The Sewing Basket | Guest Post by Nana
Every mother who sews gets excited when her young daughter asks to be taught how to sew. Memories fly in the mother’s mind as to when she asked her mother to be taught to sew. Remembering the first items you sew… an apron, pillow case or A-line skirt. We worked so hard to learn how to use the sewing machine…And remembering when you step on the peddle not to push too hard you aren’t driving a car! In learning to sew by hand, learning as a child is time consuming and very tedious especially when your thread gets knotted up. Or how in the world do you keep that thimble on your finger? I still have problems with those thimbles!
This year my 36 year old daughter asked for a large sewing basket for her birthday. I was so excited I went out the next day shopping for the basket. Now my daughter is not new to sewing, but she is now making clothes for her daughter and doll clothes for American Dolls (who by the way are better dressed than me!)
“L-Naehmaschine3“. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
In the 1940’s women used feed sacks and carefully pulled the threads to use for sewing their quilts or garments. Cavemen (or women) sewed fur garments with bone needles with cuts of finely thin leather for the thread. What about in Bible days what did the woman use for sewing? Proverbs 31:19 tells us this was the women’s responsibility as she “layeth her hands on the spindle”
I wonder when they made Joseph’s coat of many colors how long it took that to be completed…
When a person learns how to sew there is a gathering of supplies that is needed. Hence comes the sewing basket… to hold all these much needed supplies. Kinda like men are with their tools/toolboxes.
Victorian parlors or sewing rooms were not finished without a work stand, with a workbox or sewing basket attached. Sewing by hand was the only way to put clothes together until the sewing machine was invented in the 19th century and sewing became a faster procedure.
In Grace Coolidge’s autobiography, Grace’s Sewing (President Calvin Coolidge wife):
Every girl should be taught to sew, not merely for the sake of making something but as an accomplishment which may prove a stabilizer in time of perplexity or distress. Many a time I have needed to hold myself firmly, I have taken my needle, it might be a sewing or knitting needle whatever its form or purpose it often proved to be as the needle of the compass keeping me on the course.
I was lucky to have a mother who sewed and taught my daughter to sew.
~ Wanda (Nana)
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