emm cinematic headlines right ? I am hibernating due to snow storms and it makes me more creative word wise ; ).
For starters my mother doesn't sew. She doesn't even know how to sew a button or she never bothered to learn how to sew a button. How she got that done - By her daughters. We were handy daughter (as in handyman) who did everything for our mom which includes sewing buttons . She is not a domestic diva. She devoted herself to two C's - Career and cooking. I have never seen her feel lazy to cook even when friends or relatives come in the wee hours. She can cook for whole clan . But she was/is not interested in housekeeping, sewing , drawing . She is voracious reader . She used to read fictions as if the world is going to end tomorrow. Give her a JHC novel (James Hardley Chase) she will forget the whole world.
As kids we picked all the good traits that my mother never possessed. Me and my elder sister were good at home decorating, painting /drawing . Then my elder sister learnt to sew using the antique sewing machine we had in our house when she was in middle school. I have a vague memory of seeing my father use that machine when I was a kid . My sister use to sew my mother's saree(her fav ones) into long flowy skirts. Long skirts were in fashion those days . We got the cool fashion tips/trends thanks to our anglo Indian neighbour(s). My sister strictly made dresses only for her though I longed for those cute skirts. Still I never wanted to learn sewing.
During my high school/college years I learnt little bit of crochet , made an afghan and stopped there. For the second year valentines day I made handmade woollen scarf for CB. We ordered custome made wood frame with nails for making that scarf. Hope it is still there in my parents house. Even at that point, I never developed interest in sewing .
Coming to US and seeing beautiful fabrics in the stores kindled my interest in sewing. Circa 1998 when we lived in Kansas I became friends with tamil friend - Aunty M. We both enrolled in a sewing class offered at the county extension center.The class required us to bring a sewing machine, desired pattern and required materials. I really liked the concept of trying to sew a dress in the first class as opposed to "learning to sew petticoats" as the first step. If you enroll for sewing class in India, you have to start from sewing petticoats . Just this reason kept me away from the sewing classes in India.
I bought the machine , a blouse pattern ,fabric and notions.I was the only student in the class who had no prior knowledge about sewing or sewing machine . I never even know how to thread a machine. During first session, the instructor taught me the basics of sewing machine and asked me to practise "straight stitch" before the next class . I practised the straight stitch for few times and wanted to check out the pattern. I opened the pattern envelope only to find a "Industrial engineering blue print " kind of drawings. I realised my sewing hobby is going to end pretty soon because the pattern was quite complex to understand at a first glance just like my "Wave Mechanics" class during my UG and my debugger projects at work.
In the second class she taught us to cut the pattern according to our size. It wasn't difficult at all and it was easy to decrypt the pattern. We learnt to cut fabric using the pattern . She gave me an idea about joining the pattern to get the final product. She said we will be finishing the pattern in the next class. Aunty M knew sewing and she has been sewing stuff for her kids but she never used pattern till that point.
I came home and jumped into project with full vigor. Finished the entire blouse within an hour. Finishing touches like sewing button, hand hemming took another 30 -60 minutes. Guess who was the only person who had finished product on hand for the third class? - "moi" . Novice students got lot of help from the instructor to finish the product. I sat there helping M aunty to finish the project since we both bought the same pattern. That's the beginning of my sewing hobby. Thus the seamstress was born.
The best thing about sewing in US is that , you get all sorts of pattern for all sorts of things . The patterns comes with full instruction and it is relatively easy to sew. My strongest skill is reverse engineering. You give me dress, I can completely take dress out and make pattern out of it and sew a new dress . At the same time, I am not good at free hand stitching (Indian way of cutting fabrics using free hand method) and I don't miss it.
Few months after attending the sewing class, we moved to Idaho . I decided not to pursue work in US during our initial years in US due to visa reasons. We might have to live separately for the sake of job and I was against it then and now. We keep "Money" away in our family decisions. I had quite a lot of time at hand. I sew around 8 -10 dresses for my 4 year old niece as gifts during my trip back home. Hand made gifts gives extra "I care about you" effect over store bought gifts . My sister and my dad were quite surprised to see a sewing machine challenged girl turn into a good dress maker.
