My sewing history

My mother has kept her sewing supplies in the same dark brown cookie tin since my earliest memory, which is now over 50 years old.  The tin probably contains at least some wooden spools of that vintage, now wound with brittle, dried-out Coats & Clark’s thread in several colors, assorted hand needles, and a tape 

McCall's 3584

.measure. Also a pin cushion; probably a tomato model

With these, she sewed on buttons and sewed up hems.  For real, from-scratch dressmaking, you have to go back a generation to my grandmother, whose knee-activated, table-hidden Singer is also still tucked away in my mother’s house.  But Grandma never taught my mom to sew, and my mom never taught me.

   

Could it be that Jewish women who immigrated to the US in the 1920’s associated machine sewing with sweat shops, and so never encouraged their daughters to sew? My junior high school friend Laura sewed some, and her Italian female immigrant ancestors might have treadled shoulder to shoulder with mine. The first sewing machine I saw in active use, however, belonged to Chris, my luck-of-the-draw roommate of sophomore year at college. She had a nice sturdy portable Necchi, and I can picture it on her desk in our dorm room. Chris was the country mouse to my city mouse; a common cross-cultural introduction at our upstate state school.

Some old pattern with front and back pleats.. in progress.

Chris was so bedrock American that her mother actually braided rugs. She also canned fruit, grew asparagus, sheered sheep and spun wool. Chris' father had built at least part of their house; perhaps the loft we slept in, overlooking the braided rug and the spinning wheel. I think that this degree of self reliance was unusual even for Tully, pop. about 800 back then, 20 minutes south of Syracuse. I visited for a weekend once or twice. My first up-close Republicans, judging by the newspapers they read. In any case, Chris sewed beautifully finished seams and perfectly turned, pointed collars.  Many years later, when I was pregnant, she sent me her home-sewn maternity clothes to wear.  Came in handy, too.

Butterick 5588

So I was inspired by Chris, and after using her Necchi to make an enormous womb of a stuffed chair for our dorm room, I went out and got my first machine. I bought a Singer 503  in the basement of the beautiful Pfaff sewing machine and fabric store in the middle of Rockefeller Center, near the skating rink.  Of Jetson-style, tapered design circa 1960, it was a trade-in that the Pfaff store clerks were glad to hustle out the door for $300.  It came with interchangeable cams that performed all kinds of stitches mechanically.  I’ve been buying patterns and learning by doing, off and on, ever since. 

I've owned three sewing machines now.  Two of them came to bad ends. The first, Jane Jetson model got swiped from my car when I foolishly left it visible on the back seat, parked in the vicinity of Macy's Herald Square. I was left with only the cams to remember it by. The second, a $300 Viking trade-in rescued from another Pfaffs store (follow the money), was caught needle-deep in water on the basement floor during our first-ever flood.  I replaced it with a flashier Viking; my first new machine. I never leave even the foot pedal on the floor now.

I can’t be sewing to save money.  Clothes made on the other side of the world can hardly cost more money than I can earn in equivalent hours. I just like to make things, to see and feel the potential hiding in bolts of fabric, to get away from the damn computer screen and do something low-tech but semi-high-skilled and produce something tangible, to escape from the demands of more typical, contemporary accomplishment. Sewing may not have been the absolute best use of my time. I admit, though, that making cute clothes for my daughters when they were little felt virtuous. Also fun.

Like sewers everywhere, I have fabric stashes that go back years, some of which -- it’s becoming increasingly clear -- will survive me. I still can’t resist a fabric store.  But fabric stores have gotten a lot rarer.  Here in the Jersey burbs, just off the NYC map, I can point out four places where there used to be a fabric store. When So-Fro in the mall closed, decades ago, I pounded on the shut gate like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.

Now, even if all you want is a certain color thread or seam binding like Woolworth’s used to sell in every neighborhood, you’re out of luck or stuck online. If you want it today, you’ve got to schlep to Joanne’s, twenty minutes west of here on the edge of the countryside, where sewing stores remain and my demographic thins out. 

I don’t bump into Jewish friends in fabric stores.  I’ve met one or two who sew, curtains or even clothes if they happen to be hard to fit. But they’re rare, too.  Look at the 25 different English-speaking women you can find demonstrating the use of the narrow hem foot on YouTube.  No Jews. Black, Hispanic, lapsed and practicing Catholic and Protestant women are shopping with me at Joanne's, but not my people, much. Nor Asians, come to think of it. My sister tells of an Indian friend who bought fabulous fabric for her daughter’s wedding, but she actually went back to India to buy it.

I don’t really care so much -- I can be New Jersey’s only Jewish sewing blogger of 2013 --  but a) I’m probably not -- Come out, come out, wherever you are; and b) some of us Jewish women may be getting lured by the new online courses, social media contests and Project Runway. (Is that still on? They’re promoting patterns with it.) Some of us may enjoy just doing something slow, some like to show off.  Somebody’s got to be buying that blue bolt of cotton Hannukah print. There’s also a recent book of Jewish sewing crafts -- I actually contributed to it -- and I hear Joanne’s is moving into a bigger store, one strip mall closer.