Had a really good meeting with Arlene from Alcrafts and bumped into 4 other women that I had met the previous week at a craft fair! Arlene also works with fabric as does her Mum who must be in her late 70's. We had a great chat about sewing and how awful it was to always be wearing hand-made clothes as a child when all you wanted was something from Tammy Girl! Now as an adult I can appreciate how much care and effort it must have taken for my Mum to make all the things she did for both me and my sister. I think it was worse for my sister, being 5 years older than me it must have been rotten to be wearing the same dress as your 6 year old sister at the age of 11.
She also made us great fancy dress costumes - my sister is the Frys Turkish Delight girl and I am Nell Gwynne - you can tell by the basket of oranges that I am carrying!
My Mum was always doing crafty things with fabric so I suppose that rubbed off on me - she taught me how to sew - first on my great-grandmothers old hand operated machine which I still have -
and then on her own electric machine. I still use this machine today - it is very sturdy! I inherited it after my Mum died and have dragged it around every place I have lived for the past 10 years but not until recently have I actually used it. It used to have it's own table but I ditched that along time ago so I had to buy a cheap table from Ikea and cut a hole in it to be able to use it comfortably.
I also bought a great table to use as a cutting/pattern drafting table - it has a glass window at one end that you can use as a light box and you can also adjust height and angle - when I started out I was using the kitchen table and my back started to hurt.
Voila! Home workshop just like that!
I am so grateful to my Mum for spending the time to teach me how to sew as it has been invaluable. I made alot of my own crazy clothes as a teenager - mainly baggy ali baba trousers in various rainbow colours. I made sweet little dresses and booties for my nieces and nephew when they were wee and then at college I made some really intricate costumes as part of my course and now all my fieldy products. I think my Mum would have been delighted to see me making things again - I don't think she ever really understood the whole theatre/film thing but we could really bond over sewing.
My grandad (Mums' Dad) came from Glasgow and his father Richard Stevens, was a tailor. 4 years ago I moved to the southside of Glasgow where lo and behold I found this shop just down from my fave coffee shop Beanscene!
I have a secret fantasy that these people are relatives of mine but so far have not had the courage to ask. I love how old fashioned the shop front is. I will probably never go in.
Oh yes you will - next time I'm up in Glasgow we are going in!
nessx
Posted by: ness | July 22, 2007 at 10:42 PM
So great to see your old photographs! - they're great - and that you are cracking out the camera... your photos are brill, keep it up. And yes, you must go in there one day! XX
Posted by: caireen | July 23, 2007 at 10:02 AM