Cutting It Out

Before I get caught up in a million project recaps, I’m going to make good on my promise to maintain the disability component of DMS. This feels important because the more time passes, the more I realize that accessibility-related considerations play into almost everything I do, hobbies included. Not always in a bad way, though: in fact, failed attempts and hard-won triumphs have shown me that there are few things more satisfying than taking life’s fabric scraps and turning them into a quilted vest (not that I’ve ever done that, but the metaphor seemed apt). In this context, the remnants are the myriad annoyances that are part and parcel of living in a wheelchair, and the vest—messily grafted but kind of beautiful in its scrappiness—is a very practical solution to a problem that made me want to scream into the crafting abyss.

As I’m sure I’ve noted on more than one occasion, cutting fabric is absolutely my least favourite part of sewing. I can’t blame my disabilities on that since I loathed it even when I was still a human with two fully functional legs. Thank the sewing gods, then, that I’ve fumbled my way to the less frustrating setup that I’m about to describe in excessive detail while leaving out the more universally relevant parts such as the cutting itself. Feel free to stop reading if you’re only here for the pizza shirts. I encourage you, however, to humour me, and not just for my ego’s sake. Most of us will be disabled at some point. Maybe you’ll find yourself in need of a bespoke cutting station one day just as I did.

Besides, a sewing blog is a perfect excuse to elaborate on the evolution of my sewing system, which is in turn a nice opportunity for me to pat myself on the back (and pat my husband on the head) for the effort we’ve made to enable my obsessional garment construction. Calling it obsessional is no stretch and makes sense given that a) I’ve lived with OCD since I was a kid, b) I have more unpaid-work time than most of my peers and a great desire to add what I’ll term “productive structure” to my days, and c) I don’t easily tolerate sitting around feeling aimless. Luckily, I do an excellent job keeping myself busy and occupied—too good, my husband might (OK, does) argue. Indeed, I’m always scrambling to complete one project or another as dinnertime approaches and I’m hunched in front of my sewing machine or computer. (“One more seam!” I call, cranking up the volume of a podcast to drown out the passive-aggressive clatter of dishes being set upon the table. “One more sentence!” I say, starting a new blog post.)

The enthusiasm with which I’ve leapt into my new identity as an amateur seamstress has had plenty of perks, but it’s had the occasional downside, too. A big one, at first, was that enthusiasm + dedication + ample time = many items completed relatively quickly. This would have been fine if it weren’t for the fact that I had the drive and ability to sew but the drive and no ability to prepare the fabric to stitch together—a necessity, as it turns out. A talented friend whose me-made clothing I greatly admire generously cut the pieces for my first few garments, but there’s only so much one can impose before a favour becomes an imposition, and I didn’t want to jeopardize a friendship in the name of satisfying my sewing urges. At a certain point, it became imperative to find an alternative.

There were a few major challenges here. The first is one common to many apartment-dwelling sewists: lack of space. The solution thus couldn’t require a dedicated room or even a dedicated ten square feet. The second was twofold: I had to be able to get at the cutting station and lean over as much of it as possible from the lowly height of a wheelchair, and it had to accommodate my particular limitations and abilities, some of which are pretty fixed and some of which fluctuate and shift over the course of a day or weeks or months. It’ll be no great shock to learn that this was the more vexing of the two primary barriers to cutting, but I believed from the get-go that it wasn’t insurmountable. When there’s a will there’s often a way, and I didn’t lack for will, nor for help. Coming up with custom accessibility solutions to niche problems has become a bonding activity my husband and I find more entertaining and rewarding than acing an escape room or whatever normal couples do, so I could frame this to him as date night.

In the brainstorming phase, we independently researched how other wheelchair-using sewists tackle the cutting process. No use reinventing the wheel, after all. However, there was a dearth of ideas to be found on the almighty internet, including on the few social-media accounts I’ve come across that are run by disabled makers. I thus posted in a sewing group I follow and got plenty of thoughtful replies that could be summed up as “get someone else to do it”—not super helpful. Although I briefly considered admitting defeat and outsourcing as counselled by those wise elder seamstresses, the desperation quickly passed and my stubborn insistence to do as much as I can for myself came roaring back. I emerged more determined than ever to take charge of my cutting. It was the principle of the matter. It was a hill I was willing to die on.

Unsure where else to start, I went with my gut and bought one of those old-school cardboard fabric-cutting boards. My mom’s had the same one forever—likely since before I was born—and the aforementioned sewing friend has one, too. It’s charming in its simplicity, appealing in its relatively low cost, and seemed workable given my reluctance to use a rotary cutter for anything but bias strips and other small pieces. My fine motor skills are much improved, but they’re certainly not perfect, and I don’t want to push my luck a little too hard and end up with one fewer fingertip and blood-stained fabric. All it took was a few clicks. A cold December morning a few weeks later, an unlucky delivery person hauled the awkwardly dimensioned package to my apartment door. Aaaand, check.

But on what could I position it? Our kitchen table is a two-seater, and we lack the counter space to accommodate a 40-by-72-inch board. I know from Instagram that some sewists get right down on the floor and work from there, but that’s not an option for me since my limbs just don’t bend like that. I needed something low and foldable but adequately large when open; stable, affordable, and easy to set up and take down. I toyed with the idea of a plank on sawhorses but quickly nixed that; hauling a plank in and out of my dining room would be asking a lot of my husband, and I do love the man. I eventually located a huge folding table, on sale and with good reviews, at Canadian Tire. This, I thought, was promising.

My spidey senses were spot on. In retrospect, maybe I should’ve sat in the planning period a little longer as to better guarantee an optimal result. Nonetheless, my semi-intuitive problem-solving resulted—in this case, at least—in an actual solution rather than a cupboard full of the detritus of failed attempts. The $90.00 table is great: it’s exactly the right height, and the cutting board fits perfectly on it. It takes my husband two minutes to set up (we store the table on our balcony and the mat in the bedroom) and two minutes to put away, which makes him less resentful that I ask him to perform both tasks several times a week and makes me less resentful that I need his help for this initial step. Once it’s out and the cardboard cutting board has been placed on it, I’m good to go. I can hardly remember the days I relied on the benevolence of friends to grant me a fabric fix.

(Un)surprisingly, I’m certainly no master cutter (yet). I’ve learned how to prop myself up to maximize how much of the tabletop I can reach, but it’s logistically tricky, especially with larger pieces, and the first few patterns I cut were a little wonky. The more I work on perfecting my technique, however, the smoother the sailing becomes; practice makes perfect, radical acceptance, yada yada. Speaking of which, much as I play up my irritation at not being 100% independent, I’m willing to tolerate requiring a bit of assistance if the reward is more sewing, and I of course appreciate that I have a partner who supports my all-in approach to everything I do.

While I’m happy with my makeshift cutting station, I’ll undoubtedly keep tweaking it as time wears on. Figuring out the accessibility part has made it possible for me to look for other “problems” to solve. Equal-opportunity dissatisfaction! I’m already thinking about investing in a large self-healing mat and risking sacrificing my lesser appendages to the rotary cutter, but that’s a future-me question, and one I’ll revisit with the assistance and permission of medical professionals. Fingers I’m fine with mangling; a nice piece of fabric, no.