Sewing and Life Lessons

My Aunt helping me sew in Nanny’s laundry room

My grandmother, Pauline Ricketts (“Nanny”), was a tiny woman with a big personality, a big heart and a big kitchen. When I was little, we traveled from North Carolina to her house in Maryland several times a year.

Much of my visit was spent playing with a “Francie” doll house, left over from when my aunts were little girls. It had original dolls with their clothes, including outfits my grandmother and aunts made. I still have the doll house and handmade clothes, 30 years later.

During one visit, my grandmother and aunt helped me sew accessories for the doll house; the picture is of my aunt sewing with me. We are in Nanny’s laundry room, surrounded by fabric. On Nanny’s refrigerator was a magnet that read,

“She who dies with the most fabric wins.”

Before she passed away, my grandmother made two quilts for my infant son, so now my second son has one, too. But only one quilt has a patch Nanny hand-sewed after a stroller ride, when the fabric caught under a wheel and tore. That patch is my favorite part. I can still see her bent over it, stitching. An act of love — one among many.

Jessi Waugh, Pine Knoll Shores, A member of Carteret-Craven Electric Cooperative