Sewing Machines and Spool tractors

This is my girl Sherry sitting on her mothers sewing machine. It always amazed me how the machine folded into the cabinet. I thought it was sort of magic.

This was like Mama's singer that dad put a motot on later.

These are something like the spool tractors we made to play with.

Today's entry.................

I miss folks sewing. Mama was real tolerant of me when she was sewing. There were times she would let me peddle as she sewed. The best things of the sewing was the wooden spools the thread came on. You could play for hours with those things. Daddy only once showed me how to make a spool tractor, and I made many of them after that. Mama was good about saving the spools for me. She used more thread when she loaded the bobbin, you could see the end coming on a spool.
We had a corner shelf stand, made by gluing spools together in three stacks and inserting a triangular shelf about every five of six spools. After that was done dad shellacked it. I thought it was beautiful. But it collected dust along with the knick knacks set on it. Daddy also used them for drawer knobs.
Mama could adapt to change better than anyone I knew. In Burlington, NC dad converted the old wood stove to kerosene. If mama burned the biscuits or ruined a cake because of the difference in heating, I never knew it. It was there that he had someone add an electric motor to mama’s sewing machine and she did not have to peddle anymore. She could make that thing hummmmm.
I never knew her to make a man’s coat, but I believe she could have. Now if you have never tried to sew you don’t know how to appreciate a real seamstress. You try to get a bunch of yards through and under the machine as you turn around and start back down a long seam. Mama could do it without missing a beat, and the side- by-side stitches looked perfectly alike.
In our early marriage we had a sewing machine in the house. Sherry’s mama had sewed also. We used the machine to patch mostly. Sherry did some light sewing with patterns. Once in North Missouri I decided to make Sherry a dress. I bought the cheapest material I could find (that is probably not being sure of one’s self). She picked the pattern. I did great until it came to the zipper in the back. It was a long zipper. No way could I sew a seam straight that far, and I didn’t. So I added a large ‘kite’ on the back to cover the zipper. I used three small snaps one in the top center and one on each shoulder, the bottom was loose so if the wind caught it you could see the lining. I was proud of the dress, but that was the first and last garment I made.

Tomorrow: Robbie took my Sweetheart.

Thanks for coming by the log.
Nite Shipslog
PS:
**** Scratch a dog and you'll find you have a permanent job.

*****. No one has more driving ambition than the boy who anxiously awaits his 16th birthday.

******* There are no new sins; the old ones just get more publicity.

****** There are worse things than getting a call for a wrong number at 4 AM: It could be a right number.