The Sewing Room

Dad:
I never spent much time in the sewing room, except for a short time when my desk was back in the corner. It was later moved upstairs to make more room for the sewing table. The best thing that happened to the sewing room was the shelf unit that Corey made as a Mother's Day present for Mom.  He did a good job on it and as a result, stuff was easier to organize. Fred Barton, a contractor from our ward in Canoga Park did the add on. Originally there was a small patio back there, where the room was to be added on,but as I recall, Fred had to take out the patio and pour a slab with rebar to build it to city code. That room was a welcome addition to the house because it freed up one of the upstairs bedroom. It was basically a work room. A lot of  stuff was produced by Mom in that room over the years.

Maren:
Oftentimes the sewing room had only a small pathway from the door to the sewing machine, with access to the ironing board off the side.  The white cutting table took up a majority of the space, with mom utilizing underneath to store bolts of fur fabric, bags of stuffing, and who-knows-what-else.  There were also brown cardboard filing cabinets that housed patterns and perhaps some scraps of fabric. 

The sewing machine was against the wall that was shared with the living room for many years, but I also remember it being moved to the opposite side of the room in front of the window.  When it was just up against the wall, the TV was placed on some sort of dresser so that mom could watch/listen to TV as she worked.  When I was in my late years of elementary school and throughout junior high I remember watching TV in there on Sunday nights when I wanted to watch something besides football (which was being watched in the family room) like The Simpsons or America's Funniest Home Videos.  Only one person could really fit in there to watch TV.  We may have tried a few times to set another chair in there for two of us to watch at the same time but it wasn't very comfortable.  Ice cream and possibly cake was consumed in there on those Sunday nights as well (being careful not to spill on any fabric or anything, of course).

I also spent many hours in that room sewing dresses and skirts.  Sometimes I would stay up late on Saturday nights in an effort to finish making something that I could wear the next day to church.  But  I would often just give up, realizing that it wasn't worth the sacrifice of sleep for something new to wear, when it could wait another week.  Many of the things I made turned out quite well and I wore them a lot.  But sometimes, I made some serious mistakes and a few items of clothing were worn only once or not at all.

The shelves that fit into the closet space where well used, with bolts of fabric lined up on the bottom and additional folded fabric filling the upper shelves. Whenever I was in the mood to make something new I would scour those shelves first in order to save some money and a trip to the fabric store.  I found a treasure or two along the way, but more often than not, I ended up going to the fabric store.  Loopin also hid out under those shelves after the 1994 Northridge earthquake.  Didn't it take us a day or two before we finally found her there?

Mom made many valuable heirlooms on the sewing machine.  I still have my Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy dolls, a large wardrobe for my 3 Cabbage Patch dolls, which of course include fur coats, pajamas, and several cute dresses.  Several of the dresses that I wore as a child that Mom made were made in that room, too.

Dad ironed his shirts in that room.  I'm thinking probably every day except Saturday.

Vacuuming that room gave me a strange sense of satisfaction as I sucked up all the little threads and fur that quickly accumulated.

Mom tells me that before I started going to school I would want to sit on her lap while she was sewing.   I remember for the longest time she had a valentine hanging up next to the TV that I had made for her at the Montessori preschool that was on construction paper with a doily glued on it.

The window was nicely shaded by the apricot tree in the backyard.

Mom:

The sewing room was built in 1978 while I was pregnant with Maren, prior to that, there had been windows in both the living room and family room.  We gave them up for the sewing room, also a small patio off the living room that was removed.
 

One year while Corey was in college he came home and offered his labor to build the shelves as a Mother's Day gift.  He measured and figured and we went and bought the wood and the kit to put it together.  When we moved to Venus Street we were able to take them apart and reassemble them there.  It was sad to leave them when we moved to Boise.  Those shelves helped take all the bolts of fabric out of the family room.  I also bought a cutting table (which I still have) which was high enough that I could stand up and cut fabric without getting a backache.  I made tents, tee shirts, dresses, pants, etc. for all of you at one time or another.  I had my Pfaff sewing machine and an industrial machine.  I did sell the industrial machine after I stopped sewing tents and moved my Pfaff by the window. Brother Barton built the room, it cost about $7,000, and we were able to deduct the cost over time as a business expense.  I sewed samples for a woman who had her needlework items in a hobby catalog, lingerie for a woman who had house parties to sell the merchandise, tents, many of our clothes and lots of t-shirts to give as gifts at birthday parties.  Maybe the boys who received them didn't think they were a "cool" gift, but many of their mothers loved them!  I also work with Joelson Industries beginning in 1989 and continued with them for 15 years designing and making samples of fabric giftware for the mass market stores.  I spent lots of hours, literally morning, noon, night and even in the wee hours of the morning sewing.  I loved to sew because the end product lasted much longer than the hours it took to make dinner, which was gone in minutes after being served. This also allowed us to buy the Nintendo, pay college tuitions, books, and extras above what your grandparents paid.  Also helped buy clothes and other expenses for your missions.  This also allowed me to be home and take care of you and make more money than I could by getting a full time job!  I loved sewing and creating doll clothes for the reproduction doll hobby people....this also paid very well.  This room was one of the best investments we made in that house.

 

Curtis:

One word: Chaos. In a good way, of course.

Corey:

Not a lot of family interaction took place in the sewing room. True to its name, it is where all Mom's sewing took place.

 

I can remember when the sewing room addition was built. It seemed like the room went up very quickly with a lot of workers swarming the house for a couple weeks. They had to fill in a window in the living room along the back wall, which I remember they didn't do until the rest of the sewing room was closed in, so it was fun to have an "indoor" window for a short time. And it was exciting to see the red carpet in the family room replaced with the brown carpet to match the sewing room.

 

Of course I remember the sewing room being filled with all kinds of sewing stuff but the brown cardboard file cabinets were in there as well. I remember rummaging through the drawers from time to time to look at old photos and report cards and other mementos that  that Mom and Dad had saved for us.

 

I can remember when Mom was trying to capture Mars the cat in a towel, I assume to have her put to sleep. The cat sensed this and was going crazy trying to claw through the window and literally climbed up the window while mom had the towel partly wrapped around the cat to keep herself from getting scratched. 

Then there was the fake fur Mom used for making the bunnies and bears. There would be clouds of the small fibers floating in the air while she worked, KMPC playing on the radio. The fur would eventually settle on the brown carpet, like a fresh flurry of snow. Vacuuming it up later was always satisfying, painting the carpet back to its normal, matted brown.

 

My biggest contribution to the sewing room was building the big, long shelves that went in the closet and along one wall. I don't know what the impetus was for building them when we did, but we did it during the couple weeks before I left on my mission. I went to Home Depot and found a kit for building the 2x4 frame and some white laminated boards for the shelves themselves. I think I started putting them together by hand and found I couldn't get the screws in all the way and my wrists were getting tired and sore. I was excited to go back to the store and get a cordless drill which made the job a lot easier. The completed shelves were really heavy and it was difficult to move them into the room once we had them built. We assembled them in the backyard, but maybe we should have built them in the sewing room.  Once in place, I found a nice spot at one end of the closet for hiding my box of music CDs, which kept them up disturbed for the two years I was gone.