My luggage was a brown paper bag and it held only one item, my nightie — all I needed for my weekend with my grandparents. Their home in Dayton was an I-house, so-named because many of the original builders were from Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. Indiana was only thirty-five miles to the west. Two stories high, only one room deep, it had a small, covered porch attached to the last room, the kitchen. Multicolor asphalt siding climbed half-way up the front. Modest as the house was, it had sheltered many. Neat, tidy, with well-tended flowers in the yard, two dogs, shelves of houseplants, and the aroma of beef and noodles, the house on the corner of Second Street and North Jersey epitomized homelife.
In those days, after the GIs came home from the War, housing was scarce. Many doubled up. For a time, my grandparents opened their home to a boarder, a young woman named Rose. Other times, my great uncle Claudie lived with them. I was their “weekend boarder,” spending most weekends with them. My teenage aunts, Shirley and Betty, still at home, made me their pint-sized mascot. They took me to the movies to see Pat Boone and Elvis, drove me in Shirley’s convertible to the drive-in restaurant and bought me hamburgers wrapped in white paper. They teased me and told me outrageous fibs. Saturday mornings were set aside for housework as, weekdays, my grandmother worked on the line at NCR, banging out big silver-colored cash registers. She showed me how to water the houseplants, how much water to give the aloe, how much for the cactus, and how much for the rest. I wiped the mirror on the coat closet with Windex and enjoyed it.
I gave an enthusiastic “yes” whenever my grandfather asked me in German if I wanted to come for a visit. The trip was less than a block from my home. We lived in my great aunt’s double, a duplex, which we shared with her son Earl. Earl, his wife, and four kids lived in one half. My parents, two brothers, and I lived in the other. It would be decades before it dawned on me that, by having me over, my grandparents eased my parents’ childcare load.
On that summer’s evening, with the sun still in the sky, I begged to get ready for bed early. My nightie was a new one, made by my mom and it was magical. Pale green as a luna moth, the shortie nightgown barely covered my bottom and included matching ruffled panties. Mom had emphasized to me the special properties of the fabric and its suitability for keeping cool in the sticky Ohio heat. She taught me the name of the lightweight cotton with round puckers a little smaller than a pencil eraser: plisse.
My mother made many of my clothes as well as my doll baby’s and I loved it. I felt no hesitancy in wearing homemade dresses, blouses, skirts, pants, shorts, and tops. One afternoon I watched in amazement as my mother smoothed out one of my grandmother’s voluminous cotton slips on Grandma and Grandpa’s bed. The lace trim had become worn beyond repair, but Mom pointed out the fine cotton was still good. She cut out a slip for me.
Sewing clothing was just one more fascinating talent of the adults in my life. My grandfather made long curls of wood with his plane as he built a canary cage for my grandmother. My father painted my swing set Chinese Red and told me if I dug a hole deep enough, I would pop up in China. My grandmother rolled up, cut, and dried dough to make noodles. She darned socks. I could not wait to learn how to do these things, though China had to wait till 1986.
My cousins and I did not balk at wearing each other’s hand-me-downs either. Rather, we’d ogle the clothing of the cousin ahead of us in size and dream of the day Carol Ann’s yellow dress with black bias trim and a dropped waist would be ours. Even underwear elicited excitement. When I was seven, full skirts puffed out by petticoats — like an upside-down carnation — were in vogue. I often wore three petticoats at a time, over a slip, to achieve the look and would have layered more if I had owned them. For my birthday, my parents bought me a special petticoat. Known as a “Huff ‘n Puff,” it sported an inflatable tube, like a bicycle tire wheel, sewn into a channel a few inches above the hem. I blew it up like a beach ball, slipped it on, and voila! My skirt bellowed out and swayed like a bell clapper when I walked. Cousin Linda Sue, younger and smaller than me, piped up that she could not wait till I outgrew that petticoat.
My most memorable childhood clothes were all homemade. Unlike store-bought clothing, they were sewn in precisely chosen textiles and styles. Patterns and hemlines were adjusted to fit me. Custom-created by my mother (and grandmother), meticulously stitched details like smocking gave them personality.
Red is my favorite color. In kindergarten, my mom made me a red polka dot, short sleeve dress with a tucked white bib and a row of buttons on the chest. I memorialized it in one of those efforts for parents’ night. I stretched out on a piece of brown kraft paper on the tile floor. Classmates traced my outline in crayon, then I colored in the details — including my red polka dot dress. In fifth grade, I scraped other kid’s food trays and stacked them for washing alongside Butch, the janitor, to earn free lunches. Yet, I felt like a princess in my metallic-trimmed brocade weskit as I pushed uneaten vegetables into the garbage can. In autumn browns and gold, the fabric remnant echoed the October trees outside and accented my coloring. Lavender is another favorite shade. For Easter one year, Mom sewed me a lilac linen puffed-sleeved dress. The gathered skirt had a single layer overlay, like a long peplum. She used net to make the upper part of the underskirt so the whole dress laid nicely. Bright white strings of embroidered daisies trimmed the peplum’s hem and the bodice.
