Sepia Saturday: Two Flags and A Twist

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt brought to mind the many women in my family who could rightly be called a seamstress, whether they were making clothes and quilts for the family or sewing for a paycheck from the WPA during the Depression.  The approach I WANTED to take was to show you my mother’s exceptional work, but I could not narrow the field:  just too many pictures of the drapery, slipcovers, bridal gowns, doll clothes, costumes, coats, not to mention almost every stitch of clothing I ever wore to school. 

Instead I’ll tell 2 stories about my mother and sewing.

Momma sewing something pink

(1) As long as I can remember there was a sewing machine in the house and a project in the works.  If Singer, Viking, and New Home offered an odometer, it would have turned over countless times.  One Saturday afternoon when I had just turned 16, Momma was busy at the sewing machine.  Like most kids my age, I was eager to learn to drive.  I asked Daddy to give me a lesson.

His response was a mix of irritation and condescension.  “Teach you?  You want to drive?  You don’t need a lesson – you just get in the car and drive.”  Really?  Is that how it works?  I knew there was no use arguing with him.  He had other things on his mind.

Like a hole in his tennis shorts that needed repair. 

 

Daddy in tennis shorts and dress shoes --
what kind of look is that for cutting the grass?

He held his shorts out to Momma who was busy ripping out a seam or sewing a hem, maybe attaching a button, who remembers?  “Can you fix this seam?”

She looked up at him and said, “You want those fixed?  Sit down here at the machine and sew ‘em yourself.  You don’t need a lesson.  You just sit down and start sewing.” 

Big sigh from the Big Man.  “Go get the keys,” he said, waving the white flag.

A garden flag for spring
sewn for Wendy by Mary Jollette

(2) It was Christmas 1992.  Garden Flags were a hot new item.  And they were expensive.  Flag material, however, was cheap and in plentiful supply at local fabric stores.  Surely my sister would be happy to receive a number of hand-crafted garden flags fresh from my sewing machine.  On Christmas morning, Mary Jollette opened my gift and burst out laughing.  When I opened her gift to me, I realized the joke:  she had sewn flags for me too. 

Poor Momma.  She said the weeks prior to Christmas were the worst in her life as she struggled to keep two secrets.  Constantly she fretted over the chance that a casual comment or an errant scrap of fabric would give one (or both) of us away.

Please visit my friends at Sepia Saturday who undoubtedly will keep you in stitches. 

© 2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.