THE BLACK TAFFETA DRESS

" My mom taught me how to sew when I was 2 or 3, so I've been sewing for as long as I can remember."

Serena Williams

Mr. Pooh-pers helps

That Black taffeta Dress. Hand sewn with needle and thread in 1984. My mother, the seamstress,spent weeks getting it just right. Paper thin. Crushed in the hand. 35 years and counting.....

Black Taffeta  circa 1984

 As long as I can remember. Yes. There's been needle and thread. Now, I have a lot of fabric, beads, glitter, sari strips. I am a fabric hoarder, I freely admit it.  And I love it. 

 My mother sewed tidy clothes, neat window treatments, sturdy cushion covers.   I'm much more messy, abstract,  mixing mediums of fabric,  saris, beading, sheers, into quilts, bags, stockings, hundreds of  metres of fabric.......

   When I first wanted to sew, my mother   showed me a back stitch, gave me some scraps of fabric and  told me to start with Barbie clothes.I had to take off their arms and legs and heads to make anything fit. I threw away the  fabric and kept the broken dolls.

my first sewed quilt 1995

My mother used to sew  everything on her big Singer sewing machine....professional grade. Great big machine  mounted on a wrought iron table. I used to play underneath with my headless barbie dolls.

 She would sew  late into the night. With the radio playing softly beside her machine as she worked.

2011 big quilts

It was  her space and time.

 I was never allowed to touch her machine. But I loved to hear it's comforting whirrrr in the wee hours . It meant she was making something wonderful. 

Memory Quilt 2017

 Then in 1984, there was THE gown.  The black paper taffeta designed with  sleeves like Princess Diana's wedding dress. For my Grad concert.

1984

 She stitched a lot of it by hand, because she said taffeta did not like a sewing machine. But it did like hand stitching. It was  fine and beautiful. I wore it for years to come. Her fingers worked that fabric. Her fingers sewed and counted stitches.

2019 Underground Railroad

 One year, when I was in university down in California I needed something for a quartet concert.  I made a pink dress, by hand, like  my mother taught me. Mostly because I couldn't afford a sewing machine.

2015

 That black taffeta Dress came with me.......I was not the neatest sewer, my stitches slopped and slid, but I got it done. It was the first  thing I ever made for real.

1995 Kimberley Crest, Redlands CA

 I was colour co-ordinated at least!.

 Few years down the road I needed a Master's grad concert dress. My mother said I shouldn't wear the black taffetta. She would make me something , even though .

 In the mail arrived a shimmering rose satin gown. She'd made it from memory.  And it was beautiful.

1987 Masters Grad

I had not seen my mother in a couple of years. We argued a lot on the phone.We were like oil and water. But home was home.  I wanted to come home. She didn't want me to. She was adamant about that. So I stayed away, like she asked.

Stockings

 The Black taffeta Dress has stayed close by all these years, as I wade my way through life. And the bling is calling............

 2019

Photographs 2019