She measured their dresses with string
A quick trip to San Angelo to learn how to use a $40,000 piece of quilting equipment and hear some stories I don't want to forget.
I drove all the way to San Angelo last week to work on a quilt.
For as long as I’ve been quilting, I have wanted to learn how to use a long-arm quilting machine. It’s a high-tech tool that is typically out of reach of a small-time, seasonal quilter like me. You can rent time on these machines, but many people bring their finished quilt tops to a professional quilter, who uses a long-arm machine to finish it. (I usually finish quilts by sewing straight lines on my sewing machine at home. It gets the job done, but without flair.)
I didn’t bring any special quilt with me to work on. I simply wanted to learn how to use the machine. Maybe I’d find it easy enough to bring future quilts back to. Or maybe I’d realize it was better to just pay someone or pay to rent time closer to home.
I picked out two pieces of fabric from my stash — a 20-year textile record of old clothes, flea market finds, and trips to JoAnn Fabric packed into two large plastic tubs — and brought them to the Tom Green County Library in San Angelo.
This public library, across from the courthouse in this town on the edge of both the Hill Country and the High Plains, is one of only a few that offers a library card to anyone in the state.
Texans from Beaumont to El Paso can access their digital and physical resources, as well as a growing STEAM maker space that offers everything from laser engraving workshops to rocket launch clubs.
That’s where you’ll find two long-arm quilting machines that are available to use in four-hour blocks for anyone who’d like to use them. These machines allow you to stitch across long sections easily, stitching curved lines by hand or programming elaborate patterns for the needle to stitch without you holding the handles at all.
It’s the ultimate quilting experience.
At least that was my thought on Tuesday when I spent the day hanging out in this creative den. I completed an online training before arriving and started the day with the required one-on-one training session. But within a few hours, I was creating whatever designs I wanted in specialized variegated thread.
As with the quilt by my great-grandmother that I finished a year ago, this quilting session tapped into something really deep for me. She couldn’t have imagined the technology at my fingertips at that moment. She was with me as I felt it for the first time.
I’ll be writing a full story about the library’s maker space and going there for this quilt for Texas Co-op Power magazine next year, but I can’t wait that long to tell you about one exchange that will stick with me for a while and might not make the story.
A sweet woman I’ll call B didn’t want to be interviewed for my story, but she really wanted to tell stories. Even though I was packed up and on my way out the door, we started chatting and she kept the stories going for an easy 20 minutes.
I found out that she was one of 10 children raised in a small town an hour or so from San Angelo. She was a teacher for more than 40 years, raising her kids in San Angelo. She divorced a long time ago. Never remarried.
She grew up wearing homemade clothes, she told me. Her mother would go into the dressing room at the dress store and use a piece of string to measure the dress to recreate at home.
B did the same thing with her ex-husband’s suits. “I told him, ‘I can make your suits, but I have to take one apart for a pattern’,” she told me. “I made all his suits from then on.”
Even though she has a whole craft room at home, she gave her sewing machine to one of her daughters. That’s why she was sitting in the basement of the library this Tuesday afternoon, darting the corners of her soup bowl warmers.
B cut out the folding fabric pieces from a pattern she copied onto scrap paper. “You want to copy my pattern?” she asked.
“No, I have enough projects going, but thank you.”
“It’s a good pattern,” she said. “You put your bowl in here and put the whole thing in the microwave, and it keeps the bowl from burning your hands.”
Some of the fabric she was using already came with batting because it was an old dinner mat. “I got two out of one mat,” she said, turning the sunflowers over in her hands.
One of the library staffers and I stood there with her, listening to her stories of getting indoor plumbing for the first time or what her mother’s dowry cost when she first moved from Mexico to what is now Texas.
Sewing isn’t B’s only craft. She said she has been wanting to write her dad’s story of living in the Concho Valley. Maybe she’ll also tell hers.
I guess I’ll have to go back to the library to find out.
It’s December and almost the holiday season and the sun is finally coming out on a Monday afternoon. I have been hosting my dear friend Rachel for a little visit from Portland, Oregon. She and I have known each other for coming up on 20 years, and it’s a rare treat to get this one-on-one time with her.
I wanted to make sure I share this San Angelo story while it was still fresh in my mind. It always pains me when people don’t want to be quoted in my stories, but I can’t help but still remember and be moved by what we talk about.
I miss having my own grandmothers to talk to about this kind of stuff. Only one of them sewed, but both of them could tell a yarn.
Thank you, as always, for your Substack support! Paid subscribers keep the lights on at TFK. Your financial support of the newsletter makes it possible for me to go on freelance stories where the travel expenses aren’t covered, like this one to San Angelo. So, thank you!
I love writing about life through the generational lens, and I’m glad you enjoy reading it.
Until next time,
Addie
LOL--You didn't have to go all the way to San Angelo to learn how to use a quilting machine. Parque Zaragosa Rec Center in East Austin has a quilting group that meets regularly, and they have one of those machines. I went there when I needed to figure out how to make some insulated window covers for my DIY camper van, and learned that actually, my solution was to tuft, not quilt. They were super nice and I was sort of sorry that I didn't need to go back.