ASS Guru Sunday: Name Badges

It's Laura's turn to offer wisdom to the wary and advise on the delicate political minefield that is name badge swaps for sewing events. 

Dear ASS Gurus
The last sewing event I went to had a ‘name badge’ swap beforehand. Everyone made a name badge for everyone else, and then everyone gushed over how wonderful everyone elses name badge was. Mine was fluorescent pink and yellow hexies with rainbow candy sparkles and an appliqued octopus swordfighting a kangaroo on it. It was really …. “special”. Or so everyone said. I’m worried about the same thing happening again - so, here’s my question: what do I do if I don’t like my name badge?

Annonymous in Anapolis

Being known for my tact and diplomacy, I took this one.

Dear Annonymous,

First of all, congratulations on your discerning taste and resisting the cult of the hexagon. Hexagons are truly the devil’s shape - it’s no coincidence that they have 6 sides and Beelzebub’s number is 666. Secondly, there are a number of ways to get out of this depending on how committed you are to your cause. I’ll start with the most time consuming and work my way back.

My first instinct is to use the “my dog ate it” excuse, because I have already done the background legwork on this. That is, getting a dog and blogging about it eating unsanctioned items. If you haven’t done this, you will need to get (or borrow) a dog before Sewing Summit and post about it on any social media you use. Secondly, smear your name badge with meat, or cut a small slit in it (not too big as it needs to look like scissors were never anywhere near it. Stuff some liver treats inside the slit and get your dog to work on it. (I’d suggest pulling the offensive rainbow sparkles off first as they may be a choking hazard to your dog). Remove the hideous appliqued reindeer off and throw  the whole thing through the wash on the roughest cycle. If it’s too clean, do a bit of tea-dying so that it looks vaguely like dried dog saliva. Then make yourself a nice name badge, take the scungy one to SS and wave it around lamenting how beautiful it was and how you can’t wear it.

If you are allergic to dogs (or fear that two of us turning up with the same story may be suspicious), I’d suggest that you officially change your name to “the quilter formerly known as [symbol]” by deed poll. Alternately, pick a name from a marginalised ethnic group, make a name badge and explain that you changed your name in solidarity. If you feel bad about this, you could make your NEW name badge on the back of the rainbow sprinkle giraffe one.

My third suggestion has to do with location. Location, location, location is the key, as any good con-artist real-estate agent knows. Let's face it, your name badge looks like dog poo and where does dog poo belong? The bottom of your shoe. You can glue or staple (depending on the thickness of your soles - I'd recommend not stapling it to your sole while wearing the shoe just in case) your name badge stapled to the bottom of your shoe and explain it as critical to your unique sense of style and modernity. To really convince people of your creative bent, you may have to dye your hair purple and wear something like this:

(Or this if you are Katy. In-joke, sorry.)

Alternately, you could pretend ignorance and sew it to the INSIDE of your clothes and say you thought that was wear the name labels were meant to go.

Finally, if all these seem a little too much work, or too mean (where is your sense of commitment?), remember that misery loves company. Make a really fugly name badge for someone else so you don’t have to suffer alone.

That's all I have time for this week. I have to go and hunt down my rainbow sparkles and Spongebob Squarepants applique motifs to get moving on making Danny and Katy's Sewing Summit nametags.

Regards

Laura 

ASS Guru

PS. No fabric was harmed in the production of this post. I was PLANNING to pose Melody with a piece of fabric to look like she was eating it, but she saved me the trouble. I turned around just in time to rescue my diamond-English paper pieced star from her jaws. Little minx.