My Mom Frances Swanson really did teach me to sew. I was in 4-H from an early age of 9 and finished the hand sewn apron in very small black and white checks with very small tedious stitches all lined up a micro millimeter apart. I received a blue ribbon at the Weld County Fair that made us all smiles. I moved on to learn other things about sewing; dresses, bathrobes and pajamas. Who makes pajamas anyway unless you are learning to sew?
Life happened and sewing was put aside until I had a little girl who looked so cute at age two or three in little dresses with rick rack tacked along the edges. Jamie was the first little girl I knew who had a pants suit out of the most awful brown plastic-like alligator textured material that would barely take a stitch it was so rubbery. This was about 1969 when pants suits were just making a break through. Women had worn mostly dresses before that. My little girl just barely two was running around like a women in a brown double breasted rubbery pants suit. Whatever was I thinking?
My Mom got a job working in a retail store owned by her best friend Sally. That was pretty much the end of my need to sew for Jamie. Her Grandma waited patiently until the end of each season where each day Sally would mark things down 10% every few days. Mom picked up the most delightful outfits for Jamie at a fraction of the cost. These pants suits were uptown, kind of like little dresses over pants. She had great new clothes a lot of the time up until be moved to Texas when she was about 6.
It was hot in Texas where we lived right on the border in Brownsville. I should say, down right dripping wet humid. None of our polyester clothes that worked great in Colorado were bearable in Texas. I sewed lots of hideous loose fitting, gathered at the top dresses, for myself and bought some great seconds from the Carter outlets and other not such great quality items right along the border on the Texas side. We got use to wearing and using things that were seconds, as there was little else to pick from there in the early 70’s unless you had an unlimited budget, which we didn’t.
I made throw pillows, placemats, tablecloths, drapes and hardest of all; a pair of tennis shorts for Stan, my new husband. He must have thought I was nuts. Well I did it. It was complicated, for me, and at the time it seemed a logical thing to make as he really liked to play tennis and I really like him.
Stan’s Mom, Alice was a real sewer too. She visited and I guess wanted me to make sewing my career along with cooking and keeping house for her special son, Stan. This was in 1973 or maybe 1975 right after John was born when she made a visit to check things out. She bought me a really nice hardwood sewing cabinet with great drawers on both sides for my lowly Singer sewing machine, so I wouldn’t have to work on a card table anymore. I still have that sewing cabinet, but long ago got rid of the Singer and moved to an Elna. This cabinet was so nice that in the 80’s Stan, after we moved back to Colorado and Stan started his own business, he used it for a desk in our living room as it was finished on all sides.
While Alice was visting in Texas, she bought me every book at the same place she bought the cabinet, that the Singer dealership had in stock. She figured I would know how to make curtains and drapes, sew in some sleeves, gussets, buttonholes and things you couldn’t imagine I would ever do.
She also decided to sew a little bit herself. I had this old iron baby bed that I had re-welded one of the sides to make it lower. so it looked like a love seat. My Mom, Frances, had bought some five inch foam to make the seat cushion. It was covered in the great paisley drapery fabric in trendy colors for the 70’s of avocado green and harvest gold with swirls of my favorite rust and browns. She had made me drapes to match for our home in Colorado.
Jamela on third birthday – 8/1/1970
Well Alice decided to improve on that deal. When she decided to do something there was no stopping.
We found a used baby bed mattress somewhere in Brownsville along with lots of velvet baby blue striped fabric at one of the stores carrying fabric seconds. Stan loved blue. His eyes were robin egg blue and somehow he needed blue in his life. I was more a yellow-brown person with orange highlights and red hair to match. It was a dilemma. So baby blue velvet it was.
Alice was good at this. She had probably upholstered everything in her house and more. She was from New York and knew the ropes to find things and had the skills to make them work. The baby bed mattress was deeper than the cushion my Mom had made. It was almost too high when you sat down on it.
Alice added piping around every seam and ran a great big zipper on all the pieces. It was amazing, now that I think back on it. You would have thought that she visited for a whole summer, but I bet it was only a week. She complained a lot as she sewed about the machine, tools, zipper availability and the like. That is probably why she bought me the new sewing table.
John 2 months old – 4/15/1975
We had that baby bed deal for a long time in our harvest gold carpeted living room. We still have the frame.
The only thing that Jamie remembers about that baby bed – sofa is that I would hide her and her brother’s Christmas presents under it, with clear instructions not to go under there and touch the presents. They were easily in sight through the iron bars of the bed. She convinced her little brother when he was barely two to sneak under there and carefully open the ends to see what was in the gift.