The beauty of sewing now and then

I just love patterns. To me they are a special gift just waiting to be opened.

I have forever loved vintage everything, dishes, fabric, cars, books, you name it I love anything old. I have been told on more than one occasion that I remind people of someone from the 1940 & 50's I totally take that as a compliment. (insert a huge grin) What a great era in history, the way of life was so much simpler, not easier by any means, but more, more.... What's the right word I am looking for.........not as complicated. No video games, no texting, no 24/7 TV with 5000 channels to choose from and certainly no tween rock stars that your 5 year old daughter wants to talk, act and dress like. You grew your on vegetables, raised your own chickens and a trip to the city was a big treat. (if you were a country girl)

Ladies wore dresses and hats and cute little white gloves on Sunday morning. You uses everything you had, even the flour sacks to make your clothes. You saved the bacon grease to make gravy & cook with and you canned every vegetable or fruit you could get your hands on for the coming Winter months.

One of the most significant difference between now and then is that most people, especially country folks, made their own clothes. There wasn't any huge Super Target or Walmart or malls to run to when a dress was needed. You cut out your patterns & fabric and made it.

I have had a love for fabric ever since I was a little girl. My mom made all my clothes just as her mother had made for her and my great grandmother had made her. We couldn't afford to run out to the department stores in the big city and buy expensive clothes. If you wanted a new dress, shirt, pants, skirt, you made it. My fondest memories of time spent with my mom were at the fabric stores, looking through the huge pattern books and marking pages and comparing this outfit to that outfit, me running to the large horizontal filing cabinets and searching for the exact pattern number and the correct size. Then the best part, looking for just the right fabric.

I also spent hours sitting under my mom's sewing machine playing with my dolls as she sewed and sewed. I loved the hum of her sewing machine. She would play her old records and in the Fall she listened to the college football games on her old radio.

Mom would tell me stories about when she was growing up in Texas and how they would save all the flour sacks because they were made out of the prettiest floral fabrics and if you wanted to make a dress that you would have to buy the same printed flour sack until you had enough of the same fabric for your sewing project. Oh, how I wish I had some of that fabric. When my great grandmother past away in Texas my grandmother and her sister went to her house and took special items that they wanted to share with the family but my grandmother didn't even think to grab all of the lovely fabrics my great grandmother had stacked in a large dresser in the main hallway.

At the time I wasn't sewing and I wasn't even considering taking up the hobby. In fact, I detested even the idea of sewing because during junior high when I was 14/15 years old I took home economics for two years and the teacher knowing how well a seamstress my mother was analyzed every stitch I made, every button hole, every zipper......everything. She graded me harder than any of my peers. I struggled to pull a B out of the class.

Now 20 years later I can't image my life without my sewing machine. Which by the way, is the one and only sewing machine I have ever owned. Woolworth in the Southland Mall was going out of business sometime in the late 1980's. It was a retail company that was one of the original American five-and-dime stores. My mom bought me a basic Singer Sewing Machine on clearance for about forty dollars.

That machine sat in its box for 16 years and one day I decided I wanted to start sewing and I haven't stopped. The sewing I do now is not out of necessity but out of enjoyment. I find great passion in creating my works of art with my sewing machine. I only wish I had more time to dedicate to this lovely art form.

The picture below shows a great treasure I have in my home. A dear couple we know inherited this beautiful New Home Sewing Machine. They already had inherited a gorgeous sewing machine and had no use for two. I was the first person they thought of when deciding what to do with this beautiful machine. I had no idea what to expect when they called and we walked over to their house. The second my husband and I saw it we looked at each other and said YES! So for a hundred dollars we gained a beautiful treasure that will now be passed down in our family. It is #15 Fancy Handwork model, new it retailed for sixty five dollars in the late 1890's, early 1900's. The company was established in 1860 in Orange, Massachusetts.

The details on the machine are exquisite, nothing like the boring white molded plastic sewing machines of today.

I ask my friend if she would write what history she knew about the machine, what relative had it and how and where they lived. I keep that hand written treasure in one of the lovely drawers of the sewing machine.

Photo credit: All Poster, ISMACS International Sewing Machine Collectors' Society