Before Pinterest and Etsy, I was inspired by 9-year-old Betsy, who spent the week before Christmas making presents when a blizzard forced her to stay inside.
Reading “Snowbound with Betsy,” by Carolyn Haywood, when I was 9 myself, I couldn’t think of a more idyllic way to spend a week. Since then, I’ve spent countless hours cross-stitching, scrapbooking, embroidering — even decoupaging and making candles. But the most constant craft in my life (besides writing) has been sewing.
My love for sewing began with my mom, Anna Meckstroth, who grew up in Cuba. Her mom received packages filled with beautiful clothes from a friend in Illinois, and those packages made Mom yearn to emigrate to the U.S.
When Mom was 12, she rode a horse to the nearest town, La Gloria, where she purchased her first piece of fabric. Then, using a treadle sewing machine powered by a foot pedal, Mom’s sister Dorothy helped her mom make her first dress. They used starch made out of yucca and an iron heated on hot coals to smooth and press it.
Mom’s greatest reason for wanting to come to the U.S., though, was to get an education. In Cuba, she had only attended school for two years, one of which was at the Eliza Bowman School, an elite boarding school established by the Women's Missionary Council in Cuba for girls and young women. Using another girl’s uniform as a pattern, she sewed her own, and to help with tuition, she washed dishes, served meals, and swept hallways.
I’ve often reflected on the humility and hunger for education that were necessary for a teenage girl to perform such menial tasks for her peers.
In 1950, when Mom had the opportunity to come to West Palm Beach, she was 19. Once here, she cooked, cleaned, and did laundry for her sponsors and their four boarders.
Because Mom’s my mother's English was limited, and public schools didn't then have classes for English speakers of other languages, she was placed in the third grade.
After Mom learned to speak fluently, she was moved to Palm Beach High School, now Dreyfoos School of the Arts. When she graduated in 1955, she was nearly 25.
The next year she married my father at First United Methodist Church (now the Harriet Himmel Theater of Rosemary Square). Mom made her own wedding dress, bridesmaids’ dresses, and the flower girl’s dress.
The details of those dresses are immortalized in a July 8, 1956, wedding announcement in The Palm Beach Post: “Miss Aubyn Ann Johnson, in a ballerina length gown of white nylon over white taffeta with pink embroidered motif, a bandeau of white net petals and tiny rosebuds...was maid of honor. The bridesmaids ... were dressed like the maid of honor...Kitty Kay Anthony [Polly’s daughter] in pink organdy was the flower girl ... the bride wore a gown of Chantilly lace and net, fashioned with a basque waist and full skirt. Her illusion veil was attached to a headpiece of pearls and crystal.”
Shortly after their wedding, my parents moved to Louisville, Ohio.
By 1962, my two brothers, Clyde and Steve, and I had been born. To help make ends meet, my hairdresser mom shopped at thrift stores for the big skirts that were fashionable in the 1960s and then used that fabric to sew clothes.
In 1967, when I was 7, we moved to West Palm Beach, and in 1972, when I was 12, I took a sewing class at the Singer Sewing Center at The Palm Beach Mall, now the site of Palm Beach Outlets.
Ironically, Mom and I — who often pushed each other’s buttons — were united by sewing. We became partners in crime, spending hours perusing the 2-inch-thick McCalls, Butterick, Simplicity, and Vogue pattern books at Rag Shop and Cloth World and selecting fabrics. Mom wanted me to have what she had gone without.
I grew to be 6-foot-2, which was advantageous as an athlete but made finding clothes that were long enough impossible. Even more impossible was finding women’s size 13AA shoes. But I digress.
I’m not sure what I would have done if Mom and I hadn’t been seamstresses. I can now search the internet for companies that sell tall women’s clothes (and shoes); but I was born in 1960, and the Internet didn’t exist before 1983.
Nine years later, in 1986, I married into an Italian family that also sewed. My in-laws both worked on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach: my father-in-law, Angelo Alessi, as a tailor at Saks Fifth Avenue, and my mother-in-law, Michelina Alessi, as a seamstress at D. Kylene, a dress shop owned by the 1979 Miss America, Kylene Barker.
When I became pregnant in 1988, I couldn’t find maternity clothes that fit right and were comfortable, so I sewed my own.
And when I became a mom, I made matching outfits for my children, Jordan and Christina, and four of their cousins. Olan Mills was my mom’s and my favorite photography studio. After a photo shoot, we would go to Chuck E. Cheese, the Palm Beach Zoo, or the South Florida Science Museum (now the Cox Science Center and Aquarium).
What I’ve most enjoyed sewing is costumes: for Jordan and Christina for Halloween, for the annual Christmas Nativity skit we had at my parents’ house, and for my students when we read a Shakespeare play.
When Jordan and Christina expressed interest in learning to sew, they had three eager teachers: their two grandmothers and me.
I wish that when Mom looked at herself, she wouldn’t have seen a woman who couldn’t “spell worth a darn'' and only had six years of formal education. I wish she would have seen what others saw: an incredibly strong and brave woman who spent her life loving and doing for others. The common threads that Mom had woven throughout her life —hard work, sacrifice, and caring for others — were qualities that my brothers and I had come to value as well.
But she did let her lack of education affect her self-esteem. A s a result, she made sure her children received a good education. She couldn’t have been prouder when my brothers became doctors, and I became a teacher.
One Christmas, the Betsy in me sewed tree skirts for the adults on my list, and another year aprons. And, of course, when COVID-19 hit, I sewed face masks.
Most of the sewing I do today consists of mending and altering, but I do occasionally create something if I can’t find what I want. Last winter, I wished I had a robe but couldn’t find one that was long enough or had long enough sleeves, so I made one. As I laid out and pinned the pattern pieces to the fabric I had chosen, I thought of Mom showing me how to do so.
Patterns and fabric aren’t cheap, even with coupons. I could have bought a robe at T.J. Maxx or Marshalls for less than I spent, but the one I made fits perfectly, and I got to choose the color and texture.
By creating something with my own hands, I feel a sense of accomplishment. But what’s even more rewarding is the connection I feel with Mom.
Five years ago, Yanet Rivero — who emigrated from Cuba to West Palm Beach, hardly spoke any English, and knew no one here — began working as a caretaker for Mom and Dad. Mom loved Yanet and taught her to sew, so after Yanet’s heart broke in March 2020 when Mom died, it seemed fitting to give her Mom’s sewing machine and cabinet.
I think about Mom every day. When I look through pictures, I’m astounded by how many outfits she lovingly sewed for me. I no longer have any of those outfits, but I still have the “Hand Sewn by Mom” tags she sewed inside them, and I still feel her love.
Janet Meckstroth Alessi has been teaching at John I. Leonard High School since 1983 and is a frequent contributor to Accent. She can be reached at jlmalessi@aol.com.
https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/lifestyle/2021/11/29/writer-recalls-how-love-sewing-brought-her-and-her-mother-together/8712574002/
2021-11-29 11:45:07Z
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