I learned to sew from my Mom. She was a 4-H leader for over 20 years.
She loved to sew, mostly clothes for her daughters and mending worn shirt collars for my dad along with the ebb and flow of his size changes on his pants as he gained weight and lost weight. Every evening she would sit in the living room with some type of needlework in her hands. She had a basket of supplies next to her lounge chair. A big ole safety pin was attached to the side of her chair that where she slide her special little scissors so they were handy.
She turned out a bundle of work over the years. Pillowcases were embroidered with colorful embroidery thread. The edges were crocheted with white cotton to add to the decoration. These were white pillowcases in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s as colored fabric for that purpose was not used until much later. The fabric was so stiff made of pure cotton that it had to be steam ironed to get out the wrinkles.
I still have a couple bags of that embroidery thread that I use to tie the quilts I make. She had every color in the rainbow.
Mom also made doilies while sitting in her lounge chair. Some were circles that she sewed together and some she went round and round until they were big enough to put on an end table. It was strange what women did with these doilie creations. Some laid flat for a space big enough for a lamp or candy dish to sit on. Then they added rows and rows that included extra crocheting. The trend was to starch these stiff with sugar water and lay them on a broad to dry pinning the pattern so it was perfect. The ones with the extra crocheting where dryed so the pattern made scallops. It was a sight to see when I think back on those silly stiff scalloped doilies. Big dust collectors too.
Once Mom brought out the yarn to work on she was in pig heaven. She crocheted up and down the rows to beat the band. As we started to get married and move away she took on crocheting afhgans like there was no tomorrow. She had several patterns she loved and made many of those. One pattern included two colors of yarn at the same time. It was ribbed and showed mostly one color on one side an another on the other. She made them for each person on the family: daughters, son, grandchildren. When she finished one she would set it aside until she visited the person so she could give them their gift. It seems that we had a beige/brown one and a blue/cream colored one. On the handle of her sewing basket that was parked permenantly by her lounge chair she had looped through a scrap of the yarn from each afhgan she had made for her family members. She enjoyed showing you these scraps of yarn and taking about the person who received this special gift. She had a story behind each one and told you why she had picked certain colors for each person.
When John was little about 2 to 10 we moved back to Colorado and decorated his room with red, white and blue. The wall paper was attached to the upper two-thirds of the wall. It was line drawings in red and blue of stamps with a white background. We were going to paint the botton with bright blue, but decided it was way-way too bright and decided to just add a strip of blue wainscoating with the bottom painted white. It was really cute. I don’t know how I had time to really think about this decorating, but I did. I wanted a different afhgan pattern for John as I had seen so many of those double colored ones before. I requested the chevron pattern in bright red and blue for his bed. We still have it as we saved it all those years even if his room changed colors many times and now he had move away and has a family of his own.
When I was in college I started skiing. Mom made me several ski sweaters with all the patterns where you change colors of yarn. A couple were in mauve/pink and one was angora in bright blue and white. One she embroidered flowers on the bottom with crewel yarn. It was quite intricate. It was so long that you would sit on the embroidery. Not very practical, but interesting. What a lot of care and effort she took to make all those things.
My Grandma – Anna Swanson, always had a crocheted white table cloth on here dinning room table that she had made. I never saw her working on crochet projects with the intentity that Mom did. Maybe it was because when we saw her we were there to visit so she kept her work put away.