A Room in Which to Sew

My mother taught me to sew. I remember that she was big on making samples of different sewing skills--a zipper, buttonholes, seams of all varieties(French, flat felt), which I made all the while wishing they were going into something wearable rather than just to show I had mastered the skill. As a small child I spent long hours in fabric stores with her WHICH I HATED. Those were kinder gentler times when mothers sewed and girls wore mostly homemade items. Now that is no longer true--but I DO love to buy fabric. When I started high school Mrs. Vermaas picked up the baton in home ec. We had a sewing room and a kitchen attached by a room where we tried on our sewing projects for fit. Of course, we balked at taking off the necessary clothing to try on the new things believing that a BOY could come charging in!! Unlikely, but nevertheless a fear. Mrs. Vermaas said, "If they haven't seen it, they won't know what it is!" I guess she was referring to what we would be exposing in that fitting room! As luck would have it, that high school sewing room is now MY 7th grade language arts classroom. I can still feel the aura. The fitting room got absorbed into an elevator shaft when the building needed to become handicapped accessible. The old kitchen (oh how I loved that room!!) is a regular classroom. I also took all manner of 4-H sewing classes making aprons, simple pants, dresses (we called them shifts), and ultimately a tailored wool suit under Joan Bunderson's tutelage. So now I sew in this room here in the old original part of the farmhouse here at Provident Heritage. I invested probably 50 hours of my mortality in refinishing the floor, and then I painted the walls butter yellow. It's most pleasant.