not only am I incredibly thankful to the Fates who pushed me into that sewing class, but also that I somehow had the foresight to hang on to all of those old clothes, flannel sheets, fabric remnants, and sewing notions.  It's come in handy - even if it looks a lot like clutter.