She continued to make my outfits into high school. Whether it was a pale green wool dress with simple Jackie Kennedy-lines or a long-sleeved mod flowered voile mini dress in wild swirls of pink and yellow, she went all out. My mother taught me the proper terms involved in sewing and explained her work. I already knew how to make the fabric-covered buttons she put on the voile dress, but it was the first time I saw French seams. She explained the French seams made the see-through material look tidy. I wore the voile dress on my Senior trip to Manhattan with pride. Even into college, my grandmother sewed nightgowns personalized with hand embroidery for me.
Before the late 1800s most families made their own clothing. By the fin de siècle, industrialization made outsourcing to the garment industry feasible. The increased movement of women into the out-of-home workforce made store-bought clothes popular. Home sewing declined, only to resurge with the economic duress of the Great Depression and the textile rationing of World War II. Homemade clothes continued to be common through the 1950s. Although I learned to sew from my family and my 4-H club, many women learned at school. Gender-based classes were ubiquitous. Boys took shop and worked with tools; girls took home economics and learned to sew and cook. Then, societal changes associated with second-wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s undercut the popularity of this approach. Sewing faded from the curriculum of most schools.
The garment industry has traditionally been an employer of women, often immigrants, minorities, or those located outside the continental United States. With this marginalized workforce, worker safety, environmental conservancy, and non-predatory practices have gone begging. The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire of 1911 in which 146 workers at a Manhattan sweatshop died was met with public outrage and call for better working conditions. Activism ignited and new laws were enacted, but the exploitative use of employees continued.
In the 1990s, the US garment industry, in response to changes in trade policies, moved manufacturing from the continental United States. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, between 1979 and 2019, the American apparel and textile industries dropped from 2.2 million jobs to 334,000 — a loss of 81 percent. Today, only two to three percent of the clothing sold in the United States is made here.
With cheaper clothing, the phenomenon known as “fast fashion” arose. Since clothes could be turned out quickly and at relatively low prices, clothes shopping became a sport for some consumers. High fashions from the catwalk could be replicated and produced in as little time as fifteen days, worn a few times, then trashed or allowed to linger in the closet in favor of the next new dress or jumpsuit. No longer did clothes shopping occur only with the change in seasons or when clothing wore out. Fast fashion has become a target for those concerned with protecting the environment as well as garment workers.
The need for continued international attention to worker safety was underlined in 2013 with the collapse of the Rana Plaza. The Rana Plaza, originally built in Bangladesh as a social center, was remodeled. Four additional stories were added atop the existing five story structure and used as a clothing manufacturing complex. Poorly constructed, large generators shook the building whenever they were turned on. The building eventually collapsed, killing 1138 workers, and injuring at least 2000. It is considered the deadliest accident in the modern history of the garment industry and one of the deadliest industrial accidents ever.
The COVID 19 pandemic, economic constraints, and concerns about the environment have brought about a resurgence of interest in homemade sewing and other home-centered creative activities. Few have the time or interest to sew all their own clothing. Yet, in context with today’s world and the future many desire, this humble activity takes on a glow. Not only can making clothes be creative and an act of love, but it can also counteract in one small way the baser forces at play.
With many of us still working from home, this is a low-risk opportunity to experiment with homemade clothes. For novices, pajama bottoms are one way to start and really, we know the ZOOM camera will never tell how even your hems are.
Birthday Skirt
by Shaun Perkins
She has been alone for twelve years,
Remembers only the birthdays of dead people.
She shared one with Birdie, her brother’s wife,
who spoke in questions and smiles,
and said of the only daring skirt she ever made,
“Interesting pattern choice for you, Montie,”
while blowing cigarette smoke past her ear.
Birdie wore department store clothes and smelled pink.
She had an Audrey Hepburn neck and blonde hair
Bubbled into a sunrise display. Men stopped
talking when she entered a room. The skirt,
long since cut apart and used for doll clothes,
was V-striped in bright tones of orange, red
and yellow, and trimmed inside with delicate ivory lace.
Used with the poet’s permission.
Source: Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry
Wonderful article. My mom made our clothes until we learned to make our own clothes in 8th grade. We practiced before then by making doll clothes for the younger siblings.
I then made my daughter's clothes until she was in High School. I miss those days....