When I was a little girl, my Grandma would take a couple of us at a time for overnights or weekends. There were four of us kids at the time. We would stay up really late at night eating pickles from her super cool green Tupperware container, polish our nails and giggle the night away all while wearing her vintage 40's nightgowns. We learned how to do most everything from her at one time or another. My older sister and I would pick out a pattern and fabric for the weekend. Grandma taught us how to cut the triangles in patterns to match the pieces up. She always used Pellon to trace the pattern pieces because we needed to make two different sizes. We would stay up giggling with her around the kitchen table trying to figure how to fix our mistakes and have the new outfit ready for church the next day. My Grandma is my inspiration. What I didn't learn from my Grandma, I learned from my Mom. Mom always cooked with a wink and a nod and to this day noone can match her yumminess of her chocolate chip oatmeal cookies because we don't know the exact recipe. She wings it.
When I was in Jr High, we had Home Ec. You know, baking, sewing and ironing and all that stuff that they don't really teach anymore. I was about 12 the summer I went to sewing camp. Kinda nerdy, right? I loved it. One of the instructers would see a dress she liked and then go home and draft it up herself. I was so inspired and from that time on, always had a hand in making or fixing my clothes. In high school I took classes in photography and pattern making. It was waaay back before digital anything so I was rolling film in the darkroom while all the other kids were making out. I learned a basic on pattern making and also took some classes in fashion merchandising.
My Dad was a freelance photographer and I've always had a little bit of it in my blood I think. I helped him roll his film and man the stop clock in the bathroom darkroom. Growing up we always had fantastic photographs taken of us and we knew you paused forever to make sure Dad got the shot.
Now that I'm grown and have two kids a husband and a house of my own, I am more interested in the way things should be done. I've had enough of figuring out things. I think it is a great challenge to see something and create it just like my sewing camp instructor did so many years ago. But I am really interested in learning the basics of how things are done and why. I want to do things that my grandmother and her mother before her knew how to do. You know, those things that we have chosen for convenience or some other reason not to learn.
