How quickly and easily I avoided getting rid of anything last week. The provincial drama festival was in Corner Brook - six nights of wonderful plays, presented amateur drama groups from across the province. The “amateur” is mostly in terms of their not being paid. The shows were good quality theatre, IMHO. I can’t imagine anything like this happening in a larger place. Everyone knows everyone. Who knows what seething envies lurked beneath the surface, but the spirit of the festival seemed to be friendly competition, and enjoyment and appreciation of each other’s work.
And so - I avoid facing the Fabric of Failed Intentions for over a week, but the project now begins to take shape. There are two categories of fabric, one purchased by Selima, my alter-ego, former practitioner of the Obscure Anatolian Boogie, and the other by me. I used to enjoy sewing, but no longer do. My eyes are failing. Nice fabric is hard to find. Time is scarce. Needs are simpler. Clothing is far too cheap and far too available. And yet, I have 2 suitcases full of the fabrics of failed intention, of which I plan to keep two metres of black silk crepe, and two other lengths of dress fabric, which I will have someone else make into dresses for me. The black silk crepe - ah well, since we no longer indulge in black silk crepe for funerary purposes, I hope to have it converted to the ultimate pair of chic black pants, which have so far evaded my grasp.
Sewing ran in my family. My maternal grandmother, Nanny, was a seamstress, who raised a family of four with her sewing and money mailed by my grandfather, who left to work on the assembly lines of Detroit during the depression when my mother was four. Why the family didn’t go with him, is a mystery that has followed them all to the grave. One cousin said she refused to go, that she didn’t want to dislodge her children from Nova Scotia to raise them in a wicked American city, and that the marriage was not going all that well. Some said he just went off to work in the States because there was no work in Nova Scotia, plain and simple, not unlike what happens here in Newfoundland in 2010 where the money is sent home from the tar sands of Alberta. Whatever happened, the bottom fell out of industrial Nova Scotia even before the depression. My once prosperous native town of Amherst, on the edge of the Tantramar Marshes, had a piano factory, a foundry and Christie’s Luggage and Coffin Factory where my grandparents were working when they met. My grandfather was a carpenter building coffins, and my grandmother sewed the linings. They liked to go skating together on Christie’s Pond after work.
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| My Grandmother sewing in the 30's, with a drawing on the black board made by by mother |
This was one of the tales that came from my grandmother, who, for most of the time I knew her, was bedridden with MS. She was diagnosed at 29 in Montreal by the famous Dr. Wilder Penfield. My mother drew pictures of her at work. She always sewed with a mouthful of pins, and was famous for being able to copy any of the fashionable dresses in Margolians’ windows without using a pattern.
In home economics class, I sewed horrid flannel pajamas with flat fell seams and dreary aprons that fit on hard plastic hoops that pinched your waist. At home, I sewed glamourous Oleg Cassini knock-off dresses for my dolls. I made a batik print shift in secret, very beatnik I thought, and wore it to Greenwich Village when we sneaked to the city to go to coffee houses on Saturday afternoon, using our allowances for the commuter bus, and stood in line to get measured for Fred Braun sandals. After Doctor Zhivago came out, I made a double-breasted grey Russian military coat with Persian lamb trim and a matching hat on my treadle machine in the wretched Greenwich Village apartment I shared while a student at CCNY. The coat was long gone when a cat peed in the hat. When cats pee in furs hat there is no restitution; it was discarded. I made my first husband a Maple Leaf tartan sport coat with the plaid matched very well. He had a pair of trousers made to go with it. His relatives in Norway were dismayed when they saw our wedding photo. “Poor Paulle - if we known he didn’t have enough money to buy a proper suit, we would have sent some.” I made a pair of white jeans with an embroidered pocket - with flat fell seams stitched in red. They were, for their time, HOT. I probably was not, but I was young.
As Selima, the belly dancer, I had a voracious appetite for striped black and gold fabrics. Perhaps it started with the party dress my paternal grandmother sent from Florida the Christmas we all had mumps and measles together in Amherst, and Nanny died. I scarcely remember opening my gifts in the darkened room, but when at last the light was turned on, there was an Oriental splendour of a dress, gold and black satin stripes, with a little black velvet bolero. That grandmother also made beautiful smocked cotton dresses in pastel colours, which I liked because they felt good, not the nails-on-blackboard sensation of nylon party dresses, which I hated. She also bought me an orange polka-dot bikini when I was 15, and visiting her in Florida.
Armed with my credit card, Selima bought miles of lame, chiffon, glittery knit, crushed velvet, sequins, beads, Indian voile, trim and costume coins and filled large plastic bins. Some of these were made into costumes, but then I got very sick, and lost my sewing groove. Now they are packed in a huge plastic storage tub in large freezer bags measured and priced for the next Belly Dance Soiree. What doesn’t sell will go to the SPCA garage sale. There are vintage costumes which will probably be shunned by current dancers. The beaded bra, belt, necklace and headpiece I spent 80 hours making are not among the collection, having been borrowed by a vain young student and never returned. Two beautiful paisley print silk chiffon veils have also vanished. Will anyone want the old-fashioned coin belt I made from large Australian pennies and brass bells? My first husband taught me to solder, operate a drill press and make strong chain link from brass rings. One night when I was dancing in a North Beach nightclub in San Franciso four chaps in the front row called out. “Are those Australian pennies,” in broad Aussie voices. “Right they are, mate,” I returned in my best imitation. I met them afterwards and we had a good laugh speculating on what the Queen would think of being shimmied about like that. It was probably a criminal act on my part to deface the royal coinage.
Now, they wear cheap scarves trimmed with fake coins and beads. These scatter trimmings on the floor regularly in class, but my 40 year-old belt was built to outlast its owner, who outgrew it a long time ago.
