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Hey-O friends!
Today’s post is a writing challenge created by Karen @ Baking in A Tornado. 6 participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words for someone else to use in a post. All words must be used at least once. All posts will be different as each writer has received their own original set of words. No blogger knows who received their words or in what direction the writer will take them. Until today.

My words are from the very sweet Tamara @ Part-Time Working Hockey Mom Thanks, Tamara! Those were challenging words, but I loved them!

My words: advocate ~ innate ~ fortify ~ entity ~ toys ~ shrieking

Pattern Story #11 I hate tomatoes.

I'm not talking about the tomatoes that fortify your body with lycopene and potassium (although I'm not crazy about those either.) I'm talking about the little cushions one uses in sewing to hold pins. (View A in the pattern photo below.)

Pattern Property of McCall Pattern Company 2016

When I was in sixth grade, our class participated in various skills units, like wood-shop, cooking, and sewing. There probably were others, but the sewing class definitely sticks in my mind, because I was TERRIBLE at it. I'm not kidding. For our first project, we were taught how to make our very own pin cushion in the shape of yes, a tomato.

The teacher, Mrs. Hill, carefully showed us each step in creating the project, then held up her own blue ribbon-worthy, perfectly round tomato pin cushion. There may have been oohs and ahhs, I can't recall everything. Finally, we were off to make our own. I thought I followed every direction. I cut, stuffed, and wrapped the fabric and string just like the teacher did in her directions. Looking around the class, I saw other students holding up their red entities with pride. Me? I held up a mess of stuffed, stretched fabric and thread cut into too many pieces. I slowly walked up to Mrs. Hill and watched as she put her hands to her cheeks and shook her head in ~~disgust~~ dismay.

By now, my classmates were finished shrieking in delight at their creations. They had succeeded with their ripe, perfect, probably-soon-to-be-thrown-in-the-trash-after-class projects and were ready to move on. I was cursing my innate inability to reproduce a fabric, sawdust-filled piece of fake fruit from perfectly given directions. I must admit, my tomato resembled a red egg. Or, as Mrs. Hill put it, my pin cushion looked "like a flat, pet rock". Thanks for that, "Teach."

Mrs. Hill may not have been her correct name, It's been almost 40 years since I sat in that class. But today, I can close my eyes and see her disappointment in that squishy mess. In the days that followed, while the other children were off on their next projects (probably sewing life-like toys or 17th century costumes; I don't know,) Mrs. Hill, whose job was to be an advocate of both home-made goods and children, (thank goodness!) spent a chunk of her time helping me turn my "pet rock" into a somewhat familiar-looking red orb. Where is it now? I have no idea. Funny what you choose to remember. (and forget.)

I'd like to tell you that as a seamstress or as a teacher who gives directions to little ones that I've overcome the disdain I hold for those tomatoes, but I'd be lying. I've never made one since. My pins are kept in bowls where I can easily grab them. The cushions I've accumulated over the years have been tag-a-longs from eBay sewing-kits, antique stores, or Joann's. The middle one in the photo above belonged to my husband's grandmother. (Okay, I actually love THAT one.)

So you might ask me, "Why/When/How in the world did you even start to sew after such a disastrous experience? You know the kind, Michele. The experiences where you can still remember small details 40 years later? The kind when you recall a particular failure, you feel the shame of it late at night?"

My only answer is that I learned to master it like anything else in my life.
Out of spite.
:)