It’s an accepted and sometimes unfortunate truth that if you put yourself out on the internet in any way, you open yourself up to the possibility of harsh criticism and public flaming. Surely any of you who have your own blog have run into this at some point or other. In general I’m able to let the occasional instances of public Selfish Seamstress bashing roll off my back, have a good chuckle and let it go. But lately some of the things that have been said about your beloved Selfish Seamstress have been so inflammatory and outright defamatory that I feel compelled to address them here head on.

In particular, Cidell of Miss Celie’s Pants has made some outrageously untrue allegations, with a pretty clear intent to tarnish the Selfish Seamstress’s hard earned reputation. She recently posted an entry suggesting that she, The Slapdash Sewist and I met up for a fun and amiable supper, and went so far as to insinuate that the Selfish Seamstress is “not actually selfish”! Obviously that claim is utterly ridiculous.  Were it true, the name of this blog would simply be “The Seamstress,” which it clearly is not, and which, by the way, would be a very uninteresting blog title. Selfishness is right there in the name; it’s obviously a core value.

So allow me to defend myself by explaining the evening’s events from my point of view. It is indeed true that I was in Washington, D.C. And it is indeed true that I had supper with Cidell and the Slapdash Sewist, if sitting at the same table against your will while consuming comestibles during the evening hours constitutes “having supper with.” What happened was this: I was walking by myself in the city on Friday evening when I was suddenly accosted by two gorgeous women clothed in lovely and flattering hand-sewn garments. They grabbed me by each arm and growled, “We’re going for pizza whether you like it or not. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll come quietly.” Of course you know that the Selfish Seamstress is both scrappy and belligerent, but her weapons of choice are verbal barbs, insults, and sarcasm, which are of little use when being physically manhandled by two freakishly strong fellow seamstresses. Cidell is particularly formidable- although she claims to be a modest and average 5’5” on her blog, in real life she is probably closer to 6’3” (as should be clear in the photos below), and possibly 6’4” if you count her awesome hair. (Both she and the strawberry-tressed Slapdash Sewist have jealousy-inducing hair, though I would never say so to their faces.) Suffice it to say, the Selfish Seamstress’s hand-to-hand combat skills are sadly deficient for dealing with such a situation. So, finding myself in a strange city being attacked by a pair of incredibly chic sewing thugs, I had little choice but submit to their demands.

After thusly “escorting” me to a great pizza place, they immediately dove for my handbag. They grabbed it, tore it open like a pair of super cute, well-dressed vultures, yanked out all of my fabric (as a sewing enthusiast, I make sure to have spare fabric on me at all times in case of emergency. Don’t you?) and gleefully cackled, “We’ll just hang on to these for you.  Thanks for the ‘presents,’ sucker!” (This remark was especially stinging as the Selfish Seamstress does not believe in presents unless she is on the receiving end.) Again, what choice did I have?  I’m pretty sure they had pinking shears hidden in their coats.

As for the rest of the night, I spent the first half of the evening glaring at them as they issued threats, as you can see here:

I believe that picture was taken shortly after the Slapdash Sewist said something that sounded like, “Despite my vegetariansim, I have every intention of eviscerating your cat and eating her raw gizzard as a mid-afternoon snack.”* I spent the second half of the evening trying futilely to escape from their menacing and evil clenches (shown here with yogurt):

Finally, with little warning, they released me back out onto the street.  Angry and confused, bruised and battered, fabric-less, and with a belly full of wild mushroom and goat cheese pizza and frozen yogurt with pineapple, I made my way back to my hotel. I breathed a sigh of relief upon reaching it, thinking that the nightmare ordeal was over and I could put this all behind me.

Little did I realize that the worst was yet to come in the form of subsequent vicious and slanderous blog posts intended to shatter the Selfish Seamstress’s reputation as a prickly and self-absorbed loner. Fortunately that is the kind of attack against which I can and will defend myself. So for the record I would like to make it very clear: No giggling or secret sharing occurred during that encounter, no mutual admiring of each other’s dresses or blogs was done, no interesting and engaging conversation was shared, no discovery of lots of non-sewing stuff we had in common was made, no warm hugs were exchanged, and most of all NO FUN WAS HAD.

That is all.

*It is possible that I misheard the Slapdash Sewist’s statement at that moment and what she actually said was something more like, “Does anyone want to try a slice of my vegetable pizza?” but I can’t be sure. We were seated near the bar so it was a little hard to hear at times.