Hemming

I wrote earlier about sewing as a frequent activity in my childhood household. My Mom and my paternal Grandmother, Tatjana, certainly made clothes because they were thrifty. But they sewed primarily because they were crafty.

Tatjana measured the evenness of my Mom's skirt lengths carefully. Hemming is an art. The wearer must step into the very shoes she plans to wear with the skirt, and then she must stand perfectly still as the hemmer moves around the skirt.

My Mom usually wore her skirts at a length of about one-half-inch below the knee. This skirt looks a tad longer than that.

Suburban Chicago, April 1963. Mom and Tatjana are in the gray-era living room. Tatjana had very long hair. She usually twisted her braid—which reached to her waist—into a matronly bun.

It's not too early to start planning the warm-weather wardrobe.

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.