When last I posted, I envisioned posting every month or so, keeping you all updated on my latest dress or two. What I didn’t know in August of 2008 was that I was at a pivotal time in my life.
My own daughter, who had recalled at World’s in April, and placed 11th at the North American Championships in July, was injured during preparation for Nationals, and was in increasing pain. She was also preparing to leave home, and would soon be very busy with her new life as a college freshman. She had hoped to compete at Worlds again in 2009, but between a long recovery from her injury and the time constraints of her coursework, within a few months she knew that she would not be able to regain her conditioning to dance as well as she needed to be competitive at Worlds, so made the decision to retire.
My niece, “my” other dancer—she’s always been a small part mine as much as her mom’s—was also making the transition to college and retirement.
After 10 years of sweat, lifelong friendships, sweat, fun, pain, stress, failure and frustration, more sweat, joy and exultation, life lessons, and AMAZING success, we were no longer at class or competitions regularly.
In the meantime, knowing there would be fewer demands on my time due to dance, I took on more at my “day job”, moving from a per diem teaching position of a couple of days a week to become a more-than-half-time university professor.
Despite these changes, I knew I still wanted to be a dressmaker. I enjoy the creativity, working with dancers to bring to life their “perfect dress.” There is nothing like the look on a dancer’s face when you succeed! In these financially challenging times, I knew I also needed to keep this source of additional income to keep our paying-off-Worlds-and-college-tuition budget in the black. I continued to design and sew, working with my tailor, Marina, to bring these dreams to life.
Until January of 2009.
I knew that my friend and tailor, Marina, was going to have surgery to replace a heart valve in late December. She was calm and positive when we spoke about it a few days beforehand. I knew it was serious, but she had come through so many other health challenges, and was going to have her surgery in a well-respected hospital. I thought I’d visit her there after I returned from a family vacation, and that she’d be back in front of her sewing machine in several weeks, as she had been after her previous surgeries. I’m not sure she even told her family how dire her condition was.
As many of you know, Marina didn’t survive the surgery. In one fell swoop, I’d lost the highly trained expert half of my business, the one who could take my scattered parts and make them a functional whole, could look at a sketch and draft a pattern from it, who pulled my just-in-time act together in time so often.
But most of all, I’d lost a friend. And I couldn’t even fathom how her family would go on without her.
We all picked up the pieces as best we could, going through her cluttered shop layer by layer, laughing and crying at bits of memory told in scraps of fabric.
I knew I had to go on; I had dress orders. I took a deep breath, looked over her supplies and machines, and started to review all the things she’d taught me over the six years we’d worked together. I started the first dress when the embroidery machine was still at Marina’s, and with the help of Marina’s mom, who coached me through the embroidery with her few words of broken English and pantomime, and a dressmaker friend and angel named Diane Archer to assemble the dress, we got it done. It’s still one of my favorites.
With less time to work, and having to do so much on my own, my dressmaking career has slowed; I’ve only done a few dresses in the last year and a half. But I’ve learned so much, bringing together my own skill areas of color and design with the things Marina and her mom were able to teach me about embroidery and tailoring, intensive tailoring coaching from Diane, and of course, the wonderful folks at the Celtic Flame costumer’s message board.
I’ll be posting pictures and memories from those dresses, and more of my cherished Irish dance memories in the days to come—stay tuned!
Trish
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