FABRIC CRAFTS
YOUTH
I am not sure exactly when I learned to sew; I can recall doing dresses for my Barbie Doll around junior high and I was making dresses for myself by high school. Mom had this little black Singer Featherweight, with ALL the attachments, and I learned to sew on that. For a while, she had a treadle machine that she could sew on in one corner of the living room without putting interference patterns on the TV, but it disappeared while I was away at college.
COLLEGE
I made some of my original college wardrobe (still got remnants of some of those in my fabric stash!) and my first quilt for a bedspread in the dorm. It was a crazy quilt with no batting, the crazy-applique done on long strips of muslin wound on a hooked rug frame.
As a theater major, I got pressed into the costume shop some, but costume design never really grabbed me. Making scenery flats and the occasional backdrop still involved fabric, and was much more of an engineering challenge.
Sometime around here, Mom discovered a book by Adele Margolis, called How To Design Your Own Dress Patterns. She was so impressed with it, that she bought me a copy and sent it to me at college. Definitely one of her better investments: it tells how to take measurements for precise fitting of pattern slopers and how to modify the patterns you have to the design you want. It is long out of print and not likely to be found except in estate sales; there is a newer book on the same topic that Hancock Fabrics (among other suppliers) is carrying which looks just as good.
SINCE THEN
Mom gave me the Featherweight when I got married. I’ve still got the attachments and the pocketed table that came with it, but the original machine collapsed somewhere around 1970 and it was cheaper at the time to trade it in on a newer Featherweight than to get it fixed. I do still have that machine, despite drooling inquiries from the guy who does the maintenance on it.
I made my first quilt with a batting in it because we needed a bedspread and
Kingsize spreads cost a mint. It took me 3 years, (most of one of which it sat
on the closet shelf while I recovered from burnout) but I did finally
finish it. I did several more quilts through the early 1970’s, some as
baby-gifts, until we moved to Little Rock and I got a full-time job. I finished
the two quilts I had in-progress at the time, and then did not do any more
quilting until the year Sharon Amanda was born. I invented my first quilt
patttern in that time period, and I’ve done three quilts using it: one baby
gift, one regular bedsize in dark/light companion prints, and an
about-six-foot-square monoblock version done in strip-piecing that sat around in
a bag for about ten years before I finally figured out how I wanted to pattern
the quilting on it. [Not that I've FINISHED that quilting, but now that I'm retired maybe...]
I sewed a lot of Sharon’s clothes when she was little, but at about age 5 she discovered the joys of Shopping and didn’t want any more home-made dresses. She has recently, however, discovered the cost-effectiveness of home sewing and now lets me make her church dresses, pajamas, and a bedspread/throw pillow combo. She’s not interested in doing it herself, however.
Along with the wardrobe sewing and quilting, I’ve made myself a couple of purses, some Christmas decorations, eventually some clothes for Sharon’s Barbie dolls, and various window drapes.
Arkansas was pretty good country for craft fairs, and I always enjoyed trolling
for new quilt blocks there. I very nearly actually bought one a while back at
the Arkansas Territorial Restoration; it was a Log Cabin version done all in
black and white prints. Very impressive, but I didn’t have $200 in my madmoney
stash that day, so had to let it pass. I also worked part-time at one of the Hancock Fabrics stores in Little Rock for
almost two years; I think I bought more fabric the first five months there than
I had in the previous five years. While I was there, I wrote my first booklet about quilting.
Since retiring from the Highway Department, I'm trying to set-up a
small business doing quilt designs and self-publishing instruction
books for them.
I've been doing quilts for charity auctions and raffles for a dozen years, as well as making quilts for gifts and my own use.
Update of 9 November 2012