What every girl should know...

Dear Diary,

When I was visiting Dotty on Wednesday we talked a great deal about her career as a home economics teacher.  For nearly 40 years she had taught young girls, and some boys too, to sew and cook.  I, of course, thought about my two years in junior high school when I took sewing and cooking classes with Miss Gustafson.

This morning I got out the old sewing sampler my grandmother made around 1900.  She had given it to me to bring to my sewing class to show Miss Gustafson.  It demonstrated her skill at all the practical needs of sewing like darning and patching as well as different kinds of hems, edging and gussets.(extra photo)  My first sewing project in grade 7 was an apron.  It was blue and white check with red rick-rack trim.  On the two pockets we embroidered, in cross-stitch, our initials.  It was sewn completely by hand and we didn't use a pattern.  Miss Gustafson thought every girl should be able to sew without a machine, Dotty thought so too.

I still love to sew by hand although I could never quite reach the 15 stitches per inch level my grandmother could do.  In our cooking class everything was made "from scratch".  At Christmas we had to bring in a cookie recipe that was a family tradition and I brought in the special Polish cookies I loved, Chrusciki or Angel Wings.  I haven't made them in years and years.  Thank you Dotty for awakening those memories for me!