It's the Right Thing to Do

So, I'm working away in the sewing nook on the Tribeca shirt last night and I got a cell phone call from DD, who was working concessions in the civic center playhouse. That's highly unusual...normally she just sends text messages. I wondered what kind of emergency had come up that she should need to call, and kind of apprehensively answered the phone.

Turns out one of her (guy) friends had to make a sudden trip home (out of state) for an occasion that dictated a suit; he'd purchased a suit from Burlington yesterday evening but the pants (of course) needed hemming. His plane was leaving at 6 something this morning. Could I help him out?

Sure. I'm sewing anyway. Tell him to come by.

So at 9:45ish last night I'm pin marking the hem on a pair of dark grey pinstripe pants, remembering the lessons from the salesman at S&K about how they mark pants for hemming (mark where the pants hit the floor with the fitee in stocking feet; trim the excess off at that point and hem them one inch) I whacked the extra off with the rotary cutter, serge finished the edges and stitched them up with the blind hem stitch (which really isn't, but, well, whatever) on the sewing machine.

It took almost as long to change the thread as it did to sew the pants; but since I put black thread in the serger and my next up-projects will need black thread, it's ok.

The event for which he was headed out of town was his grandfather's funeral. He expects to be a pall bearer. And he said the last suit he bought was in junior high school.

Even if I made a habit of charging for alterations, there's no way I would've expected payment from him for that. But I did joke with him that, out of the options of 'good, fast, and cheap' for work that I do, this was 'fast and cheap.' ;)