Nostalgia, sewing is woven into my whole childhood

The other night I was flipping through a sewing book my mom left at my house for me.  It’s a whole book of project ideas that take one yard or less of fabric.  Near the end of the book one of the projects made me stop flipping and floods of childhood memories came back.

This was the project.

I haven’t kept much from childhood or throughout the years.  I make a huge effort to purge things and keep passing things along to others that can use it, but this reminded me of one of the few things I’ve clung to.

My mother is a gifted seamstress.  She made us clothes, cabbage patch kids, doll clothes and she made me this.

It’s been in a box for years so it’s starting to crumple.  But as I pulled it out of the box the flood of memories came back.  I loved this.  And now it means so much more.  I sit and analyze the amazing hand sewing and can’t believe the hours that were poured into this toy.  Our cats growing up would steal the mice and pillows and the cat fur still dotting it should make me feel annoyed that it’s not cleaner but those cats are long gone and all of it just makes me feel loved.

At times, I’ve wished I had held onto more of what she made us but I’m glad these three remain.  They were the three I loved best and they symbolize hours of time, pricked fingers and love.

She’s a great mom and an incredibly gifted seamstress who’s likely sewing away as I type this.

The more I start looking at sewing blogs and hearing from other seamstresses I realize how many of us come from a line of sewers.  We watched someone else spend hours at the sewing machine, working and shaping piles of fabric into clothes, dolls, toys, and quilts.

There really aren’t words for how grateful I am that I was raised by people that had hobbies and pursued them.  My mom made beautiful clothes and my dad even built a car from a kit, as in a real life size car.  I learned to drive in that car, a 1927 Bugatti kit car.