Sew Easy!

When we arrived for our October meeting to find the tables arranged for an activity we realised that our speaker was planning audience participation in her talk on craft! Helen York has lived in the Burton area all her life and began sewing as a little girl. An elderly neighbour helped her to make clothes for her dolls and by the time she went to secondary school she was so proficient that the teacher used to send other girls to her for help when they were struggling to put zips in their skirts. Making clothes was her passion and in her final year at school she won a scholarship to the London School of Fashion. Everything was arranged, even her accommodation, but in that last summer before she was due to leave home she met the boy who would eventually become her husband and all her plans were changed!

She no longer wanted to take up her college place so her school found her an apprenticeship with a local tailor. He was very talented and could look at the way a man stood and then design a suit for him which would hang perfectly. As Helen progressed through her apprenticeship she realised that she was more interested in the construction of garments than in design. She loved fabrics and their textures and had a natural ability to work with them. She learned much from Arthur, the tailor, but unfortunately he was a heavy smoker, a ‘sixty a day’ man. The workroom she shared with him was small so when the dangers of passive smoking were much publicised after the death of Roy Castle in 1994 she felt obliged to move on.

She has had a variety of jobs some of which have involved dressmaking or soft furnishing while others were quite different. She has always continued to make things at home for herself and family and friends as a hobby and a couple of years ago someone suggested that she should have a craft stall. She found that this suited her perfectly, particularly since she formed a partnership with a friend who sells vintage china which complements the pretty fabrics she uses. She had set up an attractive stall for our meeting with all manner of decorative items, domestic linens and soft furnishing which demonstrated her passion for quality of construction.

Helen wanted to share with us the pleasure and satisfaction which can be gained from making something ourselves. She had prepared in advance a variety of materials cut to size with a choice of trimmings and embroidery silks so that we could each make a bookmark simply by using blanket stitch to join the pieces together. As some of us hadn’t used blanket stitch for about sixty years there was some hilarity as we tried to remember which way to put our needles into the fabric but with the help of Helen, her mother and her friend circulating among us, the rest of the evening was spent in the relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere of a ‘sewing bee’. We learned that our stitches would always look neat if they were kept to the same length as their distance apart and some very pretty bookmarks were completed. The others were taken home to be finished with a new or rekindled enthusiasm for sewing!

Our next meeting, to which visitors will be very welcome, is on 13th November when Ann Brown will give us ‘Ideas for Christmas’ (with flowers). For further information please contact our Chairman Penny Bailey through the link below.