Admiring Creativity of Past

As we celebrated Mother’s Day recently, I was reminded of all the beautiful handwork projects created by the women in my life during my childhood. It seems that few women of today continue to pursue these interests. Possibly this is because so many women now have to supplement the family income by working outside the home. Some women are the sole breadwinners and provide the only income in the family.

As I was growing up, it seemed to me that all the women had some sort of work in their hands whenever they were sitting down. The creative possibilities of that generation were endless. In the evenings or whenever my mother sat down, she most usually had something in her hands that she was working on. She might be darning a pair of socks (who does that now?), sewing on a button or embroidering a pillowcase.

However, Mother did crochet and often sat with yarn in her lap while she crocheted an afghan or perhaps a baby cap or sweater. I loved to watch her with her thin metal needle or sometimes a large wooden crochet needle. All this depended on what she was making and what type of thread or yarn she was using.

I still have some pillowcases that my dad’s mother made. Most of Grandma Stephens’ projects were fancy and colorful. In making the pillowcases she had cut out a portion from the hem up into the case itself and had filled in that space with crocheted bells. They are beautiful and I’m sure making them was a very tedious job. She did seem to enjoy using her hands for projects such as this.

My grandma also tatted some. I remember watching that little white shuttle as she flicked it in and out and came up with a stitch. Mother often did hemstitching on various garments. She made gingham aprons and hemstitched them. To me, the most difficult and exacting work was doing cutwork on a tablecloth or maybe a smaller item.

As far as I can remember I do not recall anyone in my family knitting. A left-handed friend of mine tried to teach me to knit once. I simply could not follow her directions. She kept telling me that it was very simple, but I did not find it so.

When the new fancy sewing machines first appeared on the market, another friend purchased one. She was an excellent seamstress and I was in awe of all the decorative stitching she did on the dresses for her two little girls. The collars had zigzag designs on them and they were just precious.

My efforts at sewing were a little less successful than those of my friends. A friend gave me a pattern for overalls for little boys and I decided that I would make some for David. Not knowing that corduroy had to be cut with the nap going the same way, the overalls looked as if the material were two different colors. In addition, I had to rip the seams so many times, all the nap was worn off by the time I finished them.

Over the years, I did learn to do a little better, even though most of my garments looked homemade rather than handmade.

5-20-2009
#435