In the Olden Days
In the olden days there was nothing to do but find the right person to give you the best answer for your question or your quandary. Generally that person was Mom. I knew that there was a rather large library in the town 12 miles to the northeast of us. I also knew that taking two small children into a new environment that had a lot of things to take, touch and pick up was not a good thing. I won’t even go into all of the places the kids could have and would have found to hide in. If it was about wall papering, baking, canning, butchering, dressmaking or quilting, the best was to wait until it was afternoon nap time for Carrie and Kevin and then call Mom. It was a good thing we were both on the same telephone line. The long distance charges would have broken the piggy banks. My adviser was with me through the time that my children were adults. My quest for Mom’s information may have wavered a bit, but I knew she still had more to give when asked.
How much I knew, came to light these last two winters when helping someone get started in quilting. Their impatience came to the surface, but I reminded them I had cut my teeth on sewing from the time my feet could pump the treadle on the sewing machine that sat in our family kitchen. Even when my legs were a bit short, Michael would be on the floor and wait until I gave the wheel, which was strung with the leather belt which was in turn linked to the treadle near the base of the sewing machine inches from the floor, a turn. He would give the treadle a pump back and forth. As the pump would go back and forth, I was able to hit the treadle with the tip of my toes and off I went . . . until I had to stop for alignment of the carpet rags we were sewing.
Today the quilting trend is very much alive and well. I am working with fabrics and sewing accessories that were not around when I was a young mother. I still like to learn new techniques. I only live three blocks from a huge new library. I get my reading literature there every several weeks. When I want an answer to a question and I want it “now,” I turn to YouTube on my computer. Any and all questions that could possibly need an answer are there. I can watch a video, slow the video down or take it back to the beginning as often as needed. It is similar to having someone right at your elbow.
A bit of a rocking motion of the iron to follow the curve, plus rotating the project, made for a good flat lying snowflake. I wonder if the Weaver Pres-Kloth Co. in Omaha, Nebraska, is still manufacturing these useful tools.
As much as my sewing studio sports new equipment to quilt with, to embroider with or to patch jeans, I have many of my old staples just within an arms reach. Today it happened that I needed the pressing ham. It is a pillow type of pressing aid that allows items to lay over the curve. Mine happens to be filled with sawdust. Hmm, in all of Kevin’s curiosity as a tike, I am amazed he didn’t have to find out how much sawdust was in it. It has just the right about of give to be effective when pressing. The tip of a hot iron doesn’t always do justice when pushed into specific small areas. Today I was able to get the hot tip of the iron into areas of a snowflake that had no thread stitching. The fabric was pressed just as if it were lying flat on the ironing board as all the stitching around the snowflake did raise the edges a bit.
I am not in any hurry with this latest project, and I will admit the 15 snowflakes the pattern has called for was . . . to say the least, time consuming. Satin stitching around them, and then cutting them out, took a bit out of the old arthritic wrist. The best part of this, no matter how long it may take me . . . I love the challenges that are within my sewing studio square footage. I wonder what the concrete company owner, Brett, would say if I asked him for a quote to push out the north wall of the basement. I don’t need any more square footage on the main level, just here in the basement. As Kevin would say: tee-hee!