Ahhh... Sweet memories of all the pajamas and nightgowns my grandma used to make for everyone in the family every Christmas. My dad and uncles would get plaid jammies, bottom and top, brothers and boy cousins would have fire engines or other "boy-prints", my mom and aunts: flowers or pastel plaids and I remember getting kittens.
Warm and cozy memories, just like it felt to sew with the plaid flannel and enjoy the easy sew-ability of that soft, warm fabric.
(My grandma in those pre-serger days would have flat-felled every seam... the pj's she made never raveled at the seams ... oh no).
The memories of grandma's sewing bring back all the other old memories of how I got started sewing in the first place. It was at grandma's old farmhouse out in the country. She would let me loose in her scrap box. (She only had TWO scrap boxes, not 22 like I have). In it would be rolled up tight leftovers from projects, each roll tied with a skinny strip of the same fabric. From that scrap box, I would find off white cotton to make the body of rag dolls. A rectangle for the trunk. 4 longs skinny tubes for arms and legs and two circles for the head. I'd sew it all by hand. Grandma showed me a running stitch, and later another stitch with a backstitch in it that was more sturdy. She's show me how to leave a gap for the stuffing, then later sew it shut. She found bright yellow yarn for the hair. Painting on a face with I can't remember what. And then the clothes.
Later, it was quilt squares. She had me trace the pattern onto cardboard and use that as a template. I still have the quilt. (I'll take a photo and post that one of these days). To sew these together, she let me use her machine, fearful I'm sure that I'd sew my finger.
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