Bedfordtimesregister.com - The Way It Was #1,053: Mom always had soul for sewing, knack for knitting

by John Straka
My mother died at age 96 in 1987. She was what I guess you would call a seamstress. In her day, children went to school until about fourth grade, just long enough to read and write and make their First Holy Communion. Then they went to work.

Mom worked in a little storefront shop that sewed sub assemblies used to make finished garments such as men's suits. She and the other girls sewed sleeves, lapels, collars, etc. that were later assembled by tailors. That system avoided having to pay union wages for the work the girls did.

In a time when labor unions were trying to organize those little shops, the girls were at risk of being attacked by union organizers, so the boss loaded them into a truck and brought them out to a farm in Maple Heights where they slept in a hayloft. Of course, they thought that was great fun and didn't understand how serious it was.

That was how my Mom began a lifelong career of sewing. I remember she had a foot-powered, industrial-sized machine that got lots of use. She sewed curtains, pillow cases, aprons, quilts, doll clothes, children's clothing and even made wedding dresses and bridesmaids' dresses. One time she made a jacket out of deer skin, and when I was a little kid, she cut up an old overcoat and made warm house slippers for the whole family.

I recall the time she made an apron for someone, and I took it to work to have a fellow worker deliver it. That lady showed it to other women in the shop, and very quickly I was getting orders as ladies asked if Mom would make aprons for them. The material cost about a dollar and I was selling them for $3 each. I still remember how pretty they were, made out of a checkered material in a variety of colors.

Mom did lots of alterations, shortening sleeves, moving hemlines up or down, and turning shirt cuffs front to back to greatly extend the life of a shirt. She would make children's dresses out of adult dresses, discarding worn parts and using the good parts. If a stain or tear showed up in the middle of a useable piece of cloth, she would cover it with some kind of decoration, and no one could see what was underneath.

She made many feather quilts. I was learning geometry in high school and I would mark the quilt with geometric patterns, leaving narrow spaces through which the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner hose would carry fathers into every pattern compartment.

She was the proud grandmother of five girls and enjoyed sewing for them. She also did other needlework, crocheting, embroidery, knitting and tatting. She seldom used scissors to cut thread, but simply used her teeth to bite off a length from a spool.

I was amazed at how many stitches it takes to make a nice quilt by hand. Such handmade quilts make long-lasting gifts. I have three she made for various occasions about 40 or 50 years ago.

Mom made lots of booties, bonnets, hankies, pot holders, tablecloths and embroidered pillow cases. Shortly before she died, she had given up her needlework until one day she decided to try keeping her hands busy instead of just sitting idle. She cried when she just couldn't do it anymore!

In addition to helping make feather comforters, I kept her sewing machine in top condition by cleaning, oiling and adjusting it once in a while, putting on a new belt.

Of all that work she did, two pieces stand out in my memory. One is a crocheted tablecloth that must have required thousands of stitches, and the other is tatting, where she cut some of the individual threads out of a pillow case or handkerchief and then connected the remaining threads in a different and very pretty pattern.

As a boy and as a young man, I learned that to make a feather quilt or comforter, the Bohemian women in our neighborhood started by raising ducks or geese, saving the feathers until they had as many as were needed, and then inviting friends over for a series of weekly feather stripping meetings. Every little feather had to have the stiff spine or quill removed, by hand, leaving only the soft fluffy down that filled pillows and quilts. But that's a whole other story.