Posts

Posted on

Calming the savage beast

Truth, they say, is stranger than fiction. When you work with the general public, people can be very strange indeed. As a professional seamstress, it means that I work with all kinds of people, not just brides but cosplayers and renaissance actors as well; notwithstanding everyday folk looking to have their skirt or pants hemmed. My degree is in psychology (not fabricology as would seem logical) and I have always enjoyed the study of human nature and how quirky we often seem. The following story will appeal to you closer in the realm of the ridiculous as opposed to what is accepted as normal behavior.

It’s been my experience that brides come from all walks of life. As for this bride in question, I’ll call her Stacey (all names in this blog have been changed to protect the innocent, the excessively crabby, or those with no sense of humor.) Stacey was exceptionally high strung. In fact, she was so anxious that when the day she came for her fitting, she ran late as she had forgotten to put the dress in the car and had to turn around to go get it. When Stacey finally walked through my front door, she was so flustered, she was talking a mile a minute and radiating so much angst to the extent that it was stressing me out. In order to restore decorum (and my sanity,) I took the dress out of Stacey’s hands and instructed her to sit, like you would an errant puppy. I almost laughed out loud when she obeyed me upon command! I then placed a very large glass of red wine and two recently homemade brownies in front of her. She smiled cheerfully and proceeded to partake in my offerings. After about an hour with some more wine, my gifts enabled her to slow down to a discernible elocution instead attempting to comprehend the babble of a crazed woman on Adderall. Only then was Stacey calm enough to proceed with the fitting.

Now, it wasn’t just this particular fitting that Stacey’s manic reflex kicked in. During every appointment, I had to infuse her with wine and chocolate to get her to calm down in order to be able to proceed. In the meantime, I endured frantic texts and emails in the middle of the night, lamenting about everything from the fit of the bodice, to the cut of the under petticoat, to where she exasperatingly culminated with; “I just want to throw the dress out and start over again.”

Putting on my best business practices hat, I decided to ignore all Stacey’s late-night communications. The following mornings, calm and reassuring responses soothed her trepidations. She always had a ready apology for her craziness from the night before. Don’t get me wrong, Stacey was a very lovely person and I enjoy working with many different types of personalities. It was my pleasure to help her through the process, regardless of how off-beat it may have been at times. By the time I applied the final touches, Stacey’s wedding dress was absolutely divine, she looked like a queen.

In my trade, it seems wine and chocolate are just as valuable tools as needle and thread.

May all your seams be straight!

~Heather

Posted on

Bad Santa (or, “Santa-Zilla, slip a sable under the tree…”)

Hello! Welcome to my new blog feature, “Tales from the Singing Seamstress” – a semi-regular peek into the wacky world of seamstressing. I thought I’d start off with a little holiday story.

We’ve all heard of the concept of the “Bridezilla” – heck, there was even a TV show about this special class of “lady” that goes all Jekyll/Hyde as the impending wedding day nears. Watching that television show was like watching a train wreck; however, there was a screen separating me from the horrors unfolding before me, and if it got too bad, I had a remote in my hand and 499 other channels to choose from.

Which left me a tad unprepared for my own version of every business owner’s nightmare of the enfant terrible client – my very own Santa-Zilla.

The tale goes a bit like this:

One fateful day, I received an order from a Santa for an embroidered velvet vest and matching knickers. He wanted zip fly and a back pocket, both of which additions I seem to have gotten lost in the translation. Which meant I mailed vest and knickers to him sans zipper and pocket, which in turn meant I received a very angry and nearly incomprehensible tirade via Facebook Messenger in the evening of the day he received them. (It’s important to remember the evening part of this, trust me.)

It took a while to sift through his hammered-out words and near-foreign syntax. Once I understood what he was on about, I immediately offered to – of course – fix the pants. The next morning, I received another Facebook Message from him – a more lucid message this time – pleasantly confirming he would return the knickers for their completion.

The moment Mr. Postman dropped them back off with me, you betcha I straightaway went about making the alterations. Whistling while I worked (or was it with visions of sugar plums dancing in my head? I forget), I put a patch pocket on the back and added a zipper closure in the front. Straining my own arm from patting myself on the back for my ability to placate a client, I shipped the pants back to my once-and-future Santa.

Imagine my surprice when, after he received them, I got “torn a new one” with yet another incomprehensible evening tirade. Apparently, upon reflection, he wanted a non-patch pocket; additionally, the zipper was supposedly puckering.

Le sigh.

Thus continued the messaged back-and-forth, whereupon your Singing Seamstress sweetly offered to emergency-create another pair of pants catered to his new specifications and overnight them to him. The back-and-forth continued, until it finally dawned on me that I was conversing with someone who was drunk off his Santa ass. Apparently, my client started each and every evening off with a stiff drink or twelve, which explained the tenor of my evening messages from him and the contrary daytime moods.

Well, gentle readers, the Singing Seamstress did her best with what she had. Unfortunately for me, the velvets of his original vest and new knickers didn’t match – as they say, “Close, but no cigar.” (Side note: did you know that phrase comes from old carnival days where winning one of the games would win you a cigar, and not quite making it meant you went away empty-handed. Anyway, back to the story.)

To retaliate, my own personal Bad Santa tore the waistband and the pockets, claimed it was my handiwork, and demanded his money back. How do I know that he tore them? I made him send me back the pants. As you can surmise, my check to him was most definitely NOT in the mail.

Now, here’s the punchline: two weeks later, I get a lucid daytime message from him; quite soberly (literally and figuratively), he wanted me to make him some shirts.

So, I did what any self-respecting business owner would do: I squared my shoulders, girded my loins (I don’t even know what that means, but I did it), proudly proclaimed that the customer is always right, and created for him a dozen awesome shirts and didn’t even charge him.

Not really.

After getting over my shock, I politely, professionally and firmly fired his drunk ass as a client.

It’s not nice to mess with MRS. Claus, you see…

Until next time!

Heather