From the time I was born, I remember my mother seated at a sewing machine. She made my dresses, and as I grew older, I became trained in the arts (for it was an art) that had been handed down through generations.

My grandmother had made all of my mother's and mother's sisters clothing, from their births, merely by looking in catalogs and copying the designs on newspaper. They wore frills, and ruffles, all made by hand on a treadle machine that my aunt still owns. It came with a complete set of attachments, from hemmers to pleaters, to rufflers, to something that would turn yarn into chenille bedspreads, when stitched on plain fabric. Grandmother never pieced many quilts, with 8 children to raise, and with the farm work she did, there really wasn't much time. But she sewed.

When Mother was going to school, she had one good school dress. Every evening when she got home, she washed that dress by hand, and hung it behind the kitchen range to dry. Then it had to be ironed each morning, before she could walk the mile or so to school. The old flat irons were heated on the top of that old cast iron range, while my grandmother made biscuits and breakfast.

I don't have a lot of memories of my maternal grandmother, for she died of diabetes and possibly cancer shortly before my 8th birthday. I do remember her baking on Saturdays--all day. She never made less than a dozen pies, and made innumerable pie shells, that she set on plates, so that she could make fillings later on in the week. She made cakes, several at a time, while she had a dishpan full of what she called "light bread" dough (yeast bread) rising on top of the cabinet in the warmth of the kitchen. And every day, week day, Sundays, Holidays, etc, she baked biscuits in an 18 inch square pan, biscuits she made from "scratch", three times a day, to feed her family. Biscuits that melted in your mouth, even if they were cold in the pantry, and with slices of cold fried bacon between the halves.

Nothing was wasted. Milk was separated by hand, with a cream separater, a large tubular machine that went into centrifugal force when the crank was turned. Any milk that "blinked" (was turning sour) went into a bucket, until she had a dishpan full. Then it was put on the back of that range to "set", separate, into the proverbally "curds and whey". Then the whole thing was poured into a large muslin bag of several thicknesses, and hung over the sink on the back porch. Several times during the day, she would go out and, taking a brick in each hand, work the solids down into the bottom of that bag. By the time she could no longer press any water out of it, then she turned the rest into a bowl, added pepper and cream, and voila! We had fresh home-made cottage cheese! All natural. No preservatives, no additives. The best stuff you ever put into your mouth!

The cream was kept in a cooler of sorts, ( a milk can set into cold water just off the porch) for she had no refrigeration. When she had a churn full, she would put it into a wooden churn that sat on the floor, and put the wooden dasher,(round with holes) into the top, and sometimes let us kids help churn the butter. When it "made" (you could see golden flecks in the sloshing milk,) then it was time to let her take over. She gave it a few shoshes, and then began to collect those flecks, and round them into a mound of pure gold. Once the butter was in the bowl, she would take it out to the sink and pump cold water into the bowl. With a wooden "butter paddle" (not to be confused with an apple butter paddle), she would work that water through the butter, and press the "milk" out of it. She would pour that off, and then pump more cold water into the bowl, until the water ran clear. Then she would lightly salt it, and place the butter into a wooden mold, packing it until she could get no more in. This would be placed upside down on a plate, the bottom would be pressed, and she had a pound of butter.

A far cry from todays supermarket. But back to the sewing. When Mother married, she took her skills with her. In November of 1928, she ordered a brand new treadle sewing machine from Montgomery Wards, for a total price of $39.95, to make my older brother's baby clothes. I still have that machine here in my bedroom, and it works. I learned to sew on it, and it has become my stand by, in case anything goes wrong and the electricity goes out when I need to finish a garment for a customer. By the time I could sit up, I remember Mother at that machine, sometimes long into the night.

When I entered the sixth grade, I had begun sitting beside her, ripping seams from old clothes with a razor blade, and pressing new seams open, while she turned somebody's outgrown clothing into ones for my brother and me. One year she managed to find a length of green silk, whether from my paternal aunt's work at the sewing factory, or at some store, I never knew. She turned that silk into two suits, one for me and one for her, but they were supposed to have zippers in the skirts. War time, no zippers. She created a hidden placket, one that closed with 6 tiny green buttons, a double placket that the buttonholes had to be worked in before the skirt could be sewn together. I learned quickly how to work buttonholes by hand, (no home machine would zig-zag), doing those buttonholes in the skirt, but she made the ones for the blouses, because they would show.

