Completion of My Outfit and Hairpin
My temperature finally went down two days after I had caught a fever. Remaking the outfit would be a lot riskier than I had expected. At this rate I would catch another fever before Mom was finished.
With those thoughts in mind, I climbed out of bed and went looking for Mom. In the kitchen, I saw the table pulled up close to the hearth with Mom and Tuuli making progress on their handiwork. It seemed that she couldn’t work on the outfit while I was out of commission and had shifted her focus to the handiwork instead.
“Oh hello, Myne. Has your fever gone down? That’s perfect, we can get back to reworking your outfit.” Mom cleaned up her handiwork somewhat regretfully and spread out the outfit.
“Where’s Dad? Is he on morning shift?”
“Noon shift, but so much snow fell he left early.”
The city guard was also assigned to clearing the main road of snow. They received special pay for their work, but Dad always grumbled over his beer that the pay didn’t match how exhausting it was.
“Okay, Myne. Please put it on.”
I flinched a little at the sight of the thin, short-sleeved outfit. If I wore it like Mom wanted I would end up with another fever, hearth or no hearth. “Mom, can I at least wear a long-sleeved shirt underneath it?”
“The clothes won’t be a perfect fit if you do that, sweetie.”
“That’s fine. I’ll get bigger by the time summer comes around.”
Mom put a hand on her cheek and looked at me dubiously. She looked over me as if thinking back to how much I had grown in the past, then sighed. “I understand how you feel, Myne... But that doesn’t seem likely.”
A-At least say you believe in me, Mom! Still, she allowed me to wear a long-sleeved shirt beneath the outfit so that I wouldn’t catch another cold.
“Your shoulders are what don’t match the most. What should we do about that?”
Mom was right. When I put on Tuuli’s special outfit, the most loose and unsightly part ended up being the shoulders. So I tried scrunching them up, and this transformed the outfit into an off-shoulder dress that had nice loops around the top of my arms.
“Now we just need to make shoulder straps out of string or pieces of cloth. If we have any scraps of cloth left over from when you first made this, it’ll be a perfect fit. If not, blue string should work. It’ll match the sash and embroidery just fine.”
“I have some left over, yes. Plenty for shoulder straps.”
Mom went and got some scraps of cloth from the cloth basket. After twisting it into a string shape, she sewed it onto the shoulders of my outfit. The dress that once slipped off my shoulders became an off-shoulder camisole.
“Perfect, now it won’t fall off your shoulders.”
Mom nodded in satisfaction, then furrowed her brows and pointed at the armpit of the outfit. Due to bundling up the cloth around the shoulders, the rippling cloth had ended up gathered by the armpit.
“Myne, the armpit looks terrible with all that cloth in it. What can we do about that?”
“Well, I’m going to be wearing a wide sash, so I don’t think a little extra cloth by the armpit is a problem.”
“No. It looks terrible.”
“Okay, then what if we sew them into proper pleats? It’ll take time, but I think it’ll look really cute.”
I tried taking the apparently terrible-looking cloth by the armpit and put it into three equidistant folds from the chest to the side. Sewing them into place would be annoying, but there wouldn’t be any excess cloth and the chest would look fancier.
Mom thought for a minute, then nodded and held her hands out to me. “Naturally I won’t be able to sew that with you wearing it.”
I took off the outfit and handed it to Mom. I then immediately put on several layers of clothes and sighed in relief. It was legitimately cold. I would probably catch a fever after we finished this.
“I’m jealous, Myne. You get to wear a super fancy outfit.” Tuuli looked at Mom tucking the cloth and sighed enviously. It was true that all the frills were making it look fancy already. But this was only necessary because Tuuli was so much bigger than me. Mom wouldn’t have to do this if we were a normal pair of sisters, and I felt bad about that.
“You’re just too much bigger than me, Tuuli. We’re only doing this because it’s faster and easier than taking it all apart. And this was an outfit she made for you in the first place, right? It’ll still be yours, even after we change it a bit. I’m just wearing your hand-me-down.”
“Oh, that’s true.” It was the fate of we younger siblings to never wear new clothes. Most of the clothes I wore came from either Tuuli or our neighbors, and it was very rare for me to ever wear new clothing.
“I think I’ll make my own hairpin while Mom’s busy sewing.” I decided to work on my baptism hairpin while Mom was sewing the pleats in. I wanted to take the opportunity to make a new kind of hairpin that was different from the ones I had made before it.
“Mom, I want to make a hairpin for myself. Can I use our thread?”
“Since I don’t need to make a new outfit for you anymore, you can use what you need for the hairpin.”
Last year it had been a struggle to get enough thread for a hairpin since she didn’t understand what I was doing, but this year we were on the same page and she gave me some without hesitation. I picked up the fresh thread while feeling a newfound appreciation for the importance of mutual understanding.
