When I was a young teenager, my mother taught me how to sew. She had made almost all of her own clothes as a teenager, and saw this skill as an essential part of womanhood.
I thought otherwise. As a clumsy, impatient 13-year-old who preferred climbing trees and playing football with the boys, I was endlessly frustrated with the fiddly, slow, detail-oriented nature of sewing. Crooked seams, parts of the garment sewn together that weren't supposed to be, and wild thread tangles drove me to the point of tears many times.
To add to the pain, the garments I had to sew were my absolute nemesis: dresses. My qualification for clothes was simple: could you climb a tree in them? Dresses failed this test, therefore to me were completely useless.
The one aspect of sewing that provided some enjoyment was the design. I liked visiting the fabric store to pick out a pattern and pretty cloth to go with it. But the making part involved hours of pain, with my only consolation the compliments I sometimes received on my homemade creations.
My poor mother, after seeing me through to what she considered an adequate level of skill as a seamstress, finally allowed me to give it up. I never returned to making garments, though in the years since I've been thankful for the skills that allow me to sew on buttons, hem trousers, and fix holey seams.
Shortly after I quit sewing, my mother upgraded from her antique Singer machine to a slicker, newer plastic model, and the Singer was relegated to a closet. For years after I left home my mother offered it to me, but I was ambivalent. Finally I decided I would take it, but it was another year or more before, on one trip home, my mother got my father to carry the machine out to my borrowed car and put it in the trunk.
After that, it sat for several months in a corner of the dining room. This past week, the purchase of trousers some 5 inches too long compelled me to drag it out. To tell the truth, the whole process of threading it, filling a bobbin, and setting it up rather frightened me. I contemplated some lazier options, like taking the trousers to a tailor, but lack of funds prevailed.
The case was more battered than I remembered, and the heavy metal machine inside more antique-looking and covered in dust. Two ancient cardboard boxes held a scary-looking buttonholer and an assortment of bobbins and other mysterious metal parts. The instruction booklet, along with the various pages that had separated from it, were also inside, but I was surprised at how naturally the once-automatic process of winding the thread around the various bits of machinery to the needle came back to me. When I inserted the electrical cord and plugged it in, the little light popped on, just like it always had.
I put my prepared trouser legs under the needle, lowered the foot, and gingerly pressed the foot pedal. The familiar clackety-clack ensued, and a neat hem spilled out. A few moments later, I had hemmed trousers, with a surprising minimum of pain and suffering.
I put the machine back in its case with no small sense of satisfaction. Sewing, my once-nemesis, and the machine I'd loathed, were now my servants and my friends. Thanks, Mom. I'm sorry for all the agony I put you through while learning, but I'm grateful you persisted. I may never make a dress again, but at least I can sew a hem.
