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Aunt Norie’s Sewing Room

By Eleanor Mckee - | Nov 29, 2006

Remember the old curtain stretchers? This is from a friend the other day as we chatted about how fast the world is moving. It really is a bit scary sometimes.

Even in those Depression days, almost everyone had a lace tablecloth and lace curtains. The curtains, you ordered from Sears catalog. The tablecloth, you or someone in your family had made or it may have been handed down from your great-grandmother.

They were crocheted from heavy thread and would last for several generations. It also was only used on special occasions (a folded tea towel often under a small child’s plate to keep the tablecloth from being soiled).

For those of you who have never seen the stretchers, I’ll just say be glad they are a thing of the past and that we no longer have to use them. However, they did a beautiful job — you never could have ironed them so perfectly.

Oh, we all had lace curtains. And if you had a parlor you had a pair on the glass doors of the parlor. Many farmhouses had a parlor. The home would have a pair of glass doors so you could close them to keep the everyday dust out and you would open the parlor on Sundays.

Now if you didn’t have curtain stretchers of your own, you borrowed them from a neighbor — and the lender often came along to help. It seemed the ladies had fun. It was an adjustable frame with very tiny sharp little nail points along its edge that you fastened the wet curtain’s edge to, then prop the frame up on the porch or the side of the house in the sun to quickly dry.

My friend’s husband would always say, “One would think those old hens were having a party,” and, indeed, we were. It was, and still is, fun doing something with a friend, she said.

Thanks for sharing those memories.

— Aunt Norie, P.O. Box 265,Tonganoxie 66086; auntnorie@bdc.net.