The Sewing Machine

I haven’t sewn since 1990. That’s when I began working at the University Library. I no longer had time for a hobby, any kind of hobby, let alone sewing which can take a lot of time.

Instead of sewing, I turned that room into a space for kids going to University.

From my own experience, I need to have a sewing room before I can really sew. I need all those of my tools handy. I need to know that I can reach to my right for a pin cushion and a pair of scissors, or reach to my the left and open a drawer full of many bobbins, a sea of bobbins, and many coloured spools of thread lined up in the door, and seam rippers, and thimbles. I never have just one of anything. For sewing a person needs one of each size or colour or thread gauge.

I asked Greg to bring my sewing machine out to the lake. 

I set it up in a corner of the living room. It’s taken some time for me to remember where to find the back-stich lever, how to thread a bobbin, where that little screwdriver is to tighten the needle. 

I didn’t need think about that until the needle fell out when I was sewing.

My mistakes are what makes me remember that I need certain tools.

At first I couldn’t find a pin cushion. No seamstress reaches the age of eighty without having at least three or four pin cushions.

I was remembering that when I was in high school, I took Sewing 10, 20, and 30. 

When I had a young family I took “stretch and sew” lessons. Before that the regular home sewer not have material that would give and take like those pieces of fabric would. In the following decade, I went over to Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) and took their series of sewing classes.  Once I heard Halley Logan say she had taken the lessons at SAIT. What she learned there is what made it possible for her to run a successful clothing boutique. She could sell clothes because she could show her clients where they might place a hidden zipper if they wanted some kind of detail changed. She could talk the talk of Chanel trim, all the details that don’t come with ready-made clothes.  I didn't want to open a dress shop, but I wanted to know all I could about sewing.

I had taken a few classes at Relief Society as well. Once Dagmar Mollar taught a whole series of tailoring courses after which everyone who joined the class had created a beautiful professional ly tailored suit.

When my new machine came to the lake, it came embedded with all that history. I don’t know how old the machine is. I must have had it in the 1970s. It’s the machine on which all my girls learned to sew. I made bitty ball outfits when Harry Smith was running Bitty Ball for the 6 or 8 Mormon wards. One year I made all the Nativity Costumes for Primary’s Christmas celebration. The machine has surely been worth the price per article if I could measure how many have been produced on it.

And now the machine is back in the service of making face masks.

Hello to an old friend -- my sewing machine. 

Arta