A Stitch In Time

What could be better than making the most special dress ever for someone you really love?

- Suzi Barton

TODAY is my grand - daughter’s wedding. I’ll watch with immense pride as she walks down the aisle: a vision of beauty.

Tall and elegant, the auburn highlights in her rich dark hair shrouded in a wisp of delicate antique Nottingham lace, her slim figure gliding gently in a mist of organza and silk. The exquisite dress designed, cut and stitched by my own very experienced hands.

I inherited a love of sewing from my dear mother. She was a wonderful seamstress who could create top-class designer frocks from hand-me-downs and turn a shirt collar at the drop of a hat.

I’d sit on a little stool beside her and watch for hours, noting the steady pace of her feet as they pumped the metal treadle of the sewing machine, observing how the rhythm echoed in the needle as it bounced up and down, poking through the material.

Her shoulders would be hunched over the machine with her head bent forward, concentrating as she fed the material into the grabbing teeth, making sure her fingers dodged out of the way at the last minute, just before the needle came down. Her feet peddled on and on at the treadle, the click of each stitch pulsing again and again as the seam formed.

The rich wood of the sewing machine shone where mother polished it every week, the patina different shades of honey where time had seasoned it, the smell a rich odour of lavender wax mixed with the ageing aroma of the old cotton reels that lived hidden in the wooden drawers of the contraption.