Mom

This is my mom.

This is our house.  

The time is 1980 something and I'm not living there anymore.  

My brothers are still at home and obviously they have friends there, too.

The dress she has on she made herself.  

She was a great seamstress. 

We grew up back in the days when there were no cheap clothing stores.  

There was no Walmart, no Kmart, no Target.  

If you wanted ready made clothes, they had to be ordered from Sears or JC Penney's.  We did have a Penney's store in our town and I remember going there to buy knee high socks before school. We bought our shoes at the shoe store across the street.  

That was expensive.

Mom made her dresses and my dad's suits.  

(Double-knit was easy to work with.)

She made the clothes her toddlers wore.  

She made the dresses my sister and I wore.  

She made our pajamas and the boys shirts.

She didn't sew everything, blue jeans are easier bought than sewn, and sometimes we got 

hand-me-downs. but the majority of what we wore was hand made.  

I learned to sew by her side.  My first project was hemming the skirt of a new dress when I was about 7 years old.  But the time I was in junior high, I could read a pattern and sew for myself. I was in 4-H, but it was Mom who taught me.  

We didn't have a lot of money in those days.  

Raising four kids on a teacher's salary meant watching the money closely.  

Besides making our clothes, she raised a garden and canned and froze the produce and fed us well.  

She made baby doll clothes and when we got old enough to play with Barbie dolls, she made clothes for those dolls as well.  

Barbie doll clothes are expensive, so we didn't have very many 'store-bought' ones.  I found some of them the other day and took some photos.  There were more clothes, but played with items do wear out. 

These are store bought.

And these.

Pajamas, I'm sure there were pants to match the green top. 

Double knit, 2 outfits for Ken, 1 for Barbie.

Pans for Ken.

I loved that vest. Mom had leftover vinyl when she covered the top of the buffet to make a changing table for my little brothers.   

More shirts. 

These were dresses for Barbie. 

The cute little parka was from a store and the dress is my only attempt to make Barbie clothes. It was extremely frustrating and I have no idea how my mom managed to make all these things. 

Because of Mom's ability and willingness to make these clothes, we had plenty to play with.  

Over a year ago I posted photos of the Barbie doll house my dad made for us to play with.  

You can find it here.