Reflections: Childhood Pleasures

I learned to sew on a treadle sewing machine similar to the one in this picture.  When my mother saw me spending so much time making doll clothes, she sent me up the mountain to a seamstress to teach me how to make my own clothes.  Her home was a simple hut-like cottage with a dirt floor.  As with many of the huts that dotted the mountain side, the path that led up to it was flanked by corn fields.          My mother, being a rather resourceful woman would request from the US, the discarded sewing pattern catalogs.  She would show the seamstress a dress picture then in turn would make her own patterns by just looking at the picture.  I, however, did not have that talent but managed to learn to sew, making many aprons, skirts and blouses, simple dresses and many pj's.  I still made doll clothes.   In those early days most of the cloth used came from the cloth sacks that held chicken feed that my grandparents sent down from time to time in the form of CARE PACKAGES.