An Engineer's Costume

This is such a heartwarming sight!

My friend Ted sent me a picture of his dinning room right after he finished a panda bear costume for his daughter and I love it. I love the details, the fur bits strewn on the floor, the bottle of alcool for cleaning the gunky needle, the power cord on the bottom right, the lone empty cup pushed aside, the ruler, scissors, pins, scraps. I love that Ted is the one making the costumes in his family. It must be so cool to be able to say : "My Dad made it!" I love guys who sew, I actually married a guy who sews.

I am not at all surprised that Ted can operate a sewing machine, he operates a power plant in real life. I wouldn't say it's the same thing, but in my mind, the process is the same.

- Sewing is not much different than engineering, I wrote, you make a plan and then you build it.

- I shamelessly enjoy making Halloween costumes for our kids. Each one presents interesting assembly puzzles – under a hard time deadline. For the past ten years I’ve delivered on the promise: “If you can draw me a picture of it, I can make it into a costume.”
Our dining room looks like I ran a panda bear through a blender...You’d be impressed to know that the pattern I bought was a Simplicity design that looks like a one-piece pair of pajamas with a different color belly sewn on. I totally modified it to get the right color patterns and shape for a panda. Only an engineer (or an experienced sewer) would know how to draw the curved lines, cut apart the pattern pieces, and get things to all match up right. 

I don't know what you think, but since Ted's oldest of 4 is 18 (Happy Birthday Ryerson!) and seeing the results, Ted sure gets an experienced seamster badge from me!

PS : A lot of home sewers are irritated when they find out they have to do math, actually I think it would be an interesting problem to give engineering students, they might come up with fun solutions to our sewing woes.