These two are getting married in a few weeks and I haven’t got a thing to wear.

Which is a lie. I, like most Americans, have dozens of things to wear. I just don’t have anything I want to wear.

I have traipsed through store after store after store in mall after mall after mall and I cannot find what I want. I have combed the internet. It’s just not out there.

I know what I want and I cannot find it.

I can, however, find the fabric store and my sewing machine and my long-gone aunt Virginia’s Wiss scissors and enough gumption to make what I want.

Before you get all excited and think this is going to end in tears (which it might), I will say that June 27th marked my 25th anniversary of pulling up stakes and moving to Atlanta with my $72.

My mother insisted I bring a sewing machine, on account of you just never know. She was right. I did not know. I did not know that even though I would be rich with friends and experiences, I would be poor as a church mouse.

I made a lot of skirts and dresses back then.

Sewing is something I did as a very young child, first on my great-aunt Tot’s treadle machine, making Barbie clothes and things, and then later as a 4-Her, learning to make pleats and darts and armholes, finally using my mother’s machine, learning to fit and tailor and finish beautifully.

I haven’t sewn anything to wear in years, aside from moving the odd button or hemming something, but a few years ago I got a jones for a new machine, so I bought a lady’s old Kenmore on Ebay for $51, one with all metal parts like you just can’t find anymore.

Today I set it up on the table, the same table my mother used to set up her machine on when I was growing up, and tried a few seams to make sure it’s a good machine and doesn’t need a tuneup.

Then I was off to the fabric store, where I bought some raw silk. Now I’m busy making a pattern, which skill I would not have were it not for a long stint in the costume shop at Young Harris College.

It turns out that everything you learn piles up on everything else you learn and comes in handy again.

And those two up there? They’re pretty perfect together.