Coatastrophe

Greetings to the Kamikaze Crafter fan club.

Grab your coffee and peanut butter toast. It's time for the latest instalment of my harrowing experiences in the lands of the North. If you're new to the club, you absolutely need the backstory. And best to start with the 1st instalment.

I have no sensational news about the past week or two in our current timeline, so I'll zip straight back to where we left off last time. You know, in the beloved Berlin Basement, eleven or so years ago.

The sweatshop team, aka my siblings and I (four sewing machine sisters and one overlocker brother, for those who're not bothering with the backstory), were getting into our basement groove. Queen Kami speedily shrugged off her needle-impaled-finger trauma (you can read about that here) and put us through our paces at odd intervals.

The intervals were odd because of the two paid-in-Euros gigs she'd acquired.

One gig happened next door in Hubby's study, which was way better suited for this purpose because of its spotless, empty table and wall-mounted whiteboard. The gig entailed pushing and prodding the neighbour's son over his Maths and Physics hurdles to reach his previously undiscovered higher potential. That business grew when a few of the boy's desperate peers started coming for similar assistance. I was a bit bummed that it all happened in the room next door. It was hard to imagine the queen with a patient face.

The other gig, teaching business English, happened at a language school near Checkpoint Charlie. Queen Kami told us some rambling story about Berlin's history and East and West and communists and walls and so on. And long-ago soldiers at the checkpoint who controlled who and what went East or West. Whoa! (Surge of PTSD). They sounded way too much like the men in black at Frankfurt Airport who mistook me for a bomb. My head did not want to go there.

The queen took a month or two to find her euro-paying-gig groove, but one sunny day — we could see the sunshine through the tiny way-up-high studio windows, that’s where the basement level reached the lawn — she regarded herself in the studio mirror in her spring attire. She must have seen more than my siblings and I did, because, out of the blue, she turned to us. “Underlings, I’m a working woman now. I can’t wear my puffy coats again next winter. I’ll need a chic woollen one. I think I’ll just make it. What do you think? Argh, what am I saying? You can’t think.” And off she trotted, probably straight to Pinterest.

“Guys,” called Nerina, “she doesn't have the foggiest idea about tailoring. This is gonna be a disaster.”

A few days later, as luck (or Murphy) would have it, Queen Kami skipped into the studio, waving a pamphlet. She'd apparently retrieved it from under a waiting U-Bahn passenger's foot.

“Ta-daa! Look where I'm going tomorrow!”

Turns out she'd been at the right place at the right time. If she'd scooped up the pamphlet two days later, her lifeline (think of 'the adjustment bureau') would have taken a left turn, and who knows where we all would have ended up. According to the pamphlet, this incredible, sent-from-heaven market was an itinerant one, moving around Germany a la circus, or a la desert caravan. There would be but one day to grab this local opportunity — precisely the next day!

Needless to say, she scrounged around for a few online photos to show us.

Eek! Look at all those people!

The next afternoon, after an extended morning of Holländische Stoffmarkt shopping, Queen Kami huffed into the studio hauling two stuffed Ikea bags. No more single-use plastic ones for our queen. She was saving the planet. Hence, the basement-produced clothing. The royal family (well, the female contingent) had sworn off fast fashion. By that time, the offspring were avid patrons of the pre-loved treasure troves scattered across the seedier parts of the city.

While perusing the roaming Dutch fabric market, Her Royal Kamikazeness had come across a plethora of coat-friendly fabric. She also told us her little secret: The best stuff is sold as furniture upholstery. So, she'd plucked out her phone right there at the market and summarily roused all three offspring from their Saturday sleep-ins. An urgent group video conference was held. She told them of their as-yet-unknown need for mid-to-long-length coats, and that she was the fairy godmother who would let them choose their own fabric. But time was of the essence, so they needed to study their options as she trotted past a few stalls, aiming the camera at various selections. Queen Kami assured us there'd been many similar video conferences and virtual tours happening at the market. Well, well, well! It seemed like all the Berlin Kamikaze crafters had crawled out of their holes.

