"Some of your intestine has gone bad, and we have to cut out the bad part and sew the two good ends together, " the physician explained.
The result was a big mess of plastic that looked like the someone attempting to sew for the first time.
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Dr Keasling and his colleagues scour the world for suitable enzymes, tweak them to make them work better, then sew the genes for the tweaked enzymes into a bacterium that thus turns out the desired product.
Once the problem of handling fabric has been solved, the next question is how to sew it into the right shape.
At the Century Tailoring factory, another 800 workers cut the fabric and sew 1, 300 pairs of trousers and 750 jackets a day.
Then imagine different pairs of hands trying to sew the quilt together, pulling one bit in one direction, another bit in another.
She tells of how, at a corporate golf day shortly after she was appointed, one senior executive ordered her to sew the buttons back on his shirt.
"These workers sew the clothes that earn the country foreign currency, so they deserve better, " said Kalpona Akter, executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, a non-profit group.
New Orleans "Indians" are black people who march in the Mardi Gras parade, wearing 100lb (45kg) dresses that they sew themselves throughout the year.
This time they did not even try to sew up the summit agenda together in advance.
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One solution, being promoted by a company called LifeShirt.com, based in Ojai, California, is to sew all the necessary hardware into your clothes.
In the evenings after school they sew and help maintain her machines.
Sony's got some wonderful ideas here at E3 2011, but the company's left quite a few threads for journalists to sew up -- what's the battery life like?
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With a very few exceptions, we simply don't cut and sew clothing much in the United States anymore.
"I didn't really know how to sew, so some of the bikinis turned out a bit weird, but it was a good learning experience, " she said.
It appears that they're trying to sew up a growing rift at the appeals level.
"Chinese people put quite a lot of value on 'face, ' " says 23 year-old winner Cheng Pei Quan, who earned the nickname "The King of Collars" because he can sew 95 collars an hour, a third more than average.
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Their members worked for the airlines, bottled fruit juices, and even sew costumes for movies.
As well as embroidering the loved one's name, some also sew on a piece of their clothing or a photograph.
But she recalls picking up from her mother not only how to sew but also a source of inspiration: the remnants of cloth made for one-of-a-kind garments that were sold at flea markets.
It's up to you to sew it, but it's up to the others to use it.
Fortuna Silver also set up a business for local women to sew and stitch safety vests and safety suits for the local miners as well run their own sewing business.
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Additionally, Afriyie Poku, winner of the Emerging Designer Competition at Charleston Fashion Week, taught himself to sew.
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She's been known to sew buttons, remove stains and even catch you on the way out the door to stop a stocking's run in its tracks with a dab of clear nail polish.
Emin's own touches are everywhere, from porcelain ornaments of cats, which she collects, to well-worn sofas that add a more personal feel to the space and on which she likes to think, draw and sew.
Growing up, I always took my allowance to the thrift store and came home with armloads of secondhand items I would rip, sew and remake into something all my own.
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