A novice dressmaker

This is my first foray into dressmaking and it is wonderful. Slow, meditative, iterative and intensely satisfying and I’m only up to prepping the pockets. Each section of the process has demanded an accretion of new skills – finally understanding that a PDF pattern requires two stages between delivery and being ready to sew, finding that it is important to lay the unwieldy sellotaped sheets of printer paper onto a firm surface when tracing them onto tracing paper, and not use the carpeted living room floor, because that way punctures and movements in the tracing occur. The pleasure in beginning to hear a new language with its exotic vocabulary opening into a world of new distinctions: interfacing, with its bumpy and its smooth side, only vaguely distinguishable one from the other with the scratchy winter skin on my fingers that consistently lifts the piece away from its careful placing as I reach for a pin to keep it aligned; stay stitch, the delightful term for the kindergarten-like command that a single piece of fabric line itself up, stay still, without getting all squirmy, ready for when it makes its entrance to your garment; notch – a point of connection from one fabric piece to another, but which appear to take a variety of forms – the v and the double vv I’ve found on YouTube videos and the simple line on this pattern , which perhaps all connect in different ways, like any two people connect differently from any other two.
And then there is fabric. Again, an entire realm of previously unappreciated distinctions, connected to drape, feel, bulk, function and fantasy. I feel beckoned in so many directions, it has been hard to land gently in one place. My lovely friend, Susie, who had the joy of learning to sew with her mum, and now has two trestle tables and a sewing machine on permanent alert behind her sofa, recommended I start by making a mock-up from an old sheet, which is where I currently am. But, before I knew that stretch was a consideration in my final fabric choice I bought an old circular tablecloth from a charity shop – embossed red on deep red, gorgeous, intense and with the easy give of a good friend, but presumably, now redundant for the tunic that I am making. But, then the painful delight of finding that the only remaining fabric shop near me is closing and everything is half price and amongst the bolts of fabric not yet claimed by more experienced sewers, they have a brushed cotton check in a spring green which feels kind in its permission to take this process as slowly as I need.
And for me the immersive, thoughtful pace of the process is curative. I see that I will work more quickly in future – maybe even when I come to do this with my spring-green check – but, there is something in the reading and the re-reading of the instructions, the folding, pressing and careful aligning ready for stitching that my body and my mind both love, there is a kindness and gentleness in the process, mistakes are not wrong, just sites of new learning, YouTube videos love you when you ask, yet again, for advice on exactly what is meant by ‘basting’ or tips for identifying a steady 5/8”. A completed tunic will be a delight, no matter how it fits, or whether I wear it or not, what is so beautiful, right now, is the doing, slow and steady and absorbing.