“I think it went like this...” I dug through my memories and used my thin needle to sew a small, rounded flower in the image of a lily. Tuuli finished a hairpin of her own and peered at my hands.
“Myne, what’s this? That flower looks different from Freida’s flowers and our handiwork flowers.”
“I’m actually going to put this on the hair stick I’m planning to wear for the ceremony.”
“You’re not going to make one like Freida’s? But it was so fancy and pretty.” Tuuli pursed her lips as she rolled the lily around in her hand. She had liked the rose-shaped flowers a lot. I thought back to the lustrous, delicate roses I had made for Freida and let out a tiny sigh. Even if I tried to make those again, they wouldn’t end up looking the same.
“The quality of the thread is just so different, I don’t think I can make roses like that right now.”
“They don’t have to look the same, they’ll still be pretty. Here, I’ll make them for you. You made my hairpin for me and now I want to make yours for you.”
I was so touched by Tuuli’s words that I decided to ask her to make a rose for me. A large rose that stood out would be best left to Tuuli and her significantly superior sewing skills.
“Thanks, Tuuli. In that case, would you use this thread to make roses a little bigger than the larger ones we made for Freida? Do you remember how to make them?”
“I’m not you, Myne, of course I remember.”
I-I’m sorry for having such a bad memory...
I left the rose-making to Tuuli and got to work on the little flowers. Even at my top speed I couldn’t make them very fast, and by the time I finished three Mom had completed sewing the pleats.
“Myne, trying wearing the outfit again.”
I took off all my shirts but the long-sleeved one and put on the outfit again. It was now an off-shoulder dress with a pleated chest area. Thanks to the curving, the sleeves looked like natural curvy drapes.
“Mom, could you get the sash? I want to try it on.”
Mom got the wide blue sash for me and I tightened it around me, which made the skirt portion of my dress balloon outwards.
“I didn’t think it was that special while sewing, but now I see that it looks pretty cute.”
“Because I’m cute?”
“My my, because I’m a skilled seamstress.” We looked at each other and laughed for a bit before Mom spun her shoulder in determination. “Just the hem left. It looks cute enough right now, but the hem’s simply too long.”
A dress that ended at Tuuli’s knees ended at my ankles. I didn’t know where this rule came from, but it was known that in these parts, girls younger than ten wore their skirts to the knees. Incidentally, miniskirts didn’t seem to exist at all. At most, kids one to two years old were so short that skirts intended to reach their knees ended up looking like miniskirts.
The annoying thing was that skirts couldn’t be too short or too long. Ten- to fifteen-year-olds wore dresses to their shins. Adults generally wanted to have even their ankles covered. But skirts that long were only worn by women who didn’t have to work for a living. My mom, a fine working class citizen as she was, wore a skirt down to her ankles just like most wives around the neighborhood.
“I wonder if we could just bundle it up like we did with the shoulders?”
“I think it’ll be fine if we bundle up two parts in the front and two parts in the back. Do you think that’ll work, Mom?”
“Hmm. I think that might just do it.”
We hefted up four parts of the hem and ended up with something that looked like a balloon curtain. Once we sewed the cloth into place, we added small flowers to hide the thread, just like we did with the hairpins. We then added a drape to make the embroidery look prettier, and that was that. The outfit was done.
“As expected, it looks like a wealthy young lady’s baptism outfit now.”
The chest was pleated, the sleeves were wavy, and the hem was ballooned out. The outfit used a lot of spare cloth, and from every angle it looked entirely unlike something a poor commoner would wear. By bundling up the loose parts and sewing them together to forcibly shrink the outfit, we had created a design rare for even the wealthier classes. It clearly didn’t match the rest of the wardrobe, or even our home itself.
“This was a lot easier on me than what I had intended to do, but it will stand out a lot I’m afraid,” said Mom, to which Tuuli shrugged and pointed at our half-finished hair stick ornament.
“Isn’t it a little late for that? We’re already sticking out with the hairpins and stuff.” Even Tuuli stuck out enough for Freida to notice her just by wearing a hairpin unlike anybody else’s. The hair stick I was making would definitely stick out just as much, so either way, eyes would be on me. And as Freida said, the hairpins sticking out would be great advertising for them. We may as well go all the way here.
“It’s cute and we worked hard on it, so I won’t mind the attention. I’m going to wear it!” I had sacrificed my own body to sickness and the cold to complete the outfit. I won’t abandon it here. And not to mention, compared to the frilly mini-skirt maid outfit I wore for a high school culture festival back in my Urano days, it wasn’t embarrassing at all. It went all the way down to my knees and had a respectable design — what more could I ask for?
“If you’re fine with it, Myne, I am too. So, with that settled, what kind of hairpin are you making there?” Mom peered at the rose Tuuli was making, clearly interested.
