Please Pass the Humble Pie

Today's lesson is from Rom. 2:1c, NIV "...you who pass judgment do the same things."

Bloomer party yesterday; we (a crew of 6) made 12 pairs of bloomers, plus a couple extra 'false bloomers' (I'll 'splain that later). Now, we had just kind of estimated the amount of fabric we'd need, not knowing when we went shopping exactly how many pairs we needed or how big they were to be. And we came up short of fabric on the last pair. So, we pulled some eyelet-looking fabric out of the remnants from last year and cut the last pair. Since the fabric was so fancy, we decided to make these Schoolgirl Belle's bloomers and put multiple rows of lace on them, so we left sewing them for last, so we'd know how much lace we could use. After much squinting at the embroidery and discussion between those who needed reading glasses but didn't have them handy (um, that being me), younger eyes prevailed and we marked the 'outside' sides as the wrong side. One of the other ladies started putting the lace on them...one row on each leg, then two rows on each leg, and so on. The plan was to put all the lace we could on them; after all, according to our script Belle's family was somewhat wealthy (I know that's not the case in the original story, but this is a based-on deal). Anyway, the lady who started it had to leave before she was finished, so I took over. Put the rest of the lace (a total of five rows) on, sewed up the inseams and proceeded to *try* to sew the crotch seam. Whoops. One leg had been trimmed wrong-side-up. I grumbled, I sighed, I found someone who preferred ripping to sewing and got her to unstitch it all while I started another project. When she was finished taking it apart, I carefully compared the untrimmed flat leg to the correct trimmed and finished leg, marked the wrong side and put on the first row of lace, then handed it off to another volunteer, who put the rest of the lace on it. I sewed up the inseam, put them together to sew the crotch and discovered that (you guessed it)we had two left legs. It was sewn with the wrong side out AGAIN...and this time it was MY fault. How could I have done that? I have no idea. Arg!!!

Before we took it apart again, we all looked at it and pinned an "X" on the wrong side of the fabric. Once more, from the top, with feeling... Before I sewed the first row of lace back on, we checked it again. Held my breath while I sewed, but the third time was the charm. Whew!

I repent me of the grumbles and the sighs.

After that, we checked the bloomers off against the costumes and discovered that we were two pairs short...two of the girls were listed on another list, but not the one we were working from. And we were out of fabric. So our solution was to make two pairs of false pantalets...tubes w/elastic at the top and one row of lace (we had enough remnants of other pieces) at the bottom. Under the long skirts, no one will be able to tell they don't go any higher than the knees. Ah, costuming is such great 'outside the box thinking' exercise.

But we did get bloomers for everyone! That's a biggie down!