Mom’s Memories Page 8 – Learning to Sew

When I was a kid, my mom used to make us clothes and such all the time.   I never really gave it much thought at the time.  I thought that’s what all moms did.  She always knew how to make clothes, so that’s what she did.  She made shirts and pants and dresses, as well as pajamas and quilts and furries. 

Page 8 from Mom’s Memories

But she didn’t always know how to sew, now did she?  Fortunately for us, my mom wrote a little blog about how she learned to sew.  Not really.  My mom never even tried to work a computer, much less a calculator.  My favorite memories about her skills with technology was when my brother got a calculator.  He tried to show her how to work it.  He instructed her to type in the first number, then he told her to push the + button.  At that, she exclaimed, “It ate my number!!!”  She gave up after that.  She stuck to pen or pencil and paper for both mathematical problems and writing her stories.

This post is based on the pages she wrote when she realized her memory was beginning to fail.  Now these pages are getting the treatment that they deserve – digital immortality.  I thought page 8 was a good one to go with, since she was such an avid seamstress.

It starts out with talking about how she would sneak to use the sewing machine at first to make doll clothes.  She had to be oh so careful so she wouldn’t break a needle and get in trouble.  Had she broken a needle and didn’t want to get in trouble again?  Or had she just known that breaking a needle would be trouble?    She must have shown some responsibility and promise, because Grandma let little Betty Lou make some sheets when she was around 8 or 9 years old.

Enhanced photo of Betty Lou Bucklin when she was at Hathaway High during the 1946-47 school year. She was around 13 years old in this photo.

She progressed to making overalls for her younger brother Austin, and by the time she was 13 she was making most of her own clothes.  Lots of those clothes were made from the infamous feed sacks that she picked out from the Farm Supply in Jennings.  (She went along with my Grandpa when he was buying feed.)  I thought I’d post a photo of young Betty Lou from that time. 

But there is more family history to this fascination with fabric.  Her mother was Myrtle Phenice Bucklin and she was a seamstress, too.  Hence the sewing machine in the house.  She herself had learned from her mother as well.  That would have been Daisy Keys Phenice.  Again, Daisy learned from her mother Martha Cook Keys.  Martha was born in England and had a special talent for sewing.  She actually learned her craft in an apprenticeship in London.  After that, in 1860, she went to Paris, France, to gain more knowledge of the field.  This led to her opening up a successful dressmaking shop in London.

Years later Martha got married and had five children, all the while continuing to run the shop.  Daisy was the oldest daughter and she would help out in the shop.  I wonder what tips and techniques that my mom learned from Daisy had been passed down from her own mother who learned them in London or Paris?  It makes me wish (somewhat) I had learned bit more of those skills when I was younger.  The best I do is replace buttons on shirts and pants.  I know just the other day my brother was hemming his daughter’s homecoming dress.  My sisters did learn how to sew, but I’m not sure that it really caught on with them. 

But nowadays everyone just buys their own clothes.  Who has time to make their own?  My mom grew up in the Depression.  It was a different time.  When she talked about making clothes out of feed sacks, it didn’t seem like she was trying to make us feel sorry for her.  (Though sometimes we thought she was: Gunnysack Dresses) She got a lot of satisfaction out of making something nice out of something that could have been discarded.

There’s something to be said about being satisfied with what you have.

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