When I was growing up, it was cost effective for my mother to make our dresses. I would go with her to the fabric store and make my choice. We would bring the fabric home and she would wash it and hang it on the outdoor clothesline. When I was really little I would play under the clothesline and make up stories about me wearing my new dress.

I learned to sew on Mama’s machine, an old Singer with a foot-powered treadle. You had to get everything situated, start the wheel and the treadle going at the same time, and keep it going. It was a little bit like walking and chewing gum, but I figured it out eventually. It would sew nice straight seams, and if you wanted reverse, you simply turned your work around and went back over it. I got another foot-powered machine in the nineties, when my husband and I went out the Port Protection, Alaska, to teach. We moved into a house that had no electricity, and when my Aunt Kathy learned about this she found a new machine and had it mailed to me. Our house was on the water, and I remember Scott bringing the boxes up to the beach in the skiff.

Mama’s old machine is safe in my little house in Virginia, and the one Aunt Kathy gave me is having its second career as an end table in my front room in Craig.

My first of two electric machines was a Viking Husqvarna that I bought (rebuilt) at a secondhand shop in Anchorage around 1982. That machine was my partner in crime for many years. The first time it needed repairs there was still a shop in Ketchikan, and I sent it over on a floatplane. The second time it needed repairs, I was obliged to take it to Anchorage. I flew with it in my lap. When I was (many years post 9-11) taking it through security, the agent asked me what it was. I explained. He gazed at if for a moment, then winked broadly and declared, “I bet it’s an RPG.” I knew that while “RBG” means Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “RPG” means rocket-propelled grenade, and I gaped at him for a moment until I decided it was ok to laugh. “That’s me,” I said. “Terrorist grandma.”

When the nice man in Anchorage told me that it would cost more for him to try to fix my machine than the cost of a new one, I caved in a bought a new Janome. It is, as the salesperson told me, “a good little workhorse.” I gave the old Viking to my son Brooks, and he used it until it started emitting a peculiar smell every time he fired it up. We agreed that it should be retired once and for all.

So I still sew, making fun stuff like sunbonnets and bright-colored curtains. It doesn’t save me any money, but it sure does feed my soul.