This tweet by Miriam Posner reminded me of my mother’s sewing skills, which were considerable:
One thing my mom used to do every year is sew me an outfit for the first day of school. Bless her, but I won't subject my daughter to that.
— Miriam Posner (@miriamkp) August 31, 2016
My mom may well have made my sister a first-day-of-school dress, I don’t remember and I wouldn’t have been paying attention to that. But she certainly made dresses for my sister. She made pajamas for both of us. And my parents collaborated on Halloween costumes.
When I was quite young I was fascinated mom’s sewing. When I heard the rhythmic sound of the sewing machine I’d go and watch her sew, the needle moving up and down, up and down, the motion of the foot (I believe that’s what it’d called) as she advanced the cloth through the machine, the “snip!” of the scissors when she cut the thread, all of it fascinated me. How she set the machine up, but, alas, I can’t describe it because I don’t remember it very well. I think there were two threads the interlinked during the sewing. Something called a bobbin. The foot-pedal she used to regulate the speed.
Later on, in my late teens, before I went off to college, she taught me how to sew buttons on and how to darn socks. I went off to college with a little sewing kit, a bunch of needles and small spools of thread in various colors, a darning egg, an ugly red and white plastic one, not like her elegant wooden one, and several spools of darning cotton. And I actually did sew on buttons for many years, still have needles and thread, though it’s been several years since I’ve sewn a button on a shirt. I darned my socks for years as well, but gave it up, two, possibly three decades ago. It was just easier to buy new socks. A couple three four new pairs a year seemed to do it.
But, late in my teens, one thing bothered me. Mother never sewed anything without a pattern – she had lots of those. Why did she always need a pattern? Is making up your own that difficult? For some things, maybe, a fitted shirt or blouse would be tricky (shoulders). But for a basic dress or pajamas? It seemed to me that anyone who had the skill mother had should also have been able to do some original work.
That never made sense to me. Do liberated women make up their own patterns? Or have they given up sewing altogether, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But someone has to know how to sew. We can’t leave it all to machines and professional tailers and seamstresses, can we?
Mother did have considerable sewing skills. I think that using a pre-made patterns keeps a connection with a larger community. In her case, I'm sure she thought of a community of women. All the pattern books, drawers of patterns, models of garments --- all these things in the store connected the work of women's hands together in a harmony of design. Seen and unseen, these women were their own force of nature in the larger world that denied them the status of something as basic as having a credit card account in their own name. "Dressing the world."
ReplyDeleteYes. A community of women. Just when were women able to get credit cards in their own name?
DeleteNot sure. Mother was affixed to Father's account.
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