Virtual Valentine to Mom

Mom and Dad

This Valen­tine Day’s week­end was a time to remem­ber Mom. My mem­o­ries were trig­gered by the sound of sewing shears cut­ting through fab­ric on the din­ing room table. I was cut­ting out pieces for a med­i­ta­tion cush­ion, using a fab­ric rem­nant from cur­tains Mom made us years ago.

Remembering Mom’s Craft Skills

My mother was a remark­ably tal­ented seam­stress and tai­lor. She loved the chal­lenge of visu­al­iz­ing and then exe­cut­ing com­plex sewing pat­terns, such as the French cou­turier design­ers’ pat­terns that she would buy from Vogue. Her friends admired her fash­ion flair and skill at cre­at­ing multi piece out­fits, like the suit shown here.

Look­ing back, it’s hard to believe that she made me a Chris­t­ian Dior suit with a cape, as my back-to-school out­fit for sec­ond grade. Except for its yel­low satin lin­ing, the suit was very aus­tere — com­pletely inap­pro­pri­ate for school­yard play — and prob­a­bly too severe for a child to wear to church. I had no fash­ion sense, but learned to adore the way the cape could soar like a bird’s wing or Superman’s cloak. I’d pump the swings as high as they could go, or jump down from tree branches, just to make the cape bil­low and flash its bright yel­low lin­ing.

Remem­ber­ing Mom while cut­ting fab­ric for a zab­u­ton

Unlike the other moms we knew, our mother sewed pro­fes­sion­ally while rais­ing six chil­dren. Peo­ple would come to our house so she could tai­lor their suits (she didn’t have her own car). Shortly after giv­ing birth to her sev­enth child, Mom re-entered the work­force and became a bank­ing pro­fes­sional. From then on her sewing down­shifted to a seri­ous hobby, reserved for spe­cial occa­sion out­fits.

Our child­hood mem­o­ries are steeped in images of her sewing, the sounds of the machine and the shears slic­ing through lay­ers of fab­ric. She may not have inter­acted with us as much as we would have liked, but we under­stood how ded­i­cated she was to her craft. She was pas­sion­ate about sewing, even though she never said so explic­itly. (She was more likely to ratio­nal­ize it as a money-sav­ing endeavor…)

We trea­sure the mem­o­ries of her gifted hand­i­work: the Easter out­fits, the new clothes for school, gowns for proms or wed­dings, and later, chris­ten­ing gowns for her grand­chil­dren. Sadly, there are few pho­tos of the cloth­ing she made for the peo­ple she loved.

Learning from Mom

Mom taught me to knit and sew when I was six. No doubt it was a tac­tic to dis­tract me while she tended the younger chil­dren, or worked on dead­line for someone’s promised out­fit. No mat­ter her moti­va­tion, I’ve always been grate­ful for her lessons. Given parental anx­i­eties today, it’s hard to believe that she encour­aged me to use her sewing machine when I was just 6 years old…

For the first 30 years of my life I sewed or knit­ted almost every­thing I wore, from blue jeans to dresses and out­er­wear. I also made my brides­maids’ dresses.

From our New Eng­land homes, I had easy access to woolen mills; could buy fab­rics and yarns at out­let prices directly from the pro­duc­ers. Mom loved going on those fab­ric shop­ping expe­di­tions, dri­ving across rural New Hamp­shire in search of woolen mills.

It’s been a long time since I went on a fab­ric or fiber shop­ping adven­ture… It’s been way too long since I did any sewing.

Dusting Off Those Crafting Skills

Last week I tried to mend a gar­ment and dis­cov­ered my Pfaff sewing machine was in dire need of a tune-up, after sit­ting idle for years while I focused on a West Coast career. Luck­ily I found a great repair ser­vice for this vin­tage machine, and it was all tuned up and back home within two days.

To relearn my sewing skills, I’ve begun work on a med­i­ta­tion cush­ion using mate­ri­als on hand. It’s been an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence, relearn­ing how to use this machine, how to rewind the bob­bin or select the right presser foot for the task, and how to exe­cute things I’ve long since for­got­ten, such as how to insert a zip­per for a pil­low cush­ion. It’s also caus­ing my fin­gers to move in unac­cus­tomed ways, to exe­cute pre­cise tasks like thread­ing a nee­dle — remind­ing me that my fin­gers aren’t as dex­ter­ous as they used to be.

Assem­bling a knit­ted sweater this week­end

I’ve noticed a change in the qual­ity of the writ­ten instruc­tions that accom­pany the sewing pat­terns. For exam­ple, my pat­tern says, “Insert the zip­per.” Pat­terns writ­ten years ago would have explained how… Luck­ily, I’ve got some old ref­er­ence guides that describe alter­na­tive meth­ods (e.g., for gar­ments ver­sus pil­lows), so I was able to insert the zip­per with­out hav­ing to rip it out and start over.

I’ve also resumed work on a knit­ting project I began a few months ago, com­mit­ted to fin­ish­ing it before winter’s end. As the photo shows, I’ve embarked on the trick­i­est part: seam­ing the pieces and attach­ing the sleeves to the body of the sweater. If all goes well, this project will be done this week.

Thanks, Mom, for shar­ing your love of sewing and knit­ting. They bring me joy — and remind me of you when­ever my hands are occu­pied with fiber crafts.