The Sewing Machine

The Sewing Machine

After searching stores and the internet for the perfect curtains for my kitchen and utility room I gave up and decided to make them myself. Believe it or not, it was sort of fun. I don’t sew often. In fact, I sew so little that I almost sold my sewing machine in the great-purge-of-2011 garage sale. My father bought the machine for me when I was in junior high school. He bought it from someone he knew who either owned a pawn shop, or had a connection to someone who did. I think he paid a whopping thirty-five dollars for it, but for someone as frugal as my father that was a dear price.

I was taking sewing in my Home Economics class at the time and the adage, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” was certainly applicable. The first sewing project I undertook on my new sewing machine was to re-make a pair of my father’s U.S. Navy white bell bottoms I found in his ancient footlocker in the closet under the stairs. The entire fashion foray was a frustrating fiasco. I remember staying up half the night (I wanted to wear them to school the next day) sewing and seam ripping and trying on and crying and cussing. My parents had gone to bed hours before and I cussed an adolescent blue streak, damning both the bell bottoms and the sewing machine straight to hell.

I never succeeded in re-fashioning those Navy issued bell bottoms, but I learned more in that sewing all-nighter than I learned in the whole semester of Home-Ec. I learned one must be patient to be a good seamstress. I learned following a pattern is easier than trying to wing it. I learned you cannot re-size a pair of pants just by taking in the seams. Perhaps the biggest lesson I learned that night was my parents were willing to let Miss Know It All make her own mistakes without saying, “I told you so.”

As frustrating as that first experience was I grew to love sewing on that old machine. I made clothes, cute clothes, from Simplicity and Butterick and Vogue tissue paper patterns. I made most of my college wardrobe following the fashion advice from Seventeen Magazine. The old machine followed me into my married life and I made maternity clothes and matching “sister dresses” that miraculously didn’t warp my daughters’ fashion sense.

I’m still using that old machine. Last night I made curtains out of a lightweight white canvas duck cloth that was ironically similar to the fabric in that long ago bell bottom debacle. Thank you Daddy, for giving me much more than a second-hand sewing machine all those years ago. You gave me the confidence to try new things – even if I didn’t know what I was doing. You taught me to keep trying even when I failed the first time. And, most importantly, I knew you always believed in me. Not bad for a thirty-five dollar investment.