Don't Sew Your Finger

A couple weeks ago I made two little blouses for a couple of our youngest dance students. They were the same basic idea as the blouse I made for myself last summer to go with my kilt but, you know, tiny. It was fun (I love sewing for girls!) and I got to flex my pattern-making skills for the sleeves, which was cool. I'd raided the Lost & Found at our dance school for little leotards and tank tops to use as the bases (don't worry, it was kosher - everything had been there for about six months and was about to go to Goodwill). The eyelet for the sleeves was left over from my own blouse, the elastic for the sleeves from a dress I made last year and the interfacing (for the base of the dickie) left over from our great jig outfit sew-a-thon back in December. The only thing I had to buy was the eyelet for the dickie, which came to a grand total of $5. Not bad for two blouses!

So this week was Spring Break and, feeling somewhat proud of myself for doing so well with the first two blouses, I decided to buckle down and transform the remaining three base leotards/crop tops into blouses, assembly-line style. All was going well until sleeve #5 (of 6) when something bad happened. No matter how many times I have been asked exactly *how* it happened, I really can't explain it, even though I was looking at my work the whole time. All I know is that one minute I was sewing in a sleeve and the next minute I had sewed my left pointer finger to the machine.

OUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's what I said in my head, anyway. Out loud, it wasn't quite so savory. Here's a lesson that may help you in the future: If/when you manage to sew your hand to your sewing machine, your first instinct will be to yank your hand away. DO NOT YANK YOUR HAND AWAY. Turn off the machine (I remembered this part) and use the manual wheel to remove the needle, as painful as that sounds. Yanking your hand away results in breaking the needle, which then sticks out the bottom of your finger, gushing blood everywhere, and you will be forced to remove it using tweezers. Not nearly as much fun as tweezing your eyebrows, let me tell you. Then you will go to the doctor's office and find out, although you managed to avoid the fingernail and bone (woo hoo!) there is now a small piece of needle embedded deep inside your finger, much like a metal splinter. They will also inform you that for the next few days/weeks/months your finger will hurt as your body encapsulates it and attempts to expel the foreign body - not really a woo hoo situation. Then they will offer you a prescription for oxycodone. Okay, that one brought back happy post-wisdom tooth extraction memories for me and did result in a teeny-tiny woo hoo. Just a little one, though, 'cause I was still crying from the finger pain.

Here's a picture of my poor, splinted Highland hand on the way to dance class Wednesday night. Don't worry, I wasn't driving *and* taking pictures - my brave husband played chauffeur for Monkey Boy and me, since prescription drugs and driving don't mix very safely, especially in the crazy rush hour traffic that encompasses DFW!


Luckily for you, I didn't have the presence of mind to photo-document the entire incident, but here is a lovely picture of my finger roughly 24 hours after sewing it. Don't sew your finger, it's not nearly as satisfying as sewing pretty little girl clothes and dance costumes.

Now that I've shared the first really important piece of wisdom I've picked up in my 30's, I'm off to finish those blouses. Yes, you read that correctly. I may have almost lost a finger on Wednesday, but I haven't lost my spirit, and Saturday afternoon is feeling like an awesome time to jump back on that metaphorical horse. Let's go, Susie Singer machine!