Shannon Ball

Le sigh.  Of nine children, I seem to be the only one who was born without the craftiness gene.  My sisters sew their baby’s cloth diapers and whip up cakes in the shape of a teapot, just like that.  I can’t even seem to tie a nice looking bow out of ribbon!

So why, why would I commit to making Cali’s Halloween costume?!

Batgirl.  This shouldn’t be too difficult, right?  Black leggings, black shirt–got ‘em.  Black skirt with jagged edges–easy enough.   Black bat mask–I can buy that!  I can handle making a yellow belt and the yellow bat symbol–none of this is complicated!

But it means venturing into a dreaded fabric store.  This is where the anxiety begins to bubble.

As a child I spent hours–HOURS–wandering around fabric stores waiting for my mother.  Walking down the aisles running my hands along the fabric, feeling the texture of the satins and the taffetas.  I could talk to you at length about pinking shears and sergers.  My childhood self swore I’d never walk into a fabric store once I was a grown up.

And now here I am.

I could, of course, just buy the blasted costume.  I could be in and out of a store in ten minutes, spend too much money and not give Batgirl a further thought.  But I want to make Cali’s costume myself.  I want to overcome my craft insecurities.  I understand now that my mother spent all that time in those awful stores because she was preparing to lovingly sew our costumes and our party dresses and yes, even our Barbie clothes.

I always felt like I had the best of everything–nothing generic, nothing mass produced.  My mermaid costume was unlike anybody else’s.  I want that for my little girl, too.  I want her to feel as special and unique as I did.

So I will brave the fabric store.  I will make the costume.  I will trace the bat symbol, cut out the design and sew it on.  And depending how it all turns out, I might even post a picture…

Tags: Shannon Ball

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 1:17 pm and is filed under Lifecast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.