So far today, I’ve hemmed two pairs of pants, mended a sweater, tacked the sagging drape linings, and whistled (ok more like hummed since I can’t really whistle) happily at my brand new sewing machine.

I learned to sew over forty years ago. A little bit from a Home Economics class in school but more from my two Aunts, Nettie and Millie.  Of the four girls in my mother’s family; my mother was the baby, my Aunt Lucy was the gypsy and Nettie and Millie were the milliners/dressmakers/slip coverers/menders and shakers of the family.

So once I went through my home ec class they began their unmaking of bad habits and molding (more like ripping) me into a fine seamstress.  Each had their style, it was a bit like good cop bad cop, but both were amazing and creative with highly professional results.  Their garments were beautiful and so well made that I’m sure some of them are still around today in someone’s attic closet.   Most of the old snapshots illustrated their work, no one EVER bought clothes.  That crap, Millie would say.

I remember Aunt Nettie’s sewing room like it was a play land.  It was the former front porch of her house. You had one step to go down and the floor had bits of thread everywhere.  Her sewing machine was right in front of the window and there was a closet filled with this and that.  Patterns, “borrowed” spools of thread from the factories she worked in, stacks of remnants, boxes of pins, the iron, the ironing board, all the accouterments filled this tiny little room.

My Aunt Millie had a corner in her tiny little Astoria apartment for sewing but mostly she did her work at our house.  In the basement.  When she came almost every Saturday, don’t get my Mother started on that one, there was always time spent in the basement at the “machine”.  The machine was an old Singer in its own cabinet right along the base of the stairs.  To the left was my grandmother’s metal topped kitchen table (which I now have in my office/sewing room) and to the left of that was the ironing board and iron (which my mother constantly wanted to know “did you turn the iron off?”…sometimes yes, sometimes no).

I distinctly remember making a blouse, complete with placket, button holes and a collar that must have been ripped out five times until I got it perfectly straight by Aunt Millie (yes she was the bad cop).  I remember learning the art of perfect top stitching from Aunt Nettie.  I remember fighting with Aunt Millie (like I had any kind of opinion) about basting. I remember the now famous Grandma line, “I was like you, you’ll be like me” being thrown at me when I so easily threaded a needle for her and laughed. I am indeed now like her.

I remember the smell of the machine oil, the heat from the lamp and the sound of the needle going up and down.  They are fond memories for me and every time I sit at the machine I think of them both.

Aunt Millie was always doing for us when we were kids and into our adult years too.  She purchased a sewing machine for my sister and me and had them safely stashed up in our attic for when we got married (tradition, dowry, who the hell knows).  I moved out on my own before I got married so the machine with my name on it came with me.

The new machine was an upgrade, for sure, from the one we were using in the basement and I put it to good use sewing curtains, day bed covers, bolster covers, pillows and even covering my seat cushions on the wicker furniture.  It went forward and back, had a button hole attachment and ok it got me through.  I used it for many years and was grateful to have it.

My sister, on the other hand, left hers in my mother’s attic well after she moved out.  So when mine began to die a slow death I retrieved it with the promise that whatever she needed sewn I would help her out.

One look at the box had me rocketing to Jupiter.  There it was the Singer Touch Tronic 1060, pushbutton, seventeen different stitches, automatic button holes, auto reverse, and auto bobbin winder.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  I was working for ten years on a machine that went forward and back.  Sewed everything under the sun while this automatic, one touch, do everything without changing one piece, even stand on your head for you machine was in the ATTIC?  What the hell was Millie thinking?  My name clearly on the box with the naked, simple, back breaking machine and Terri’s name on the super duper deluxe model.  You can’t make this up people.

So shake it off and be grateful that we have finally found each other at last.  And for the next 15 years we made up for and used every one of those seventeen stitches, button holed our way to new blouses and shower curtains and went forward and back at the touch of a button.

Until recently.  When I moved to Stowe Lane my machine began to scream every time I turned it on.  Literally it would scream.  Something in the way the rod was rubbing something made this noise that sent the dogs running for cover and me pulling my hair out.  If you kept going long enough it would stop…and then start again…and then slap it and it would stop.  Finally, almost five years later, it was fighting me while I was hemming a pair of jeans.  Of course I wanted to wear them that night.  Of course the bobbin thread was binding.  Of course it was screaming and not stopping.  OMG just shoot me.  I finally got through with the tiny little job that should have taken a minute.  I unplugged the machine, yanked the cord and the foot pedal off of it.  Picked it up by putting my arm through the middle (it weighed about two hundred pounds…ok maybe thirty five pounds) and marched out the door toward the dumpster.  Quite the spectacle as Muriel can attest.  She graciously relieved me of the machine and walked it to the dumpster for me while I ranted to beat the band.  Just a tiny little episode on Stowe Lane nothing to be alarmed about.

I had never bought a sewing machine before, I had no idea what they cost so I was pleasantly surprised to find I could own a very nice machine for about 139.00.  Really?  I’ve been fighting with the screaming machine for almost five years and for less than my monthly grocery bill I could get a new one.  Live and learn…again.

Thanks to Amazon, my new machine arrived two days later.  It has 70 different stitches, all the automated blah blah you can possibly think of.  And because I laughed at Aunt Millie all those years ago about not being able to thread a needle I bought the one that has the needle threader.  Just saying.