17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Sunday, May 13, 1912: Ma got my dress on the go at last and I’ll keep at her until she gets it made.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Hmm . . This entry obviously is referring to the second dress that was mentioned in previous entries. (It’s not the Indian linen one that a seamstress finished).
Was the plan always for Grandma’s mother to make this second dress or had Grandma originally expected to make it herself?
On May 8, she’d written:
Did some sewing this afternoon. I have so many things to fix over and a dress I want to get made, but it is slow about getting there.
When I look at pictures of dresses from a hundred years ago they look like they would be complex to make. Maybe Grandma and her mother reached consensus that her mother could more skillfully do the sewing task.
When I was young, my mother and I would sew together, which is how I learned how to sew, and how my auntie taught my mum how to sew. Perhaps it was a joint project. 🙂
You’re probably right. Joint projects are the most fun–and people can teach other new skills.
Can you imagine sewing all your clothes? Being so self-sufficient? This one looks very smart.
It was a different time. 🙂
It surely seemed to me to be able to get more done in our hours years ago than we can now-a-days. I used to make a great deal of my clothes and even did some simple tayloring…. There was time to cook complicated meals, and time to keep things clean without all the chemicals. I think we have too many demands on us now with many too many distractions. Times certainly were different then.
I find myself still occasionally relying on my mom to help with sewing projects that I never quite acquired the finesse to finish.
You’re so fortunate! I wish that I’d paid more attention when my mother used to try to teach me how to do sewing projects. At the time I wasn’t into “homemade” dresses.