A bit of history from my mother

Posted By: Ray AdlerAugust 31, 2023

It is always fun to hear your parents explain their perception of your childhood. Mom wrote the following story for me.

History is, according to Webster, past events, especially those involved human affairs. Why did they have to add, written in chronological order?

Your Grandmother Verna was not a great seamstress. She could and did so but, due to being blinded in her left eye at age 8, it was not her favorite thing. However, she taught me the rudiments of it at an early age. When I was a high school freshman, all girls were required to take Home Economics. That course included cooking and sewing.

I remember making a cotton dress and a pair of panties. There may have been other items which I have forgotten. While she was teaching me to make those items, the teacher also taught me to hate sewing. She taught me to sew well – I got excellent grades – the hate was incidental.

Every seam had to be marked in pencil. Then every sewing machine stitch had to be exactly on the pencil mark. If it wasn’t, I had to rip out the offending stitches, tie threads at both ends and re-stitched the place I had ripped. These threads also had to be tied. Much as I disliked it, sewing was one of the most valuable tools I learned in school. I continued to sew because I liked the results.

Then came marriage and eventually a baby. With the little one outgrowing an outfit soon after I put in the stitch, I learned to love sewing. After a file there was another baby and another. The sewing machine was used often. Sewing leaves a lot of bits and pieces of material. Indiana winters are cold; the growing family always seem to need more warm bedcovers. One solution was to piece comfort tops, buy cotton or wool batts and outing flannel. Then all three layers were knotted together to make warm covers.

One year when I was piecing a top, our young son wanted to piece a top. I gave him a small pile of cloth blocks I had cut, taught him how to sew them together by hand and he set to work. While I used a sewing machine, Raymond busily plied his needle and thread.

Soon he was asking for more blocks. His work grew to an impressive size for a little boy, but as you may guess, the stitches were not very solid. There seem to be only one solution. “Raymond,” I asked, “how big do you plan to make your comfort?” What a silly question!

He had already decided it should be big enough for his bed. When I explained that one that large needed sewing machine stitches, he was ready to tackle the learning process. I unthreaded the sewing machine, gave Raymond some lined paper and gave lesson number one. My pupil was an apt learner. Soon the needle holes stayed on the line, at least most of the time.

Time for lesson two: how to thread our sewing machine. We may have both been a little surprised at how quickly Raymond began sewing blocks together. “Mom, this is fun!”

Verna had music to practice, she was learning to cook and never seemed to be far from a book. However, she had quietly observed the sewing process and decided she’d like to join the fun. “Mom, I want to make a comfort for my bed.”

So I sent her off to the scrap bag so we could cut more blocks. Sooner than you might think, both children had pieced comfort tops large enough for double beds.

Of course that meant the next project involved knotting two comforts. The three of us worked together on that. Only one more thing to finish. Neither of the children were big enough to handle stitching edges on the sewing machine, so I think I did that.

They both took their comforts along when they got married. Check those edges, if you wish.

That was so much fun they both wanted to piece something the next winter. They also wanted to make Christmas gifts for Grandma and Grandpa Adler. The chair covers they made turned out to be an ideal solution. Those chair covers were used until they became quite shabby.

As Raymond grew, he had more outdoor chores and didn’t sew much more. Verna kept at it and became quite proficient in making dresses, suits or whatever struck her fancy.

What about third baby? Did she ever decide to piece a comfort? Be patient. I’ll try to answer that – sometime.