When my grandmother gave me my first sewing lessons, she was following a family tradition. My mother told me the story of her grandmother sending her to the store with the money to buy her first set of embroidery hoops. When my mother returned, my great-grandmother taught her several embroidery stitches.

While my great-grandmother was teaching my mother to sew, she told my mother a story about her childhood. When my great-grandmother was sewing doll clothes with her grandmother, she had to unravel thread from a scrap of fabric to use in her sewing. Doll clothes were not important enough to rate store bought thread. My great- grandmother disliked the process so much that she told my mother she would never make her use unraveled thread in her sewing.

I love this story, because of the glimpse it gives me of life in the nineteenth century, and because I can count seven generations of seamstresses in my family.

sherralyn learning to sew memories