My singer Sewing Machine

“I can’t sew on a button,” my mother used to like to say. Consequently, we didn’t have a pin cushion nor a needle and thread nor a pair of scissors in the house. We didn’t throw the shirt in need of a button away, but kept it in a wicker basket with other items needing hems or buttons. I guess there was some hope that one day the fairy who sewed would visit us.

I never saw my mother’s sweet mother, Mame, sew or knit, either. On the other hand, Grandma O’Hara, my father’s mother, was a woman who could do everything. She showed me how, with a small scrap of cotton, a needle and thread and a little pair of scissors, to make an apron when I was still far too young to execute that task. I remember to this day how she showed me the way to weave the needle in and out, in and out, in and out three times before she pulled the thread taut. She was not sweet, but strong. I wanted to be like her.

I graduated from high school, got a job, bought a sewing machine from Singer “On Time” with my first paycheck. I took elementary lessons on how to operate the machine. It went forward and backward, and had a few attachments for ruffling, french seaming and such refined techniques. My intention was to pay off the sewing machine before my wedding, but I dragged the remnants of that charge account as well as the machine into my marriage.

The first thing I ever made was a ball gown for the Kappa Psi formal at Pharmacy College, when Bill was a Freshman. All through high school, I had to struggle with trying to appear modest at Catholic school concerts and proms in my borrowed gowns. We had a club at Vincentian Institute, my Alma Mater, called “Supply the Demand for the Supply (SDS)” to urge department stores to stock dresses for Catholic girls to wear to dances. All sorts of jackets and scarves and shawls were used, but they were not considered appropriate unless they were actually sewn to your dress. You see, it was an age when virtually every gown sold was strapless. And a strapless dress was deemed immodest. So, I was going to make a modest gown.

The pattern was a Vogue. The sleeveless bodice stopped at the hip, tightly fitted white taffeta all the way. The neckline was a cowl, covering up to the clavicle in front, and dipping dangerously in the back all the way down to the bra. The cowl was in tiny green and white check taffeta, as was the enormous bow, placed where the full tulle skirt met the bodice, over my right hip. Its wide streamers reached to the floor. I looked great in it.

When the pictures of the prom came back from the drug store, I realized that, sitting at the table, chatting with our friends, my posture allowed the taffeta cowl collar to drape in the most revealing way!  Anyone who has worn a strapless gown, stiff with stays that hold you in and up and tight as a drum, never had to worry about anybody seeing all the way down to her belly button! So much for the campaign for decency!

I still have that sewing machine. I have had it serviced only once. The rest of the time, I maintained it myself. It’s a simple Singer, the last model to have been built with a cast iron head. I have so many stories that belong to that machine! It has made cocktail dresses for my sister, my own and many other wedding gowns, costumes, slipcovers, drapes and maternity dresses to die for. There was a fabric store on Central Avenue above the Boulevard that sold fabulous remnants of Thai silk and wool crepe and damask and linen. I spent a lot of the grocery money there.

My sister Maureen’s best friend, Joanne Snyder Whalen remembered, sixty years later, as she and her husband, Mike, were sitting at my dining room table, a dress I had made for Maureen when the girls were still in high school. Yellow chiffon over taffeta, bateau neck, sleeveless, natural waist with full skirt over horsehair petticoat. Fields of daisies hand sewn all over the dress. Maureen was stunning in whatever I made, which made my lack of expertise disappear in the end.

There was one funny failure, having to do with a black velvet top that I was going to make and use with a white tulle bottom that had seen a couple of different bodices, already. It was almost ready, and Maureen and I kept saying,“It’s going to be beautiful, when it’s done.”

The doorbell rang. The date had arrived. We laughed our heads off. Maureen went to the closet, put on the pink taffeta brocade dress I’d made for another dance, put her hair up and was out the door in fifteen minutes, laughing all the way.

When my own daughters were in full prom and theater mode, I sewed up a storm. I hit the mark pretty well with the show costumes, but often missed the boat in choosing (without their busy selves being present) color and fabric and pattern that matched the daughters’ prom hopes.

I was really adept at maternity outfits. One good one was the lavender top and shorts that my best friend, Glor wore after I was finished with it. She and I were like Mutt and Jeff, but strangely, we wore the same size dresses. My blue flowered silk two-piece Vogue outfit that I had  made when I was pregnant for Laurie and Mickey was light as a feather to wear, and felt smart even when I was large beyond imagination! By the time my last two were incubating, John and Patrick, we girls who were expecting (now commonly using the word “Pregnant” instead of the fuzzy euphemism) were wearing one-piece, a-line maternity dresses. But, the most fabulous of all was the black Thai silk two-piece, with the bias-cut cap-sleeved jacket and the pencil skirt, just to the knee. It was a beauty! I still have that pattern, I think. I wore it during my pregnancy for Laurie, right up to the Easter Sunday a week after my sister Maureen’s death. Laurie was born soon after that. I don’t ever remember wearing that beautiful thing again, although there were plenty of pregnancies left to dress for.

We gussied up for our dinner parties, back in the ‘Sixties and ‘Seventies. I have no idea where I got the time or money to cook and clean and have everything set for guests to arrive at seven o’clock, while also sewing a new outfit to wear that night. I do know that my little eleven-year-old Maureen would still be in the kitchen at whatever o’clock to light the flambe’ dessert and carry it ceremoniously into the darkened dining room, for full effect. She is, today, a superior cook.

Before we moved to Grove Avenue, when we had just Maureen and Tricia, and were past due, waiting for our first boy, I was sewing lavender linen Easter dresses in size 18 months and 3 toddler. They were almost finished, left on the dining room table with the scissors and the pins and needles and thread while my attention was focused elsewhere (probably talking on the phone). My baby girls found the scissors and cut into little pieces the carefully stitched puffed sleeves that were all ready to be sewn into the little lavender bodices. Undone by the guilt I felt, having left an 18-month-old baby and a 2 1/2 year-old toddler unsupervised for long enough to mangle the puffed sleeves, I called my mother-in-law at work and asked her to come home. I said I didn’t feel well. By the time she got there, I realized that labor had started for our third child, but I hadn’t recognized it. Bill showed up soon, too, and we made it to Brady Maternity Hospital with 40 minutes to spare. Almost ten pounds delivered in less than an hour! We named him Terry. I never finished the lavender dresses.

The wedding gown I finished for myself on my way down to aisle to marry Bill has undergone transformations as our family brides have loved it enough to want it to be at their own weddings. We’re down, now, to some remnants of re-embroidered Alencon lace from my original  dress, but they still show up as part of a veil, or a little applique of something old. My wedding gown pattern was found in the attic in time for our daughter, Maureen, to remake it in a new fabric, and to use the Alencon lace exactly as I had. There’s a box in the attic now, with what’s left of that version of the Vogue pattern.

I’ve come to have a deep respect for the old sewing machine. A reverence, even. It holds a lifetime of memories in its long-lasting, cast-iron head. It stands, still, ready to serve.