Back in the basement, we were about to see the stash. This time, the queen extracted the cloth pieces one by one. First up: Three metres of camel-coloured tweed. Firstborn had wanted a Sherlock Holmes-meets-Columbo lined and collared coat. Next up was two meters of light beige scuba fabric. Yip, that's what they call it. Secondborn needed that rubbery type stuff for the awful London weather. That's where she would be off to soon. Lastborn had said no thank you to a basement-produced coat. But the queen winked at us as she pulled out some autumn-leaf-orange couch-covering fabric.

“I'll use this to make one for myself, but I bet you Lastborn will commandeer it from my cupboard by the time she reaches the sensible age of sixteen.” As you are all very perceptive readers, I'll let you guess whether that actually happened.

The next piece was breathtaking (as in, if we’d been an oxygen-dependent species, we would’ve been gasping for air). “And this piece is for me. I don’t think any of the girls will be seen dead in it.” She held up what Lastborn later described as a shocking rip-off of Joseph’s original fabric. You know, the Technicolour Dreamcoat stuff.

The buttons, thread, interfacing, spare needles (hallelujah!) and lining (for the Sherlock coat) went onto the table next to the chosen fabric. The rest of the stash — lace, ribbons, cool cushion fabric and a myriad of other high-potential masterpiece material — went into the undecided crate.

The chosen fabric got washed and hung up to dry in the scary, but very warm, intergalactic control room (also housing the laundry appliances). This time, the washing was only for pre-shrinking purposes. Those clean-shaven Dutch fabric merchants were not the weed-smoking type who'd pollute their precious fabric. (At least, that was my assumption, from the photos I saw).

Scuba Coat Project

The queen brought in the thirty A4 pages of free pattern, printed off the internet. The pages needed to be sellotaped together (in the correct order) and then cut into coat components (go figure!) While this happened, there was a deathly silence in the studio. To this day, the queen cannot do high-concentration work with any ambient noise. Firstborn and Lastborn, on the other hand, could configure and design a rocket-launchpad while bobbing away to heavy metal, or head-banging house music or some other loud cacophony. Remember, I only feel the vibrations. The genre is immaterial.

In the end, there were ten stuck-together-cut-out pattern pieces. They got rearranged this way and that on the scuba cloth, but no matter how the queen approached the puzzle-fitting problem, the pieces did not fit. The only solution: the calf-length coat had to become a just-below-the-butt model.

Secondborn got called in for a consultation.

“It’s fine, Mom. I didn’t want a long one anyway.” Secondborn is such a darling. The peacemaker in the royal family. She mostly says nice things to the queen (except for the first sixty to ninety minutes post-morning-wake-up.)

After the scuba-coat components were placed on a neat pile, the queen decided on a cut-everything-first strategy. The autumn leaf coat was up next. It would be the simplest - only seven pattern pieces and no collar. The Technicolour Dreamcoat would use exactly the same no-collar pattern. Uh, oh! What was she doing now? She placed the dreamcoat fabric on top of the autum-leaf piece and tried her best to cut through both simultaneously. Alas, her scissors went on strike. I mean, I would too. It was like thinking you can cut through an arm-thick tree branch with kitchen scissors. So, single layer by single layer is how things went.

Sherlock’s coat was the tricky one. It needed lining and stiff stuff for the collar and for somewhere down the front (where the buttons would go). And all those had their own pattern pieces. A mathematical problem of note. Pattern pieces were shuffled, re-shuffled and re-re-shuffled. Then I saw Queen Kami’s eyes light up. That usually happens when she realises she has great mathematical skills, which can also be applied in real life. The pattern shapes slotted neatly into position, and it was evident that the full-length coat was indeed destined to be full-length. What a relief. Firstborn was not nearly as accommodating as her sister.

The Sherlock cutting commenced. And this is what it looked like (It is still the queen’s never-fail cutting method):

- Posture: Bent-over, like the old woman holding out Sleeping Beauty’s poisoned apple.

- Preparation: Scissors aim at target, royal brow furrows, and royal mouth gets ready.

- Mouth action: Open, shut, open, shut — in perfect synchronisation with scissors.

