Finished Object: The Liberation of Tripoli Blouse

This blouse has a history.

I cut it out the night before a two-hour demonstration class last year.  I taught piping techniques and set-in sleeves.  Demonstration classes can be nerve-racking: thirty or forty-odd people watching you sew, a camera focused on your hands and beaming them to a screen behind you.  I believe I wore a mike that day, too.  It’s tough to keep up a running commentary while applying piping evenly to a peter pan collar, don’t let anyone tell you differently.

When I sat to “dem” these techniques, I broke out in a cold sweat and couldn’t find my tongue- this crowd wasn’t mommy-night-time-seamstresses but a large group of older quilters I respect deeply.  Then I spotted a woman I’d grown particularly fond of at the back of a room- a blond woman I bonded with while teaching her to fit her figure.  She smiled broadly at me.

A year later, the blouse languished in pieces on my work table.  I needed to demonstrate a convertible collar for another class, so I reached for this blouse and taught Sherry’s excellent method.  After that, it lacked only buttons and buttonholes, yet I procrastinated until last weekend.  I’ve been feeling “meh” about sewing and life in general lately, hence the lack of blog postings.

When I finished it, I felt a quiver of fear.

“Darling, is this kitsch or simply outside my comfort zone?” I asked my husband, who is frightfully honest when I make sartorial inquiries.

He paused, considered carefully and said “Definitely kitsch.”

I KNEW IT!  Without cutting the buttonholes, I hung it up.

Then this morning I turned on the news and just like that several month’s worth of blues lifted away.  I saw liberated Libyans pouring into the newly-renamed Martyr’s Square.  They did it!  They really, really did it!  Politics aside, I watched enraptured and laughed with them.  I had to dress for work; as my eyes fell on this bright “kitschy” thing in my closet, I knew it was meant to be the Liberation of Tripoli blouse.  It looks like I feel today.

Cheers to the end of a despot.  The world could do with less of them.

I had to dance a little:

I made this from a favorite 1950’s blouse pattern- Vogue 8872.   I hope every time I wear this silly blouse, I think of today and how I watched crowds of liberated people in a square on the other side of the world and drank a little wine, danced, sang Journey all day long and rejoiced with people I’ll never know, from the bottom of my heart.  I hope I can remember that when the blues circle again.  This is kitsch, but sometimes it’s good to be effervescently bright, hopeful.

Liberation Days are my favorite days.

(Thank you, Mrs. C)