My mother was an expert at sewing and loved to shop for fabric. As a child, I spent hours and hours with her in the fabric store, leafing through pattern books, touching the bolts of cloth, and listening to the flipping of the bolt on the cutting table.
After the fabric was measured out, the snipping scissors alerted me that the magic moment was about to occur. I always watched as the clerk leaned forward and sliced cleanly through the fabric with her open scissors.
I did not inherit my mother’s talent nor her love for sewing, but still I go to the local fabric store every so often for small items. This store has been around for about twenty-five years, and is a fixture in our town. When I go, I linger there, looking at the various bolts of fabric, thinking about the possibilities within, remembering past times.
Last week as I approached the doors, I smiled, thinking about how lovely it was that specialized, locally-owned places like these still exist.
Entering the store, I stood and stared. At least fifty other women were in there, buzzing around, their arms filled with fabrics. There were long lines at the cutting table. One woman was cleaning out the Velcro supply. Had there been a sudden, urgent resurgence in sewing?
I asked one of the women in the store what was going on. “They’re going out of business,” she said. “Everything is 30 percent off. It’s the first hour of the sale. They only let their regular customers know about it.”
Now, my mother taught me about wonders of iron-on interfacing, how to open the long, smooth file drawers to find a pattern, and how to check for the bias of a fabric.
I figured out myself, not to stand between a determined woman and a bolt of $55.00-a- yard ultra-suede that had been reduced by 30 percent.
Moving deftly around the store, I avoided the women who were making a beeline for the quilting supplies. I stepped aside just in time to avoid getting wiped out by determined woman with fabrics stacked up in her arms like holy books she had to save from destruction. I moved into the upholstery fabric section to see women bobbing up and down like hulls of sailboats, grabbing at rolls above their heads, bringing them down like masts and then swinging them like booms as they went back after another.
Feeling a little seasick, I ducked down under the rolls in the women’s arms and I made it to the oilcloth section, got what I needed and then went to join the fifteen or so women in line waiting to check out.
The older woman in back of me started up a conversation. We discussed the projects we were planning and then she showed me some starch product she was buying. “When you iron your husband’s pants and shirts, this is a miracle product,” she said.
I just smiled and nodded.
(I think I have an iron around here somewhere…. I seem to remember helping one of the boys use it for a t-shirt transfer about five years ago…)
I left the store, with my purchase and a sense of sadness too. From now on I’ll have to go to one of the big chain craft stores to seek out material and other supplies.
More than that, though, the real sadness comes from the fact that when I walked in a store like that, the smells, the sights, the sounds all took me back to those times with my mom.
Life had been hard on her and normally she was somewhat guarded and pessimistic. However, in the fabric store, she changed. She saw possibilities. She felt in control. She could let the creative side of her come out to play for a little while.
As I look back on those many hours I spent in the fabric store with my mom, I realize that though I may not have learned how to sew, I did learn some things about life.
I learned that fabric, like people, can only appreciated when you see them in their fullness and consider all their possibilities.
I learned that beauty is not to be found only in the silk and taffeta moments in life, but also in the simple muslin and cotton ones as well.
I learned that one small straight pin, like one small thought or word can be a problem or a solution, depending on how you use it.
I learned that it isn't easy, but you can alter a pattern, even one that’s been around for years.
And just last week, my experience taught me that places and people we assume will be around forever can and do shut down, close up, and go away.
We can carry the treasures away in our arms or in our hearts.
What we make out of them is completely up to us.
