Stitch in time

My friends here where I live are an odd hodgepodge of various types of people and ages too. One of my favorite people is a woman in her 70's who lives in a little town just north of here. Her home is in the historic district just a block off of a traditional small town downtown. Her little Sheltie guards the front yard with her fierce yips.

This past Friday, we spent the day together at her home. She was teaching me how to sew. It was incredible loads of fun spending time with her, learning from her, and eating her cream cheese and olive sandwiches.

When Momma was here, she went with me to buy a sewing machine and then helped me learn to thread it. She made a list of essentials and braved Joann's with me to stock my sewing box. We ran out of time though, before we got to have a full blown sewing lesson.

My grandmother Honey was a seamstress. An artist really. The clothes she made were perfect. My mother's wardrobe was the envy of her college friends, and all of it was made by Honey. My Barbies were the best dressed dolls ever. I still have most of the clothes she made for them including the wedding dress with layers of ruffles, the slip, the petticoat, the veil, and the flowers that had a little elastic band to help Barbie hold onto them while walking down the aisle.

Momma and Honey would talk me through their sewing, but I never did any hands on work with them. I have to do something hands on to really get it.

However, it did give me a lot of the vocabulary to start off my lesson with Mrs. S. Friday morning, I loaded up my machine, material, pattern, and all the notions and headed up to her house.

I knew that I wanted to be able to produce the end results of sewing, but I didn't know that I would enjoy the process so much. Part of that, of course, was the good company. But yesterday, while Guy and Papa were putting in the living room flooring and Lovely was drowning in projects for school, I sewed.

And I liked it.

Little Bird will have rompers and jon jon's. Princess will have a new winter coat. Guy and I will have cheesy matching pj pants. I even bought a pattern and material to make Bird's baptism outfit.

I have never been a crafty person. I don't visualize things well, and I'm terrible at knowing where to start on a project. But sewing connects me to the women in my family that came before me. It gives me a great reason to spend the day with Mrs. S.

It gives me a skill that will create things for my family and friends. I like that.

And the cream cheese and olive sandwiches. Those are pretty good too.