A century ago, a woman knew how to make quilts for the beds, sew clothes for the family with hand-stitched embellishments, crochet or knit blankets and shawls and grow, harvest and “put up” the vegetables from the garden to have food for the winter. In today’s busy society of two-job households and with the ease and much lowered cost, comparatively, of food from grocery stores and manufactured clothing, these skills are slowly slipping by the wayside.
Gone are the days when you ran to buy material and a pattern, along with thread, buttons, snaps, zippers and appropriate needle weights for your machine in order to have that new dress for a special occasion. No longer do most of us run to the garden for that last-minute ingredient for a meal. As a society, we’ve lost the patience and the time to commit to these things. We choose convenience over the satisfaction of creating something ourselves.
Sadly, the savings which used to be seen when sewing your own dress or quilt or crocheting your own blankets have dwindled away. As these things have slipped into the realm of hobby, the costs of the materials and supplies have skyrocketed.
This month, I’ve been crocheting a blanket for my nephew for Christmas, at his request. He saw the ones I did for his mom and dad, and he wanted one, too. I bought the yarn for roughly $80, and that was with a 15 percent discount at Jo-Ann Fabric. Then I had to dig out my crochet hooks, realizing I hadn’t touched them since last Christmas when I crocheted the blanket for my brother-in-law. I simply hadn’t had time.
When I was very young, my mother’s mother taught me to cross-stitch, sew on buttons, fix unraveling seams and repair little tears. While raising two boys, these skills came in handy quite often and saved me a ton in clothing replacement costs. Of course, the boys rapidly outgrew the clothes anyway, but at least I could keep pants and shirts in one piece for those brief weeks when they did fit.
My father’s mother taught me to quilt, crochet and can or freeze vegetables for the winter. While I still find deep enjoyment in these things, I rarely have the time, usually needing a push such as an impending gift-giving occasion.
Quilting takes scads of space, which I cannot devote to a quilt spread out on the floor with four dogs in the house. Once the hundreds of hours of stitching were completed, I couldn’t put it on a bed, again because of the dogs. Even the hand-made quilts I do have stay put up, and I instead use inexpensive quilts from Walmart.
As for canning and freezing, or even cooking with fresh vegetables and herbs, the jury is still out. I have a space chosen to put in a garden, but when the time comes, we never seem to find the time to do the initial prep work to create it. This would include not only turning the beds, ensuring there is good soil quality and mixing in whatever is needed to make that happen, but also fencing the area in. Again, dogs. There just never seems to be time.
For now, I content myself with time spent crocheting for my nephew, watching the blanket grow with each stitch. As I stitch, I rekindle my love of creating a tangible product with my hands and promise myself I’ll start something else after the blanket is done. However, in the back of my mind, I know it’ll likely be next December, when I carve out time to make another blanket for Christmas.
