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Aunt Norie’s sewing room

By Eleanor Mckee - | Aug 12, 2009

Another voice out of the past.

She, remembering those tough days when their worlds came crashing down (remembering like it might have been yesterday). Those days were very harsh indeed, no government handouts as we’ve been seeing. But that’s why we are seeing such. Great lessons were learned by all in those days, especially by our government.

Anna said she learned to sew on her mom’s old Singer machine with the foot pedal. When their sheets wore thin in the centers, her mom, like all moms, tore off those stronger outside strips and made pillow cases out of them. Those soft, worn centers were used for bandages and soft cleaning rags. Sometimes, Anna said, mom had her make dish towels out of those strips.

She added: “But tell your readers the actual bust (it was also called) was not the beginning of all of this frugality and saving, not wasting anything.”

She’s so right. Our forefathers, our nation (back then), was not a wasteful land.

Anna also takes the sewing room back with these tips we forget to mention. Our moms, and us later with our families, actually made most of our clothes, with seam allowances to be “taken in or let out” as we grew so we could get more wear out of them. She would make a wide hem, then let it down as we grew taller and even added a facing to the hem so it looked like it still had a good hem in it.

Then there was the trick with the pleats, which were used a lot. The pleated skirt with pleats all the way around had a center front pleat in a straight skirt, for more action like running. Remember, girls had to wear dresses to school and you didn’t want your knees to show.

Oh and those pleats could be narrowed, or “let out” if one got too chubby. There was also extra length on the waistband itself for that very purpose.

Today’s folks can’t even begin to imagine a world without all of the shopping centers when it came time to get ready for another school year or the ease of laundering all of those school clothes. Oh, if we girls could only have worn slacks or jeans. But we had fun, too.

Bye now. Pray for our leaders now and do count your blessings. God Bless.