Two Legs, One Needle and a Sunday I’ll Never Get Back

It’s hot in Gauteng. Properly hot. The kind of hot where you start the day looking like a CFO and end it looking like you’ve run to work. They installed a new aircon in my office last week. I’m told it works. I live in hope.

So yesterday I went shopping for short-sleeved blouses.

I came home with trousers.

Green ones. Olive, khaki, army, I’m not sure what the label calls it, but whatever colour they are, it’s been a gap in my wardrobe for ages. And they fitted beautifully. Through the waist and hips, anyway. Below that, they carried on for quite some distance after my legs had stopped. I’m 166 centimetres tall, these were cut for someone who changes light bulbs without a ladder.

A normal person would take them to be shortened. I have never, in my whole life, sent a pair of trousers to be shortened. I hem them myself.

Saturday was for work. Sunday is for personal admin. And this morning, personal admin was me, a needle, a reel of cotton and a pair of olive trousers I wanted to wear to the office on Monday.

How I learnt

Home economics at school taught me the basics. My mom taught me a bit more. My dad’s contribution was a different lesson: if there’s a skill nearby, use it. I was still little when he started handing me his trousers whenever a hem came down. No discussion. He’d just appear with the trousers, and I’d fix them.

So I’ve been doing this a long time. I don’t use pins. I fold the fabric, hold it and sew, and the stitches don’t show from the outside. Sewing a straight line without pins takes a good eye, attention to detail, patience and experience. I have three of those. Patience is touch and go.

Why do I do this to myself?

Honestly, all of it sucks. Every single part.

The cotton is the worst. On the reel it behaves. Cut a length off and it develops a mind all its own. Too short and you run out just before the end and have to thread the needle all over again. Too long and it ties itself in knots while you’re not looking.

Then the needle. I stab myself every time. It’s not a risk, it’s a step in the process.

Having finished the first leg and feeling rather pleased with myself, I remembered there was a second one.

Trousers, it turns out, come with two legs. Nobody mentions this at the till. One leg is a little project. Two legs is a production run. Same operator, same needle, double the output, no overtime, and the second leg has to match the first exactly, or you’ll spend the rest of your life walking slightly lopsided.

I took a coffee break to reflect on my life choices. 

Halfway down the second leg, with the coffee going cold, it struck me that I hem trousers at work all the time. I just call it something else.

Getting audit preparation over the line is hemming without pins. Nobody holds it in place for you. You need an eye for detail, you can’t rush it, and if you go off line early, you’ll be unpicking it later. What gets you through is having done it before.

Budgeting is guessing how much cotton you’ll need. Cut too little and you stop halfway and start again. Cut too much and it tangles. You rarely get it exactly right. You just get better at guessing, and you learn to keep a little extra on the reel.

And bringing a diverse team along with you is all about the tension in the thread. Pull too hard and the fabric puckers. Too loose and the hem drops by lunchtime. You keep adjusting, stitch by stitch, and every now and then you stop to sort out a knot before you carry on.

None of it looks hard from the outside. Fold, sew, done. That’s what a hem looks like from across the room. Nobody sees the knots, the stabbing or the colourful language. I try to remember that the next time I think a job at work should be quick.

Final production report

Status: complete
Quality: approved (invisible from the outside)
Labour efficiency: questionable
Operator morale: low, then rescued by laughter
Chance of taking the next pair to a tailor: still zero

On Monday I’ll walk into my office, hopefully to a working aircon, wearing olive trousers that are exactly the right length. Nobody will notice. That’s the point of a good hem, and frankly, of most good work.

If anyone asks, they came like that.