Please don't use the good scissors.

I think it probably happens to all of us at some point.

We wake up one day and realize we have become our mothers.
In my case, this is a good thing as my mother is cute and talented and I am flattered when someone sais “you’re just like your mother”. I suppose I AM an awful lot like her, just in different categories and variations.

Small example.

I scrapbook. I can spend an hour in a craft store looking at all of the different papers and embellishments available to create scrapbook pages. By picking matching hues of paper, string, stickers fabric and other paraphernalia I can capture a Kodak moment and add to it’s visual appeal by framing, cropping, and dressing the photograph up with different objects.

Likewise, my mother quilts, and I’m not just talking about your basic patchwork quilts of grandmothers gone by. She can take ordinary fabric, and turn it into a work of art resembling a Michael Angelo masterpiece. While some people can paint a landscape….my mother can recreate it in fabric.

When I am tooling around in the scrapbook stores, I am reminded of being a kid, and going to the fabric store with my mother. She would do her thing purchasing the bits and pieces of material needed for her current project….and I would get lost in the beautiful bolts of colored fabrics and textures. I loved the material, and desperately wished I could make something out of it too.

I admire women who can sew, partly because they remind me of my mother, but more so because I can’t.
Sewing takes patience and patience was never one of my strongest attributes.

I tried to sew once. I bought some green fabric and set out to make a long skirt to wear with my new coordinating green sweater. Equipped with my mothers professional Singer sewing machine, (that if it were a car, would most defiantly be a Ferrari), was prepared to give it a whirl.

I sewed and sewed, all the while marveling at the speed I could gain with the accelerator style foot pedal of her fancy sewing machine. Why, at this speed, I should have this skirt made in no time.

Maybe this whole sewing thing wasn’t so bad after all?
Maybe I could sew?
Maybe I could design my own line of clothing and fashion them in what ever color I was in the mood for that day?
This was great!

Yeah. Well…and maybe pigs CAN fly?

I sewed my little heart out until the very last stitch had been completed.

Then, I tried to stand up to go find my mother. I wanted to show her what I had created on my very own, only to be snatched back down to the chair…much like when you forget to unbuckle the seatbelt before trying to get out of the car.

Seemed I had sewn myself to the sewing machine.
The shirt I was wearing was stitched to the skirt I had just made, and had me pinned to the machine.

I called for my mother and she came into the room.
Me: “look Moma, I made this beautiful skirt…isn’t it great”?
Her: “ Wow, it looks good, let me take a look”
Me: “well there is this one small problem though. I have to wear the skirt here while I sit in this chair, because I have apparently sewn myself to the machine!”

We laughed until tears fell, and she had cut me loose.

It should come as no surprise that I’ve changed focus since that day and work with paper and glue as opposed to needle and thread. I still admire women who can sew, but will stick to scrapbooking for everyone’s sake.

I am morphing into my Mom though.
Today I told my son “not to use my good scissors” to cut his homework assignment.
“They’ll get all dull and won’t work for me when I need them”.

What! Shut up!
They will!