vintage memories
Sewing is more than just a skill for one woman; it’s a connection to the past. in time A Stitch
By Kirsten Hudson
Jackie and her cousins in dresses her mother made.
hen Jackie Goad was growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, she never owned any store-bought clothes. Her mother sewed all of her clothes from the time she was born up until she married at 17. “She always sewed for me and my two nieces, who were only 18 months and five years different in age from me,” Jackie said. Her mother always outfitted the three girls in new dresses for special occasions, like Easter and Christmas. “When she sewed dresses for us, she always made all three the same, but everybody had a different color,” Jackie said. “It was a big deal to go to church wearing matching dresses.” Her favorite dress that her mother made for her was for Easter Sunday in 1956. Jackie was newly married and still remembers the red dress she wore that day. It had a full skirt, capped sleeves and was made from dotted Swiss mate- rial, a sheer fabric with small fuzzy polka dots. Her mother created the same style dresses for her nieces, but with dotted Swiss fabric in blue and pink. “We three girls were together, I was in love, and it was a very happy time,” Jackie said. “It really made me feel good dur- ing a good time in my life.” Handmade traditions A love of sewing started with Jackie’s grandmother, who had been a seamstress, and W
“I got too heavy for my clothes,” she said. Her mother had just had major surgery, so she couldn’t sew Jackie’s clothes for her. “I set up the sewing machine in her bedroom and worked on my maternity clothes there, so she could tell me how to do it,” Jackie said. “That was the first time I’d sewed very much. It was probably the first time that I actually started and finished the job, anyway.” Her sewing skills took off from there. Over the years she made curtains, quilts, aprons, placemats, costumes, bean bag toys, Christ- mas decorations and more. “I had sons, so I didn’t do a lot of sewing for them, but when my twin granddaughters came along, I sewed lots of dresses for them when they were little. “It makes you feel good because you’ve ac- complished something,” Jackie said of sewing. “You do it and when you’re done, you’ve made something pretty. I always felt good when my granddaughters wore clothes I made, and I’m sure that’s the way my mother felt too.”
was passed down daughter to daughter. “Her mother taught her to sew,” Jackie said of her mother. “She also worked as a milliner in 1917 and 1918 making big picture hats and putting decorations on them. She was really good at it.” Thread, needles, thimbles and her mother’s electric White brand sewing machine were always out on the kitchen table when Jackie was growing up. “I was always around sew- ing,” she said. “If it wasn’t something for us, then my mother was sewing something that a cousin needed. And if it wasn’t clothes, then it was quilts. She made things like curtains too, so she always had something going on.” Jackie remembers a time when her family lived in a tiny mobile home because their house had just burnt down. Working out of that mobile home, her mother sewed a heavy satin wedding dress, five or six bridesmaids’ dresses and two flower girls’ dresses for a cousin’s wedding. “It was for a Dec. 29 wedding, and we had fabrics, dresses and buttons everywhere,” she said. “In those days all of the buttons had to be covered, so we were covering little satin buttons. It was a mess, but it was fun.” Sewing skills Because her mother had sewed all of her clothes for years, Jackie had only learned sewing basics. When she was expecting her first child, though, she had to learn to sew clothes — and fast.
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Kirsten is one of Jackie’s twin granddaughters who wore handmade dresses. She’s bad at sewing, but
better at decorating. Check out her vintage decorating ideas and DIY projects on her blog, Red Leaf Style, at redleafstyle.com.
VintageKC / Summer 2014 46
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