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To Fashion a Legacy

Stitching Together Generations of Resilient Joy

By Heather ChockPublished 3 years ago 7 min read
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Grandma sewed the dresses for Mom's wedding; I sewed the dresses for mine.

Her mama had two rules for the girls as they came of age during the Great Depression: dress like a lady and get an education.

So my grandmother, Bobbie Ruth, cut school dresses from flour sacks. Two for summer and two for winter for herself and her three sisters. Until little Christina died. Then just dresses for Sis, Nell, and herself. Her mama never learned to use the sewing machine, though she stitched leftover fabric into warm and bright postage stamp quilts by hand.

Grandma Bobbie sewed the girls’ dresses in the evenings when cotton-picking was done. And for one week each summer the children got a break from work in the fields to attend summer short courses at Texas A&M University.

There she learned to create dress patterns and operate a sewing machine.

I learned to sew from Grandma Bobbie. Her wrinkled fingers, tipped with meticulously manicured nails, guided my short, clumsy ones as we cut doll clothes from fabric scraps at the kitchen table. The metallic swish of her orange-handled Fiskars slicing through gingham or taffeta is as memorable to me as her voice. A second pair of scissors cut patterns, either commercial patterns we bought or homemade ones we drew on paper towels or old newspapers.

(A seamstress requires at least two good pair of scissors—one for fabric, the other for paper. My children know well the fear of using Mom’s fabric scissors to cut paper.)

I made this silk dupioni dress for my daughter’s second Christmas from fabric remnants of the dress my mother wore at my wedding.

From the pieces of a harsh childhood marked by the poverty and toil of tenant farming, Grandma Bobbie stitched together joy, beauty, and hope. From her I learned to do the same. After all, fabric must be cut apart to be fashioned into what it was meant to be.

When my grandmother graduated from high school at age seventeen, she left the cotton fields forever. She put herself through secretarial school and married the tall, wavy-haired young man who worked in the cafe across the street from the courthouse where she typed and filed.

And every evening, she sewed.

My mom remembers sitting underneath the sewing machine cabinet, playing with her dolls. My grandmother sewed at night after my grandfather left for the late shift at the picture show.

I remember the stories Grandma told as we worked together weekends and summers when I visited. She pieced a family history as we pinned sleeves to bodices or gathered yards of skirt.

As I learned terms like bias, selvage, straight of grain, I also learned about faith, legacy, resilience. I learned that joy is independent of circumstance and happiness is made.

Grandma made this dress and coat for me. The coat label reads, “Made with love by Grandma.”

Three years after Grandma Bobbie married Papa John, she sat at breakfast with him as the radio announced the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He’d already received his draft card—a relic I keep with old letters and photos she passed down to me. He reported for duty in the United States Navy soon after.

She traveled from Houston to his base in San Diego to see him before he shipped out. She had just enough money for her bus ticket and a Coke.

Nine months later, she fought toxemia to give birth to their son. At one point during her labor, the doctor came out to ask her in-laws whether to save mother or baby. But Bobbie was determined they both would live. That same determination rose again when her son was a toddler, and diphtheria—the same disease that had taken her sister Christina—threatened his life. Bobbie had no money to pay the doctor. Still he treated the skinny, blue-eyed boy, accepting my grandfather’s service in the war as payment in full.

During those war years, she worked as a bookkeeper. She mothered. She took up cigarettes to soothe the stress. And she sewed. In every photo she looks like a movie star, although in truth she struggled for the money to care for her son and her parents and went most of the war without a winter coat. Still, black-and-white snapshots of her show a fashionable woman in handmade clothing that looks designer. She smiled for the camera in smart dresses or stylish palazzo pants.

And in the end, she and her family came through the war.

When my mother came along in 1949, Grandma Bobbie returned to sewing little dresses—but no longer from flour sacks. Mom remembers every school frock, Easter dress, prom and banquet gown. You don’t forget those garments handmade for you with love. Mom also remembers the sewing Grandma did for others as a second job. Her kitchen table served as her cutting table and a corner of her bedroom as her studio. In the 1950s, circle skirts in layers of tulle spread across her bed waiting to be fitted. Grandma made my mother’s wedding dress, the flower girl’s dress, and her own mother-of-the-bride dress.

