Is there a sewer in the house?

When I was newly married, I had a neighbor, Darren. He was a tanker pilot in the Air Force. One night he was over and talking about being a pilot. He said one of his dreams was to be on a commercial airline when the flight attendant came out and yelled, "Unless there's a pilot on board, we are all going to die. Is there a pilot in the house? Is there a pilot in the house?"

Dareen, being a few beers in, then demonstrated how he would stand up and say, "Why yes, I happen to be a pilot," and stroll into the cockpit and save everyone.

This was followed by his realization that, as a tanker pilot, he was really a gas station attendant. He basically went up to fighter jets and asked, "Fill 'er up?"

I've never forgotten Darren's ability to laugh at himself. When Rob was in fifth grade, he became an altar server at church. We happened to be in a dearthly phase of altar servers. Rob would go to church each week and hope that the server would not show up and he could serve. I'd think of Darren's joy every time and say, "Maybe Irene will look out and yell, 'Is there an altar server in the house?'"

Saturday it was my turn. Julie called with a problem. The purple altar cloth used for Advent was missing. She had already bought material, but it needed hemming. Could I hem it? Sure! Sue dropped it off and I got to work. I only had a few hours.

I realized how having the right tools makes a job easy.


I spread it out on my long sewing table and squared the edges with my rotary mat and rotary cutter, using my big t-square ruler. It looks blue here, but it's a deep purple.


Then I covered the table with my handy dandy ironing board cover that I made for ironing large pieces of fabric. I used my new Dritz hem marker to iron up a 1/2 inch seam allowance on the two long sides. I got it Friday at JoAnn's during the 50% notions wall sale. It turns out to be well worth the money!

I folded under the seam allowance as I sewed, which resulted in a 1/4 inch hem. I managed (I really don't know how) to slide in too far three times, and had to resew a few one or two inch sections.

I ironed, folded, and sewed the two short sides, then used the thread tails to sew the corner folds shut. I had considered making mitered corners, but I remembered that I don't know how to do mitered corners, so I dropped that idea.

Hemming a simple cotton cloth is easy sewing, but I kept thinking how big a difference the right tools make. Julie has many amazing talents, but if she had tried to hem this, she would have had to work much harder than me mostly because she's not a sewer and doesn't have these tools.


Here is is on the altar Sunday morning.


And here's Julie, pleased as punch that it all worked out. I'm glad you called, Julie!