Susan Brown Fetty

I hated school. I was painfully shy. Now I don't care. I'm too old to care.

In sewing class I was in a rush to get an invisible zipper into my A-line dress. I did a good job on the first try, but I put it in facing the inside of the dress instead of the outside. The next day was spent gently removing the stitches from the cheap material the dress was being made out of. The following day I was VERY careful to make sure I was putting it in on the correct side of the material. GREAT JOB! BUT... I had put it in to the neckline of one piece of material and the HEM of the other piece of material. I was incredibly observant during my teen years. So, the fourth day was spent VERY gently removing stitches from the cheap and now very slightly shredded material. On the fifth day I put the zipper in right, but at this point the material was not looking good.
I then made another dress. There were 7 kids in our family at this time and there wasn't much money for school supplies. I got some scrap material in purple for a dress (it had to be wool), but with the money left over, I ended up having only enough to buy lining in English Racing Green. Every time I looked at the combination I wanted to puke. I finished the dress, but when I tried it on the right shoulder of the dress rised up about an inch and a half off of my shoulder. So, when I had to model the dress in front of the sewing class I did it like a runway model with my hands on my hips and my right shoulder elevated. I think I pulled it off.

What was worse is that my sister Sheri was also in the class and she was an amazing seamstress. About a decade later my sister Patty followed in my footsteps in the sewing department. It took her a semester to sew four seams in order to make a drawstring purse. She wanted to practice her sewing at home. My mom had just gotten her sewing machine back from being serviced. She set it down on the dining room table. Patty came up to use it, but couldn't figure out how to change the bobbin. A screw driver and a half an hour later Mom had to take the sewing machine back to the shop to have it put back together again. The shop owner did it for free.