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I put together a Power Point and a sewing project for participants, and though I hadn’t spoken in public since my son was born (he’s taller than I am now) , I got my fanny to New York — hauling little Coco the Bernina 215 (a great travel machine) and my sewing gear on the train and subway, then rolling her from my sister’s apartment to MoMA, weaving block after block through the holiday crowds near Rockefeller Center with my little Tutto wagon (and it’s more uphill than you’d think). Later, when the museum featured photos from the workshops on their social media channels (with several million followers), I’ll admit it was a pretty big thrill for a middle-aged broad like me who’s spent a lot of her time in the past decade cutting fabric on the floor, tracing disintegrating vintage patterns, negotiating with her sewing machine, and digging through fashion history archives in chilly libraries. She’s a Bernina fan like me, but when she asked me if I’d like to have her mother’s 1930s

I had just enough fabric to make the Decades of Style one-sleeve wrap pattern #5006 (which was originally designed by Schiaparelli, but that’s our little secret…). And I loved Jane Fonda’s ad lib that the Oscars’ set looked like “the Orgasmatron from Barbarella. For Queen Ramonda’s crown, for example, Ms. Carter’s inspiration was a “traditional Zulu married woman’s hat, In a tizzy over the gusset, I consulted the blog Jet Set Sewing, who’s dyspeptic Bernina, Karl, recommended Lite Steam-a-Seam 2 for any and all sewing emergencies.

The coat has sleek style lines and a relatively simple construction, allowing sewing newbies to make a lined coat without a lot of hassle. I gave every seam a “sandwich press,” where you press it just the way it’s come out of the machine, then clipped the seams and pressed them open (over the ham or seam roll). The pattern instructions call for the sleeve of the coat (called the “cuff” in the pattern) to be lined with the same fabric as the exterior, then attached directly to the body of the coat. If you decide to make this coat, dear reader, I recommend buying extra lining fabric and using it to cut the sleeve cuff lining, so the seam won’t be as thick.

A couple of years ago, I wrote about visiting Aix-en-Provence and the surrounding area, as my husband and I drove around in circles while two competing navigational systems – Miss Moneypenny and Miss Google Maps – bossed us around, and our teen son hid in the back programming a new million-dollar app (at least, I hope that’s what he was doing – though it sounded a lot like he was playing Fruit Ninja). But then he said those horrible words: He started to go on about how, even though we’d had a great time together, he could only be an intern for so long, and how it was probably time for him to go back to Switzerland and get a real job and… I realized the horrible truth. But Karl, being Karl, informed me that before he could continue to star in my blog, he needed to spend some time in the machine spa to get his annual cleanse, lube and Botox touch-up. A little while later, I pulled up with a large box in the Jeep, and said, “not to worry Karl, go off and have your spiritual journey/tummy tuck.