“Tuuli’s making big roses for me, so I’m making about ten more little flowers like these.”
“I’ll help. Consider this my thanks to you,” laughed Mom as she went to get a needle out of her sewing box.
“Okay, if you want to thank me more, can I have some blue thread and light-blue thread too? I want to make about three flowers of each color.”
“Well, aren’t you clever. How could I say no?”
“Yay! Thanks, Mom.”
We all got to work sewing together, making the hair ornament bit by bit. Three people working on it at once made things go by super fast. Three large white roses, three blue flowers, three light-blue flowers, and fifteen white flowers. We finished them all in a single day.
“How are you going to put this on? Aren’t there too many small flowers?”
“That’ll be a surprise for when I’m done. Don’t watch me, I want it to be a secret,” I said with a laugh, but since there was only one place I could make it, no secrets could be kept.
The two of them pretended not to look but I could tell they were glancing my way, mouths shut tightly to swallow the questions they wanted to ask. It was kinda funny.
“I’m back. Whew, today really took a lot out of me. Spent the whole day shoveling snow and taking care of drunks!” said Dad as he came inside. He had brushed the snow off him before entering the building, but there was still some on him. Tuuli and I brushed that off him while I asked about my hair stick.
“Dad, did you finish the hair stick I wanted for my baptism?”
“Yeah, gimme a sec.” Dad gave a confident grin and took out a well-carved hair stick from the storage room. I couldn’t help but smile as I saw how smooth and polished it was, which showed how much time he had spent carving it.
“It’s really pretty. And it’s so smooth there’s not a single bump on it. Thanks, Dad!”
I sewed the three white roses onto a piece of cloth, which I then sewed onto the hole in the stick. I then pushed the needle through the cloth and worked my way down, attaching flowers to it like a hanging wisteria flower. First was the blue flowers, then the light-blue flowers, and finally, five white flowers. I ended up with three columns and seven rows of flowers, making a gradient of colors. I had mimicked the design of a yukata hair ornament I had seen in my Urano days, and it looked even better than expected.
“Wow, it flutters! This is so cute! Myne, try it on!”
“Put on the baptism outfit while you’re at it. I wanna see it too,” added Dad.
“Yes, please do. I want to see what it looks like when you’re not wearing the long-sleeved shirt beneath it.”
Overwhelmed by my family’s pressure, I changed into the outfit. I then slid the baptism hair stick in next to my usual hair stick. I could feel the fluttering small flowers hitting my hair.
“Woah, Myne! That’s incredible! Everyone’s gonna think you’re the daughter of some wealthy family for sure. It looks a lot cuter and special than what I saw Freida wearing back then. You really can’t tell it’s a hand-me-down.” Dad deftly complimented both me and his wife’s sewing ability while looking at the outfit in awe.
Mom shook her head with a wry smile and tossed some sharp words at him. “Now now, the materials used to make Freida’s clothes are so much higher quality than what I used here that you’re just being rude. But still, this looks a lot cuter and fancier than what you’d expect from a little reworking. You can just do so much more when you have extra cloth to work with.”
“I’m saying that with the same materials, your clothes would be better.”
“Goodness, Gunther, you always have a comeback.”
Well, my parents were going off into their own world. It was honestly kind of hard to watch them flirt in a manner which could only be described as “lovey dovey.” I would rather they not show romantic fulfillment in front of me, the girl who never had a single boyfriend in her life on Earth.
What returned me to reality and ended my angry internal rant was a surprise comment from Tuuli, who had slipped behind me to look at my hairpin.
“Uh huh, it’s cute! Super cute, Myne! Your fancy clothes are cute too, but the hairpin’s doubly cute. It’s fun to watch since it sways around, and your hair is really dark like the night sky, so the white flowers stand out a lot. I was thinking I might be making the roses too big, but now that they’re on you I see they’re just the right size.”
Well... What can I say. Tuuli truly is my guardian angel. I obeyed the call of her voice and turned my back to my parents. Merely removing them from my vision as they flirted was enough to make me feel better.
“My hair’s a lot heavier than your wavy hair, so without a flashy hairpin it’ll have trouble standing out with this outfit,” I said, already shivering from how thin the outfit was. Goosebumps covered my body and I was starting to feel an ominous chill running up my spine.
“Ngh... Achoo!” My sneeze surprised my parents and had them leaning towards me.
“Myne, that’s enough of that outfit. Hurry and change so you can get in bed. At this rate, you’ll catch another fever.”
“Oka— Achoo! I-I think it’s a little late for that, Mom. My back’s shivering, but my neck’s heating up.”
They hurriedly changed me into my pajamas and sent me to bed, but I could feel my head heating up. I sunk into the scratchy straw mattress beneath me and let out a sigh.
...Well, I expected this from the start, so this doesn’t sting as much as it could have. Maybe one day my body will get stronger. One day.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login