Hostage

Around 5 years old, I watched my mother cut and make my teddy bears picnic costume. 8 kids in a box trailer, waving to the crowd, we were all gold with white inserts for ears and belly. At 9 she made my tap costume, vibrant pink with a silver love heart in the middle of a twirling dress. I watched her make our heavy blue curtains on a old electric domestic singer. At 11 she made my primary school prom dress. From golden ears, pink with hearts, to flowers right to the floor dress with blue curtains as a back drop for photo's. Then mum got a part time job.

In my teens and at high school, sewing came up for home education. One project was a mouse. Which I started to cut it out on the kitchen table, my mum was helping. My friends came over so we were allowed to go play and my Mum finished cutting it out. We won a star for it. The white mouse 30cm long with a mouth and whiskers still resides in my parents’ house. I used to sit and watch her sew. She still laughs and tells me that I always said, “I hate sewing”. Little did I know that learning classical guitar in high school would set my fingers up for the work I was to do.

At that time I witnessed my girlfriend’s mother who sewed at home for small companies, making potpourri bags, she gave me one for Xmas. I still have it in my memory box. She did that as a side line to make money for her daughter, while she was learning ballet as those costumes and shoes were expensive. My mother loving sewed because she could just do it, and it made us things cheaply. My friend’s mother loved it for she too could make her daughter happy, Which it did, she made it in to the Australian Ballet Company

While on the other hand, my dream of going to the school of music in Sydney was shattered with "Get a real full time job". So at 16 years old I started at Pelgrave's Clothing Factory 1982 in Adelaide as a trainee sewing machinist. After one year full time feeling like a zombie on a vacuum cutting machine, cutting threads off jeans. My work started fail, from perfection to redo the whole lot. I then said “I was promised to learn all the machines”. After, the following year, I was the fastest threader of the 15 needle shirring machine, and had learnt every machine they had. I then filled in for the ones who were away. I multi tasked.

After working in a few different factories, the opportunity came and I moved to Alice Springs the center of Australia, vowing never to sew again. Not knowing back then that factories were starting to close and manufacturing moved overseas. I was 25, and got a job in the Kmart fabrics department. Felt more alive than ever, Alice is compact you can walk everywhere in the town, but 1500 klms from any beach. So I took the opportunity and I answered an ad in the paper to lease a free horse. It was a dream to have a horse. Mum can I have a pony in the back yard. No! Oh my! To know how to ride I was hooked. It was then that I met, Emmie a single mother with 8 daughters who were all involved with race horses, she was a Trainer, and some of girls were jockeys, who had made good names for themselves.

In amongst, me learning to ride my new horse, and being roped into riding Emmie’s horses around the race track and down the mighty Todd River every day. Within a year I was super fit and got my own Jockey’s licence which wasn’t easy. Changed my job at Kmart, to a job I accidentally walked into. I was looking to buy an industrial sewing machine, to make a dress for a local play I was in called Camelot. A lady from a Sydney factory moved to Alice and started a clothing alteration business. She fell over backwards when I walked in asking where to get them from. I said I knew how to use them, and she offered me a job learning alterations, well paid too. Super fit, in a play, working, riding horses everyday, living the life. Living the dream.

I fell Pregnant at 29 and then started my own business at home, “Home Sewn”, after cashing in a small superannuation to buy my industrial machines, sewing whatever came in the door. I surprised myself several times with what I was capable of making. Even the 4 bridesmaids that gave me their measurements, they all lived outside of Alice and were coming in the week of the wedding. So I made them all 5 inches bigger, nearly fell over when they all tried them on and they fit perfect. I was expecting to take them in a little. But I knew no matter what, I was going to provide my son the best and it has. A suburban life, with basic creature comforts.

We moved to Queensland, before he started school, he’s 25 now and I’m still sewing, no dressmaking now only alterations. No horses but I can still ride, not in a jockey pad though, trail rides only. Surprisingly so I finally bought myself my dream guitar, I was using my brothers way back then, it was forever going out of tune and was hard to use, I can still play a lot of what I learnt at high school, my fingers are still fast at plucking strings. I took it to my work and it sits in the corner. I rarely pick it up, I work alone in a shop with my friend’s osteoarthritis, tendinitis, frozen shoulders and mental health. Understandably though, my Blind hemmer falling off the truck leaving Alice, luckily its strong and kept working. Going through the Floods in 2013, my sewing business lost everything. All under control, just keep keeping on. But realistically I would have thought that riding race horses was more dangerous than sewing. I just keep bouncing back.

I now need glasses to see distance and close up. I play, I can thread the machine with my eyes shut, it must be a memory thing, I can do it, sometimes. I offer same day service. There’s always someone needing help with their sewing. A wedding, funeral, sporting, vanity.

But do I want to keep doing it?

I don’t know!

Maybe I could play my guitar/sing and earn a living that way ?

Go back to horses and teach what I know ?

The Inner peace I get through helping others, being told "I’m a life saver', and all the other social interactions sewing has given me over the years. I’m there to serve, I’m there to feel the memories of my life. To stop in the middle of a beautiful dress that I’m altering, feeling the sunrise through the window, that warmth, I take a deep breath and feel the imaginary wind pass my face as I’m galloping a big solid horse down the straight of the race track at 12 seconds per furlong. It makes me smile, the transcendental meditation I know I get through the long hours of concentration has created a wild imagination during the patience of sewing, it makes my imagination feel real ! I have inner Peace.