If you sew...

I don’t sew. My mother sewed beautifully and I’ve already talked a little about her sewing matching shorts to go under all my dresses so I could be a prim, proper girly girl who wore dresses and didn’t show my panties while being allowed to do cartwheels and climb the monkey bars at school.

Some of the drawings in my comic **November West **include a little girl in purple and white striped pants. That’s based on an actual pair of pants my mother sewed me as a little girl.

They were my favorite pair of pants and as I got taller, they began looking like high waters but still otherwise fit me. So my mother added a few inches of the same cloth but had the stripes go horizontal instead of vertical so it looked intentionally decorative rather than like a patch job.

That was an extremely memorable experience for me and really made the lesson stick that during a certain period, children tend to get taller without getting bigger around in girth. I also moved the buttons on a cute pair of overalls for a child I knew in my twenties to add a bit of length to her favorite outfit that still otherwise fit her.

My sister had the only granddaughter in the family and we all enjoyed supplying her with frilly clothes. My sister told me she had about twenty dressy dresses at one time in part because my mother sewed and she knew kids mostly get taller for a time.

So mom would sew dresses with a deep hem, like four inches deep, with lace details and keep some extra lace. When my niece got taller, mom let out the hem and covered the visible old hemline with lace.

I can’t find a name for this style nor a representative pattern, but she frequently sewed a style of dress that is fitted in the shoulders and loose below that with a tie in back so it is forgiving of getting a little bigger in the torso.

For boys pants, mom made pants with elastic in the waistline and put elastic in the cuff similar to sweat pants. If they were a little too long at first, it didn’t matter because they didn’t drag the ground. When the knees wore out, she cut them off and made them into shorts.

She frequently made reversible vests with a brightly colored, patterned side and a coordinating solid side and two pair of pants, one in each pattern of material. She used snaps instead of buttons because they are easier for children to close and work better on a reversible vest.

When I was five and failing to learn how to tie shoes, she made me a blue vest with a tie closure to motivate me to learn to make a tie closure.

My parents had a failed store, so the leftovers from the store went in mom’s sewing room. She had tons of thread, lace and patterns and mostly bought new material and elastic. She would shop the bargain bin and get a yard of wildly patterned material for a dollar because you only need a yard to make something for a small child.