Sewing - First, Last and Always

My favorite hobby:

My first experience with a needle, thread and fabric was with my Aunt Corrine's rag bag and darning needles. She must have been desperate to find something to keep the three of us busy (Joe was too little then to join in the project.) I don't suppose we made anything recognizable, but we really had fun. I think Joy and I were about five or six and Herman would have been three or four.

I think we played with that rag bag more than once, and probably progressed to smaller-eyed needles. What we all remember most though is the time one of us carelessly 'lost' a needle in the easy chair. Joy's dad, my Uncle Eldon, plopped down in that chair to read the paper, and popped up just as fast. He was MAD! That was the only time he spanked us, and I think he spanked us all....including our friend Marchia who had the misfortune of playing with us that day.

The only person who could always find a needle in an easy chair was my husband. To this day I am VERY careful that I don't lose a needle, because it will ALWAYS be he who finds it.

My first real sewing project was a little dresser scarf to embroider. My Grandma Hammond was always embroidering pillow cases and scarves and she must have got this project for me. I still have it around somewhere. The sewing is bad, but I'm sure it looked good to me. I never finished it.

Through my youth I was always designing clothing for my dolls. There was a variety store across the street from my house, and calicos were about $.29 a yard. I would buy a quarter yard of several of them and then try to make pretty dresses. It was about then that I discovered that pants were not that easy to make!

At that time (early 50s) we girls all took home ec. My teacher was Elsie McCluggage at Woodruff High School, and she had us all make a card-table sized cloth out of Indian head fabric trimmed with hemstitching. For some odd reason, I chose to use yellow cloth with brown thread for the hemstitching. Those have never been my favorite colors, and I've always wished I had chosen something prettier. I got a B on the project because my knots were too big. It's been 51 years and I'm still using the table cloth.

My mother was the managing type, and always wanted everything done right. I would never let her teach me to sew, because I didn't want her to tell me what to do. I eventually decided to make myself a housecoat WITHOUT HER HELP. I'm sure she thought I was crazy, but I did it. I got a pattern that included piping and buttonholes, and I got the whole thing finished. I used that housecoat for years. It was some kind of symbol of triumphing over my mother.

For my graduation from Bradley University, my gift was a new portable Slant-Needle Singer Sewing machine. It was and is wonderful. I would be using it today as my major machine if it weren't for the fact that it didn't have the zigzag feature. No machine ever made better buttonholes.

I made all my maternity clothes and clothes for all the kids as they came along. Eventually I made daughter Robin's wedding gown, which taught me that I didn't know diddly squat about sewing a hem in chiffon.

Over the years I have made innumerable quilts. I like the hand piecing, but doing the actual quilting is too big a job, and I get it done by others. I've also made many large banners and such for our church, as well as a banner for the Sewing Guild, and I'm always surprised to see they still use it.

My most recent projects are purses made from silk ties, snuggly slippers, aprons, and girls' skirts made from old jeans with a ruffle of pretty cotton to make them flirty. Oh yes, I also finally made a sock monkey and have taught several sock monkey making classes. Several of my students had never sewn a lick, and it it's always 'interesting' to teach someone to knot a thread and how to make a running stitch without poking the needle down one side, pulling the threat taut, and poking the needle back up the other side. I never knew how much my left hand does when I'm sewing until I tried to teach someone the basics.

Today I have an awesome fabric stash. A year ago I thinned the herd by one third, but you'd never know it. I love those tubs and boxes of fabric! Going through one is like a trip down or up memory lane, and I'm sure the mental exercise has staved off Alzheimer's for me.

As any sewer can tell you, there is nothing as rewarding as completing a project that is so well done that everyone thinks you bought it. And it's so easy to forget all the projects that didn't turn out that way.