By the time I was 11, I was in the seventh grade. ( I had skipped half of the first grade, and taken both halves of the second at the same time. By the time I entered 3rd grade, I was three months shy of my seventh birthday.) One of the things we had to do was take "home ec". I was the youngest one there. The first thing we had to do was to hem a tea towel. Although I did it, the teacher wasn't happy with the results, and to tell you the truth, neither was I. However, it was the making of a pillowcase that nearly brought my mother and my teacher to blows.

The basics were that we took a yard of white muslin, added a three inch band of contrasting material at one end, and formed a pillow case. We had to do this work at home, for the schools had no sewing machines. The seams had to be french seams-- sewed the first time on the outside, then trimmed, the case turned, and then stitched on the wrong side, so that no raw seams were visible. I made that case according to specifications, and took it in to be graded. My teacher almost acted like she had blown a fuse, she berated me in front of the whole class, and informed me that I would not be graded for this for it was obvious that my mother had made the pillowcase, and that I would be failed that semester for cheating.

"No ten year old girl could sew that good!" She literally screamed it in my face, and while I huddled in a corner of my desk, she penned a note for me to take home to my mother. But it didn't have the results she thought it would.

My mother took off from work, to meet with the teacher, and I wasn't present at the show down. Still, the gist of it was that I would do the work over, under the teacher's supervision, at the school, when she brought her portable electric sewing machine to school, or else face the wrath of both my parents. I did--the work was even more perfect than the first, and she had to eat her words. I didn't get a public apology, as I had gotten a public dressing down, but she had ruined school for me forever.

However she couldn't ruin my love for sewing. I had been making doll dresses on Mother's machine since I was eight, and even had branched out into some designing for myself. I had one of the first mini-skirts in town, back in 1946, when I began copying the designs on the front of Pop's Science fiction magazines, and quickly learned that no decent woman could bend over in one! Needless to say, that miniskirt went the way of the Buffalo!

In 1947, I began making almost my own clothes. Soon I had graduated to making pants for myself, because I was shaped wrong for the manufacturers. When the children began arriving, and I inherited my father's grandmother's treadle machine, I started making their clothing--and I have never slowed down.

I have made wedding gowns, nightgowns, pajamas, t-shirts, jeans, bibbed overalls, shirts, skirts, bras, and even a man's suit. I've created award winning costumes for Halloween, and toys for the kids for Christmas. I learned to quilt, and at one time I had thirty seven quilts on the beds at once. I made training pants from old t-shirts I bought at garage sales, three pair from one shirt, paid ten cents apiece for the shirts. I made my daughter's plastic lined sunsuits when she was crawling, so that she needed no expensive rubber pants over her diapers. I patched kids knees, and found a way to creatively lengthen pants when they were just a tiny bit too short for fashion.

And there came a time when my skills had become a necessity again, one that would keep me solvent. I altered clothing for some, hemmed pants for others, and still held down a full time job. One year I had four kids in school at the same time, and didn't have time to finish their school clothes before the first day. Each night I would come home from work, cut out a shirt and a pair of pants, sew them up, set buttons, put in zippers, and have a new outfit for one of the kids to wear to school the next day. I did this for two weeks, until I had all four outfitted. And before you ask--or say, yeah, they were all girls!--let me explain.

I have six children. Five boys and one girl. All of them were in high school and making their own way before they had "store bought" clothes. I always gave their things to a thrift store when there was no one to hand them down to, after they outgrew them. One day, my son and I were standing on the street, watching a parade, when he whispered to me--

"Look, Mom! That kid up there in front of me has on those bibbed overalls you made me and I outgrew!" Guess it was a kind of monument of sorts. I am sure the kid never knew they were homemade.

But these are some of the things that we oldsters lived through. And I am a firm believer that if this country is to get back on a firm footing, it needs to restore some of our old values.

Not necessarily family values, for in that the woman was a doormat, and had no chance to make decisions on her own. But everyone would benefit from the old adage about making do, or doing without. This generation will be known as the throw-away kids, for they are being taught that if you want it, you deserve it, and you shouldn't have to work for it. That if it breaks, whether on purpose or accidentally, just pitch it and papa will buy you another.

And we should stop chopping down trees so that Mama don't have to wash her kids diapers any more----- But that's another column, for another day! [an error occurred while processing this directive]