Inside and Outside

As I've mentioned before, the Mild Wife and I invested in a sewing machine during the pandemic. It was the most basic model we could find, but it was good enough for what we needed: to make a few masks. And now, over a year later, I still think that it was a good investment.

Interestingly, even with restrictions being lifted a bit, we still find that we need masks. Some stores still require them, and neither of us wants to be in a position where we needed a mask and didn't have one. So, we still have to wear and wash them. And even though we've never run out of clean masks to wear, we did notice that we were close a couple of times. So, I recently broke out the sewing machine to make a few more masks.

When we initially invested in supplies, we bought a pack of fabric squares. We figured we weren't going to need super high quality, and having a bunch of squares would give us options in case one of us screwed up (read: me). That also gave us the ability to add a little variety into our life, for the heck of it.

Now, variety is good, but that also means that there are some fabric squares that neither the Mild Wife or I would ever wear. I mean, there are uses for those colors and patterns, but I would prefer that it not be on my face. So, certain squares are much higher on our list to sew with, and some would preferably never see the light of day.

As we discussed this, we very quickly came to describing these as "outside" fabric squares (i.e., the ones that would be visible) and "inside" fabric squares (i.e., the ones that would get used for lining that no one would ever see). It was an interesting discussion, because the ones that both the Mild Wife and I considered inside squares were immediately used as lining, but others that only got one "inside" vote were still in play to use as an "outside." It wasn't so much a negotiation as a filtering process, but the whole thing led to some banter and discussion.

After all, if you vote for something as an "inside," you likely have opinions on the color or the pattern. Maybe I didn't like the color, or maybe the Mild Wife thought the pattern looked too much like colors splattered about. One of them even looked like, and I quote, "an infection." You can probably see how this would lead to more than a few laughs.

Fortunately we had plenty of fabric to choose from, so it wasn't a problem, but we sure did have fun picking the fabric squares to use.