- Sound effects: Swish, grind (scissors), grunt, sigh. Repeat.

A shocking spectacle, I tell you.

Thankfully, no fingers got cut, and the bloodless fabric got folded and placed next to the other three piles. I was a bit disappointed. A few blood splatters would have made the Sherlock coat look so much more authentic.

The queen went upstairs to fortify and caffeinate herself. She came back into the studio still chewing the last bit of something. Evidently, the offspring had gotten hungry and rustled up some exotic supper. (The offspring were anti-ordinary in everything, and rapidly heading towards veganism.)

Bees were buzzing in Queen Kami’s bonnet. The coats would become a late-night effort.

Like a full-on surgeon, she lined up her instruments. Scissors, pins, spare needles (in order of size), plasters and antiseptic cream and thin pliers to extract any foreign objects from flesh. I had to hand it to her. She looked prepared.

“Okay, Underlings, are you ready? I’ve decided to leave the Sherlock coat for tomorrow. Only three for tonight. Let’s do this.”

She opened the countdown timer on her phone.

Nabirne (my overlocker brother) got quick-threaded with black — for the Dreamcoat. Brinane got black for the same project. Nerina (the sturdy one) was threaded in a beigy cream for the scuba project, and I was prepared with rusty orange thread to receive the autumn-leaf cloth. The queen had opted not to repeat her previous multi-machine-for-one-project strategy. Interesting!

The Dreamcoat flowed like a dream. No needle breaks, no thread breaks. Fifty minutes flat. Queen Kami decided to move on to the autumn leaf coat, which was the same pattern. Fully sold on the positive learning-curve theory, she was determined to improve her time. Unfortunately, there was a quick-threading hitch, so the nifty LED-light magnifier was needed to investigate Nabirne’s insides. Darn! It wasn’t laid out next to the other instruments and the queen needed a full five minutes to locate the nifty tool in the study next door, where Hubby had used it without permission. The threading was successful, but too slow. The autumn-leaf coat took a total of sixty-five minutes. A negative learning-curve. Shocking!

Scuba coat took a full three hours. And even then, it wasn’t done. By midnight, four needles had broken, there were machine-oil blotches on the very beautiful collar and a blood stain next to the breast pocket. Dee-sas-tah.

Her royal Kamikazeness somehow managed to get the blood washed out successfully while also throwing a royal fit. She declared she’d deal with the rest of the coat the next day.

The next day was Sunday. After the queen returned from the family church outing, she entered the studio adequately filled with the Spirit. In fact, she had a supernatural aura of calm around her. We (the sweatshop siblings) took that as a sure sign of the queen having received a double portion of craft-anointing. And we felt good to go. Now, why the queen then decided to switch on all of our lamps, i.e., four machine lamps, beats me. The resulting heat must have been what melted away all that anointing. And it didn’t drip off slowly. Oh no! It instantly evaporated into our thin basement air.

More needles broke. The queen ripped off the ruined scuba collar and constructed a new one (thank the Lord there was just enough leftover fabric). She needed to pull out some top-stitching, then found out those little puncture holes never, ever go away (stupid scuba fabric!). One buttonhole needed to be unpicked and replaced with a non-skew one. The coat was hurled onto the floor seven times. And we received some very Sunday-inappropriate verbal abuse. Hubby — bless his soul — came in twice to make sure the queen hadn’t maimed any of us.

At some point, the coat was deemed acceptable. But by this time, Secondborn was too traumatized to do any fitting. So, the surprisingly chic scuba coat waited around on a coat hanger for a week, after which Secondborn at last scraped together enough courage for a fitting.

The Sherlock Coat project was postponed for two weeks. By the time the queen sat down to start that one, her craft-anointing had returned, and she made sure to only have one machine lamp burning at any moment. YouTube tailoring tutorials were consulted, and the end product surprised us all. Firstborn actually wore that coat for years.

Strangely, the queen never ever made another coat!

We had a few weeks of respite down in the studio. That is, until Queen Kami dragged in a new sweatshop inhabitant. From a previously-unknown species. Without warning us.

I’ll tell you about that upsetting incident next time.

Toodles.

Nirbe.