The Sewing Machine by Natalie Fergie
A extraordinary story about an ordinary object, a sewing
machine. What can be said about a sewing machine that would make a good story?
Natalie Fergie answers this question overwhelmingly with her story of the
little Singer machine, from the time it was being made in the factory, through
100 years of use, and handed down through generations. This is the story of the
women and men that used this machine, the way they are all connected and
intertwined seemingly by the threads of the machine.
My favorite part was the journals kept by the people
sewing/mending/creating projects, one page in a small book dedicated to each
project, a line of sewing on the page with a small scrap of the fabric and
notes as to what was made, for who, etc.
I actually got choked up visualizing this, notes in little books going
back 100 years.
2016 - Fred is cleaning out his grandparents house, opens up
the old Singer case, discovering a bundle stuffed inside containing 16 small
notebooks which he discovers go back 100 years.
"Some have homemade covers cut from scrap paper. Fred can see that one has been made from a road atlas, and another has a picture of sweet peas on a page from a seed catalogue. There is a school jotter and an old cash book. At the bottom of the pile, the final notebook is covered with a familiar wallpaper with cars on it. ‘My bedroom,’ he says softly.
He opens one of the books. Each page has a line of stitching running vertically near the outer edge. Yellow stitches on the first page, then white, blue, black. And caught in the seam every time is a scrap of cloth, maybe two inches by one. The pages have writing on them too and he catches his breath; it’s the same as the handwriting on the first six of the birthday cards in his treasure box, and on the jam jars in the larder."
I thought what a wonderful idea, a good idea for the history
of one sewing machine, but also a good idea for the documentation of one person's
sewing history even on different machines. What if I had done this? The school dresses,
mini skirts from the 70s, baby clothes, bridesmaid dresses, prom dresses, quilts, my wedding dress c.1973… what a history…
The Sewing Machine is a new favorite book of mine, a reminder of the importance of family, of passing down through generations the tools and skills and stories that make up each family's history.
