This past spring, I learned there would be a Mindful Making Retreat about an hour away from me, co-taught by Katrina Rodabaugh and Meg McElwee. I’ve made a number of Meg’s patterns this spring and summer and have been gradually embracing the idea of slowing my sewing down and making it more of a practice than a drive.
That has been a process. My typical M.O. is to bring all my other responsibilities to a halt, let my children run feral, and whip up a top or a pair of shorts as quickly as possible.
We were drawing close to the end of our trip. After a day at Seven Mile Beach and Stingray City, we went to the little beach where we’d been going for our morning sea baths to watch the sunset together our last night on the island.
We both brought our reading material, and it was sublime.
I made this pair of Arenite shorts not long after I got back from the Cayman Islands. I wore my first pair nearly every day of the trip, and I was looking forward to trying out some mods for the second pair.
The Chaplain has shared a piece of wisdom from Tobago, “More haste, less speed.” I often think of it when I’m sewing. With so much going on at my house, it often feels like if I don’t rush, I will never finish.
This weekend I’m going to a mindful mending retreat. Between spasms of social anxiety, I’m looking forward to it.
Really, mindful mending is something I’ve been doing all summer.
At first, my stitches were really uneven. I stabbed myself with my needle regularly. My sewing is still nothing like the perfect stretches of straight, even stitches that you’ll see if you search online for sashiko stitching, but it has also noticeably improved since I started.
I’ve made five pairs of pants using the Arenite pattern, and I saw on Instagram that Meg of Sew Liberated had made one of her pairs of pants into shorts. I was looking for a couple of quick makes before our trip to the Cayman Islands, and this Arenite shorts hack came together in just a few hours.
