For love of sewing

“Mom, my corduroy quilt top is almost finished,” my daughter Erin exclaimed into the phone.

She has been working on it off and on for a year and a half. After starting it in Alaska, she is finishing it in Colorado. This is the same daughter who greatly disliked sewing in seventh-grade home-ec class at Colony Middle School. It was too structured. She wanted to be more creative.

I’m just glad she grew up to share my love of sewing. When our phone conversation ended, I continued to sit and think about my love of sewing.

One day as a young girl, my mother suggested my sister and I cut out material for a Dresden plate quilt like her Aunt Carrie had made. We had a few remnants of fabrics. We made a template and cut out several pieces of material in the basic shape. But something came up and our lesson ended with a plan to work on that project “later.” Later never came. I still carry around that little black box containing the seeds and dreams of a beautiful quilt.

The next project was my idea, clothes for my Barbie doll. I don’t know where the pattern came from, but I cut out material and sewed several items by hand. They weren’t as fancy or as professional as store-bought, but I enjoyed making them.

When 4-H Club started in Glennallen in the mid 1960s, I signed up for sewing, cooking, woodworking and electricity. Sewing was my favorite. By this time, mom had purchased a sewing machine for the family through the mail. I made a clothespin storage holder and a pincushion, and was so happy when they won ribbons in the 4-H division of the Alaska State Fair in Palmer. By the time I took home-ec in high school, I was sewing a lot of my own clothes.

I remember one project in particular. Another girl and I showed up to class with the exact same materials for a dress/vest set. Unknowingly, we had both ordered our material out of the Montgomery Ward catalog. The local store had some yardage, but not to our liking and driving to Anchorage just for fabric was unthinkable. She made the blue print dress with solid blue vest and mine was green. We each looked best in the colors we selected, at least that was a comment I heard when we modeled our dresses at the Mother/Daughter Tea.

I kept that sewing machine humming through high school — pants, skirts, shirts, dresses, a tie for dad, a shirt for my boyfriend. By my wedding, I felt confident to make my dress and help my sisters with their bridesmaid and maid-of-honor dresses. My husband bought a sewing machine for me as a wedding gift.

After we married, the tradition continued with curtains, bedspreads, bathrobes and even a swimsuit. Even when we lived without electricity, I still managed to sew. One winter I used a treadle machine to make a blue jean quilt. Another time, I babysat and was paid with use of electricity for my sewing machine.

When my children were little, I enjoyed sewing Halloween costumes for them. One year I looked high and low for camouflage material to make my son some pants like his papa’s. My timing was just a little off because the next year camouflage pants for boys were all the rage. When Erin was 6, I made the dress she wore as flower girl in my brother’s wedding. The blue ribbon it won at the Alaska State Fair that fall is still a treasure.

My sewing machine didn’t see much use for several years when my life was overflowing with family responsibilities, a part-time job and chauffeuring the kids to sports activities. But the summer Erin was 13, my desire to sew something was so strong I told her I’d like to make some clothes for her. She picked out two patterns and the materials. In two weeks of hard sewing I completed a dress and another three-piece outfit. She only wore these items once or twice before her tastes changed drastically. She preferred a new style that could only be found at the second-hand stores!

My son surprised me during his first year in college with a special request for a polar fleece jacket, which was a new and different challenge. A few years later I added a pair of polar fleece pants for use with all his downhill skiing.

My love for sewing came in handy with my teacher’s aide job at the Slana School when one year for the Christmas play I made costumes for a shepherd, Joseph, Mary and an angel. Another year, with a little help, I made eight poodle skirts of various colors and sizes for a 1950s-themed play. Some of the girls wore their skirts after the play.

But the biggest challenge was making 15 quilts — one for each grandchild — out of the clothes my mother wore during her teaching career. Even though they were tied, twin-sized quilts made with a simple rectangle pattern, that project took me 10 years of work, off and on. All the time and effort was worth it, though, when I gave the first one to a niece living in Fairbanks. Her two children watched as she looked at her quilt with a big smile on her face, pointing to certain pieces of material saying, “I remember grandma wearing that and that …”

All the sewing I’ve done through the years and the joy I find in creating things is even more special to me now knowing my daughter shares that same love.

Maraley McMichael is a longtime Mat-Su Valley writer and resident.