My Mom and my paternal Grandmother, Tatjana, sewed most of my clothes when I was a child. Mom even took a tailoring class at the local community college—in her spare time, ha ha—and she became expert at crafting suits and coats.
For many years, a sewing machine was a fixture in our home's Rec Room both before and after my Parents remodeled that area.
When Mom bought the modern Singer sewing machine pictured here, she and Tatjana moved Tatjana's old White machine to the basement. A few years later, the Singer traveled downstairs as well. The basement became a space where Mom could "get away" from everything and focus on her sewing. Best of all, she could leave all of the sewing paraphenalia—the pattern tissues, pins, tape measures, figure form, ironing ham, and so on—out in the basement without feeling, as she had in the Rec Room, that she should put everything away at the end of each evening.
I took sewing lessons beginning in the seventh grade, and Mom and I started to spend a lot of special time together in the basement.
Suburban Chicago, February 1966. My Mom's in the Rec Room, working on a cotton dress that I'll wear in the summer.
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Suburban Chicago, February 1966. Fittings never are fun, but hemming is a particular form of torture. Even my Mary Poppins doll, popping out of the Crown Royal bag, looks wary.
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