My mother, as I have mentioned, made all my dresses (with pants to match). She also loved to work in leather . She would buy a hide of beautifully finished suede and with intricate patterns first cut, then stitch a pair of elegant gloves for herself, and perhaps peccary hog for my handsome father. She used a bayonet needle. It was designed to pierce through the toughest leather, consisting of three sharp sides, like a bayonet sword. She had a silver thimble to force the thread through the double layers of leather.
We sat together in the living room of 11 The Bluff, and I was tasked with tidying here sewing basket as she sewed. Her sewing basket was a three tiered Japanese fisherman's basket, which she carefully lined with some upholstery scraps. There was an Oxo box to hold pins and needles. What is an Oxo box? It was a tin box about 2 1/2 by 4 inches with a tight fitting lid. The original use was to hold beef cubes which went by the trade name Oxo. It made a very useful pin and needle container. There were spools of thread, silk and cotton, and very strong waxed thread for leather. Her mother had worked as a seamstress before she married my grandfather, so she had passed on her considerable skills to my mother who could, beside dresses and gloves, toss off bedroom slippers, curtains, slipcovers for sofas, and just about anything else one could put a needle and thread to. She had a Singer treadle (foot operated) sewing machine that did not require electricity.
She also began, the year of my birth, a piece of crewel work embroidery with a Jacobean pattern of fanciful animals and birds entwined in foliage. It was destined to be a firescreen, a decorative piece that would cover a bare hearth in summer.
She finished it many years later just before her death in 1973, and it now hangs framed in my bedroom.
Can you guess what these are???
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