TheGentle Pursuits Chapter 3

I was eight months pregnant with my older daughter--it felt like fourteen--when my good friend Jeanie stopped by the house and informed me that I had to learn to do something called English smocking, and that I did not have time to waste with my due date approaching rapidly.  She assured me that I was the only young woman in Thomson who had neglected to learn this gentle pursuit.  She showed me the little bishop dress and bonnet that she had made for her daughter, Leslie, for the upcoming Easter.  As I have said many times, I have never met a needle technique I did not love, and smocking was no exception.  Weekly, I waddled to the smocking shop in Augusta for my three-lesson tuition.  Over the last thirty-three years, I have, from time to time, called my smocking teacher, Selly, to thank her for writing a new chapter in my life.  At the last of my three lessons, I began my first masterpiece, a daygown for my baby.  I finished it on Friday before going into labor on Saturday.  Timing is everything.  I still take that gown around with me to show my smocking and sewing students that any sewing or needlework handicap can be overcome.  I am living proof.

My First Masterpiece

   I was a prolific smocker.  Sara had a different dress for preschool every day for a month.  By then, Mary had come along and I was sewing for two.  I went to every class I knew about, and soon my hobby grew into a cottage business, as the girls could not wear all that I was turning out.  Ribbons and Rosebuds I called it, and for a number of years I made commissioned heirloom sewing creations with the help of another local seamstress.  As part of the business process, I often attended wholesale fabric markets to maintain an inventory of the latest fine fabrics, laces and trims.  It was at one such market in Charlotte, North Carolina that I met my next great teacher and mentor,  Esther Randall.  She and her husband, Dan, owned the only company at that time that sold Japanese silk ribbon used in Victorian ribbon embroidery techniques such as crazy quilting.  When I walked into the YLI booth, Dan was manning it while Esther had gone for lunch.  I was totally captivated by the beautiful dimensional work that Esther had done on a number of samples.  I was dying to meet Esther, and find out all I could about silk ribbon embroidery.  I returned to the YLI booth after lunch and met one of the greatest ladies in the needlework world.  Esther took me under her wing as a master would an apprentice, and our love for embroidery grew to an enduring friendship.  It was she who first encouraged me to become a needlework teacher.  Her confidence in me was the foundation on which I have been able to build a career that feeds my passion.  I began to teach small local classes, and pursued every learning opportunity available.  One of those opportunities turned out to be the turning point in my needlework career.  In the autumn of 1992, YLI was sponsoring the Martha Pullen School in Provo, Utah, and the Randalls graciously invited me to attend the school as their guest.  This was big.  Really big.  In addition to Martha and Kathy McMakin, two of my other idols were teaching as well, Margaret Boyles and Theta Happ. I had never met Margaret, but fell in love with Theta at a Smocking Arts Guild Convention in Atlanta a few years before.  Theta was the only teacher at that event that that did not look down her nose at my modest Kenmore sewing machine.  I bought my plane ticket, settled the girls with family for those few days, and was packing the last few items to go to the Atlanta airport when a very, very strange thing happened.  I will tell you about it, gentle reader, when we visit next.