My Mother's Sewing Machine

 

It was in the house before I was born, bought sometime in the mid nineteen forties. Mum spent hours and hours at that machine making most of the clothes for the two of us until I moved out on my own. I loved to go with her each fall to pick out fabric for blouses. I liked all the different colours and the fact that my clothes were different from anyone else's. There were turquoise fabrics, rusty brown ones and forest green ones. Some were paisley and some had small flowers on them. Sometimes we bought striped material and sometimes I wore checks.

Mum would bring the material home and the first thing she did was to wash it. Once it was dry she would pull a thread out to determine the true grain of the fabric. I don't know whether grain is the correct word or whether I have transferred that from my passion for working in wood, but I know that orienting a pattern properly on the fabric was very important. She would then lay out the fabric on the dining room table and place the pattern pieces in such a way that she could get the most out of the fabric. Next she took the tissue paper pattern out of its envelope and, if it was a new pattern she trimmed the patten pieces down to the lines being careful to cut around the notches so she could later mate pieces to be pinned and sewn. Sometimes if the patterns were really wrinkled, she ironed them to flatten them out.

When she was satisfied with how she had laid out the pieces she pinned them to the fabric using steel dressmaker's pins and then cut them out. The next step was to put the pieces in the order in which she would sew them and do any basting that was needed. She was pretty quick with a needle and thread. I remember she was always slightly cross that in every single project she had to pull out a seam. Even though she had sewn most of her life she never got to the point she thought she should be where a garment went together flawlessly.Many nights after I went to bed I could hear the sound of her machine humming away in the room across the hall from my bedroom.

I think she would liked to have passed on her love of sewing to me but she never complained when I professed to hate Home Economics, the subject in which she earned her university degree, and grumbled that it was unfair that girls couldn't take shop.

I did do some sewing. It was hard to escape that in the compulsory Home Economics classes of the day and Mum was a big support. She helped me with my projects. She never sewed anything for me but she gave me the benefit of her years of experience showing me an easier way to tie a knot in the end of a thread or how to thread the sewing machine correctly. She gave me tips for getting the seams straight and told me about the importance of basting and pressing as I went along. I sewed what I had to sew and happily gave it up as soon as I could.

Mum's sewing machine remained in her house until she sold the house when she was in her early nineties. I told her I wanted it, although I had no reason to since I did everything I could to avoid sewing. Besides I already had a portable machine willed to me by my grandmother. It was a more modern one than my mother's. Somehow I felt I needed to take care of her machine as she had taken care of it all her life.

When my mother died a few months short of her ninety fourth birthday I held onto the machine. Many things that had been important to her during her life were not important to me and she understood that. She cleared out all of her silver and china because I wasn't interested in them. Why then did I hold onto the sewing machine which really didn't interest me either? Maybe if was because I respected all the hours she had spent making clothes for me. Maybe it was a symbol of her consummate skill or maybe it was the object, more than any other, which made her who she was.

I know that once we let go of our possessions we cannot expect anyone else to treasure them the way we did and yet, I wanted someone to take the machine and appreciate it in a way that my mother did and I did not. So, it stayed in our basement. I made a few attempts to see if anyone wanted it and even decided not to give it away to someone who wanted it because I didn't think she would take proper care of it. I looked on kijiji a few times for similar machines and it seemed they were a dime a dozen. Nobody was going to want this old machine and yet I could not part with it.

One day I read a Facebook post from a friend requesting sewing machines for an NGO that works with women in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their mandate is to educate children and to teach women skills and advance them micro-credit so they can support their families. I called the number and and the founder of the organization and her husband arrived the next day to collect the machine.

  

When we brought it out to the car her face lit up. She told me they loved to get older machines like this one because they were sturdy and simple to maintain. She told me she could tell it was in excellent shape. I gave her all the accessories and the manual which Mum carefully kept with the machine. We had to bungie the trunk down because it wouldn't close.

As the couple drove away I felt at peace that the old machine had finally found a dignified home. My mother was a teacher and, to me, it is fitting that the machine should make the trip to Congo to be used by some women I will never meet. I think Mum would have been pleased that her cherished machine went to a place where it could help make the lives of some women and children just a little bit better.

When I bought my piano the person who sold it to me said, “Sometimes I think it is our function to hold onto something until the right person comes along to accept it from us.” I think she was right.