Aunt Norie’s Sewing Room
Just visiting at a garage sale, we were, I guess, sizing up and marveling at the condition of this old treddle sewing machine, a beautiful cabinet, made of real wood. Oh, how they used to make them, drawers down each side to hold threads, bobbins, shears, just everything you were going to need right at your finger tips. The machine still sewed perfectly beautiful perfect stitches, and people did not even seem to notice it.
Another lady stepped up, with an excited little, “Oh look, just exactly like my mother’s that I learned to sew on.” Then a gentleman stepped up with, “Oh, I still have my mother’s. I wouldn’t part with it for no amount of money. I work with leather, and it sews right through even that.” Then he added, “and I sew a lot of heavy canvas. My wife the other day was sewing lace curtains.”
They took several of us way back. I began sewing on Mom’s old white rotary sitting on the very edge of a chair and my tippy-toes just touching that treddle. You pushed it back and forth, up and down, and a belt from it turned the machine and made it sew.
Hat pins of all lengths and sizes are collector’s items now. I have an oldie, handed down, that was my mothers. Ladies wore hats, and some had to have two hat pins to keep them on. They wore their long hair piled high on their heads in braids, rolls and buns.
Their hats with wide brims, feathers, etc. never fit their heads. They just really sat on top of their heads fastened on with these pins. Some had wide, floppy, wind-catching brims, or real sun-shading brims. The hat pins went through the hat, on through the hair, to anchor them down
My old hat pin stays in a pin cushion fastened around my sewing machine. That old oversized head is always at the ready to grab, to guide and turn seams as they go under the presser foot as I sew any garment or seam, a real time-saver.
The next time you think you are having a bad day, try stepping back to give another person preference in traffic, or in line in the store. Their surprise and appreciation will give you the lift you needed.
God bless you all. Love.
— Aunt Norie, P.O. Box 265, Tonganoxie, KS 66086; auntnorie@att.net