Thursday, August 21, 2008

The Ballerina Doll and Madame Alexander

Yesterday I was shopping for fabric to line a tote bag I want to make to carry a framed embroidery. In the cutting table line in front of me was a woman who was buying fabric for her seven-year-old granddaughter whose favorite show was about making clothes for models.

She and I got to talking while waiting for the one clerk to make her way through that long line of women. Her name was Sheila and she had been taught to sew by her mother in the late 50s and 60s. Her mother was an uptight individual who made Sheila take out every wobbly seam and poochy dart a small child makes. Consequently Sheila learned to hate sewing and refused to do it. Now her granddaughter was in love with fabrics and the idea of creating clothes, and Sheila herself was having sort of a renaissance in sewing. She had a machine and she wanted to help her granddaughter work on this dream.

When I was a child I had a similar experience. My mother was hopeless with sewing and so I was sent to my grandmother to learn to sew. I loved my grandmother and she loved me, but this learning to sew was a real ordeal. On top of all this, my grandmother's best friends, Lillian, had a granddaughter named Pam who was within three weeks of my age. Pam was the apex and epitome, not to mention the paradigm, of the Good Grandchild. I labored over making doll clothes for my ballerina doll with pointy toes. Pam made dozens of outfits for her Madame Alexander doll. My doll clothes were grimy and crooked. Hers were perfect in every way. Now I liked Pam. We played together a lot when I was a child. She had a killer doll house that her grandfather had made her. But I really got tired of hearing about Pam and her sewing skills.

So my grandmother gave up on me and the sewing machine and started me on embroidery. I did two pillowcases over the course of two summers; one was a kitten drinking out of a pool and the other was a rose with stem and a leaf. I still have the kitten, though the pillowcase which I used for years wore out. I carefully cut away the embroidery while my mother used the rest as a rag. I don't know what happened to the rose. But the deal was that I was not good at any of this when I was seven to twelve years old. I was good at running and making forts, and playing make-believe. I was a reader and a game-player.

In junior high and high school I had to take home economics. So I learned to make an apron, then a skirt and blouse. I still was not brilliant at it. I was captain of the girls' soccer team and the basketball team. I was taking Latin, creative writing, and advanced English. My lowest grades were in home ecs. and typing.

Some people come to their passion early in life and some come late. My good friend Carole Rinard came early to it and majored in home ec. and textiles through two degrees in college. Needless to say, with all those years of experience behind her, embroidery is now child's play to her. She is a tremendous stitcher. I came to it later. As I said in an earlier post, I was thirty when the passion for embroidery struck me like a bolt from the blue.

Sheila is doing the right thing for her granddaughter. She said she was going to gently guide her and not force her to rip and redo till perfection reigns. Sheila also said that she was becoming interested in sewing herself, now that she had more time and an excuse to come back to it. She asked did I know of any quilting groups in the area. Sheila and her granddaughter are going to be just fine.

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