Memories

I have so many memories of fabric and outfits from when I was a child, not as much the actual stores though.

Both my mother and my grandmother sewed, though my Oma lived in Germany, she regularly sent beautiful outfits for me, generally with handsmocking as such.

I would guess that 95% of my wardrobe was sewn by hand.

As a young child I do remember buttons, and my mom matching buttons to outfits. I remember whole cardboard boxes of fabric scraps. She would take her scraps from an outfit, fold them up into a nice shape, then roll them tight. Then she'd take a small strip of the scrap fabric and tie it closed. Her cardboard box was full of these scrap "tubes." One day a neighbor girl came over to get scraps from my mom to sew doll clothes with, and I was so sad to see a bunch of those lovely tubes go.

Then I was allowed to play with her scrap box and I would sew little bags with drawstrings out of yarn (she also knits.)

When I was in 4th grade, for Christmas, my sister and I got dolls who had that growing hair. They were like 20" tall dolls, much bigger than Barbies. When we opened up the storage cases that we got as gifts too, they were full of outfits my mom had sewn. And it's wild that I remember the outfits from real clothes she had sewn for herself or us. That was probably my best present of all times.

My older memories of fabric stores are primarily from FabricLand (I think it was) in Silverdale, WA. I would have been older than 4th grade at that time. And my mom would wrap the fabrics off the bolts over me, have me stand in front of a mirror, and me agreeing that the color looked good. I had no clue. My mom was a summer (I'm autumn) and she always picked bright summery colors for me. I don't remember ever hated the fabric store or anything like that. I got to pick out some patterns too.

By the time I was in middle school I was starting to sew myself, and then by HS I sewed my own clothes (or bought.) The fabrics I later chose were much more toned down.

And I remember Esthers, on Bainbridge Island. We would go there to look at fabrics or buy notions we were missing, but it was usually too expensive...lol. Ah, to have a specialty store like that again.

Oh, my, I just googled it, and it's still there, the oldest fabric store in Washington. Esther's Fabrics