As I grew and sewed alongside my grandmother, I learned the discipline and joy of craftsmanship. The grit of grappling with a challenging design. The patience of careful pattern pinning. The delight of supple fabrics against my fingers. The power of a sharp, sturdy pair of scissors in my hands. Sharing time, thoughts, and skills in the creative process, Grandma and I wove a connection that would not unravel.

Grandma Bobbie didn’t live to make my prom dress, my wedding gown, or clothes for my babies. She died unexpectedly when I was fifteen.

Years later, my younger cousin asked how I had coped.

“We’re the two who really remember her, you know. The others were little,” Andy said.

“After she died, I sewed and I wrote,” I answered him. “That’s how I coped.”

Then over dinner, I told him stories she had told me. Of growing up picking cotton under the central Texas sun. Of home economics class in a rural school. Of the cruelty of her father and the gentleness of her mother. Of a young life that daily faced death during World War II. Of silly and sweet things his dad and my mom did when they were little. Of the additional children she wanted before uterine cancer took that dream. Of the time my mom, then a nursing student, brought home lab mice, and my uncle thought they would be fun to play with—until they ran up his pants leg. He had to strip down in the middle of the living room to get them out.

“How do you know all this stuff?” he said as we laughed.

“While we worked, we talked,” I said. “And now when I sew or write about sewing, she’s with me. In creating garments with me, she created that connection.”

My daughter’s love of dance led me sew custom dance costumes.

When my first child was born, I couldn’t wait to share the joy of sewing baby clothes and doll clothes and costumes with her. But to do so, I had to reach back to my days with Grandma Bobbie and grab hold of the resilience she taught. Struggling with a rare esophageal disease called achalasia as well as postpartum depression, I stole naptime hours to sew. To craft well-made garments for my baby girl. To restore myself. To rediscover joy while my body was letting me down and causing me, I believed at the time, to let my daughter down. In the folds of repurposed silk for a Christmas dress or warm flannel for pajamas, I escaped dark thoughts and intrusive fears to reclaim physical and mental strength. The faith Grandma modeled and the joy of her memory accompanied me.

A few years later, with three children and a budget stretched so thin we could see through it, her memory and example encouraged me again. Determined to stay home to care for my young children, I sewed late into the night, after dinner and bedtime, altering formals and sewing custom dance costumes to keep our family financially afloat.

Across the highs and lows that make up a life, the skill of sewing and the love of working with my hands has provided moments of joy. It has allowed me to give to others what was given to me. Creating costumes from my children’s imaginations. Altering my matron-of-honor dress for my sister’s wedding, when it turned out—surprise!—I needed a maternity matron-of-honor dress. Recreating my nephew’s favorite pair of outgrown sweatpants, because his autism makes him very particular about the feel and fit of his clothing. Helping a bride feel like a princess in a wedding gown I have altered to a custom fit. Sewing hundreds and hundreds of masks for safety, style, and durability during the COVID-19 pandemic and PPE shortage.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I sewed linen-lined masks with attention to style, fit, and comfort.

The joy of sewing extends beyond the satisfaction of creation, beyond the feeling of swift scissors and pattern paper and flowing fabric in my hands. It connects me to the one who taught me. The one who loved me. The one who gave me her time and patience and attention—all the skills needed to be a successful sewing artist. It connects me to those I sew for, as I make a design idea materialize into a garment or alter an ill-fitting purchase into a custom-fit piece to be worn with confidence.

Although it’s been decades since I rose tiptoe on skinny legs to cut my first garment at Grandma’s kitchen table, I still take big gulp of air and say a prayer before I cut into a woman’s lovely gown to be hemmed or yards of chiffon for a dance costume. I am then reminded that I know what I’m doing, and I love what I’m doing. Because a long time ago someone who knew me and loved me taught me how.

humanity
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About the Creator

Heather Chock

Heather is a wife, mom of three, writer, seamstress, and teacher who loves crafting beautiful things from both fabric and words and encouraging others to share their unique beauty.

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