Life Without a Sewing Machine
This is not a story about a seamstress.
This is not a story about someone who wants to be a seamstress.
This is not a story about talent and motivation.
This is a story about how sewing machines can really screw with you.
My learning to sew period began with home economics teacher, Mrs. Seebach, 1956 era. Girls took home ec. Say it as one word. The boys took shop. One word. Many things Mrs. Seebach taught me still, seventy years later, are my ways of doing home ec stuff. For example, always have color on the plate, level the measuring cups with the backside of a knife, maintain meticulous sewing habits starting with pinning the pattern expertly on the cloth.
The machine I had for years and years kept me in a marriage. Damn machine! It was a gift from Santa shortly after my junior high home ec classes. I really took to sewing and made many of my clothes. I graduated to Vogue patterns and still recall a black coat dress of heavy fabric I made with big buttons. The Christmas I received a brand new machine in a maple cabinet was splendid. The small upstairs room in our home had become the sewing room where I had been pedaling away on Mom’s treadle machine. My new beautiful machine sat in front of the window overlooking the community college and my dreams.
This machine was the only piece of furniture I took to Chicago after marrying my first husband. Shortly after the October 1964 wedding I returned home to my parents with a blackened face. Yes, I was physically abused. However, I still question why I returned to him. Mom said, “You kept saying you loved him.” I think I was loving my sewing machine and couldn’t just leave it. How dysfunctional and deranged was I! Damn sewing machine!
It feels good to type that!
And so I had this machine for years, sewing draperies, clothes and then the maternity tops that hid pregnancies in the 60’s and 70’s. Why did we hide the bump? Why did we think a flouncy full blouse hid anything? Nowadays it’s spandex the baby.
More than once did sewing projects not get finished. I recall a white elephant I took to a party - an unfinished cocktail dress in a box with the pattern and pieces cut out. It was satin fabric, white and light blue. Unfinished but off my
to-do list.
And then there were the half-done maternity tops that carried from one pregnancy to the next. This scheme of getting pregnant one more time was not motivated by the incompleted maternity clothing, I hope. One can only wish that the subconscious is more discerning. I remember one top I sewed with a rope-like tie under the belly so there I was, a balloon shape reinforced by a bulging baby with a snug tie under the bulge. And it was my favorite! Could that have been a premature spandex the baby?
This sewing machine became vintage while in my possession. It was given to an acquaintance who collected sewing machines, or so she said. How many folks collect sewing machines? In 2013, I wanted to be free of all things that required finishing! I wanted to roam and free spirit my awakenings.
* * *
Mom passed away in 1997.
Mom’s treadle machine, which had been Grandma's, became mine. And such a supreme working wonder. I recall mending one last item for Mom in her final days in the retirement home. She was visually impaired with macular degeneration, but we were able to thread the machine and treadle away.
I regret my impatience now.
The machine was shipped with a few other pieces from Iowa to Texas. The machine was in my truck bed for some unremembered reason. My friend had an errand to run.
“Just take my truck,” I said.
The machine rolled around in the back and a couple of the drawers flew out.
He went back to retrieve them, but they were nowhere to be found.
I attempted, by giving one good drawer to a woodsman at a craft show, to replace the missing drawers. I never heard from the woodsman or saw him again.
The machine with its three holes became a depressing eyesore for me. Mom would never have allowed this wonderful working marvel to be in such disrepair, although missing drawers would not affect its ability to stitch.
I sold it, as is for $50, to a friend that made contraptions out of sewing machine parts.
Mom/Grandma’s beautiful machine was dissected and the body parts placed in newer working items. Sounds like resurrection to me or at least a treadle replacement donation bank. Now that is a bit more positive than I originally pondered. Grandma’s machine parts are alive and moving in a new apparatus.
Year is 2013, the year of roaming reckoning.
* * *
I don’t sew anymore. I haven’t bought a pattern in decades..
However, I bought a sewing machine in a WalMart for $88 a few years ago simply because I could. I bought it for the nonresponsible reason that a Brother sewing machine at $88 has to be the best deal. And the sewing machine void in my home should be filled. I had no intention of using it immediately. I just thought that I should own a sewing machine.
Shoulds can be damning.
I used it twice. Once for sewing the curtains and seat covers in my children’s bookmobile and once for sewing bags for my native American flutes. I recall vividly where I was sitting/living in both instances when sewing these projects. My recollection is alarmingly scaringly specific.
Following these projects, back into the box the machine went, into the guest room closet, into the flood waters of July 4, 2025, never to be reckoned with again.
Gone.
I shall not replace it. I am not mourning the loss. I am somewhat relieved that I don’t have to feel guilty about its nonuse.
This was a therapeutic story.
I have been therapeuterized.*
This is healing.
This is all true because I have learned, truth is scarier than fiction.
I reckon the roaming is reemerging.
*potentially misspelled I am told. Obviously, wordcheck doesn’t have my dictionary.
