A "Sew-Called" Feminist

When my mother died, I somehow inherited her sewing machine. I am not exactly sure why anyone would think that I would be interested in owning a sewing machine. I have been quite vocal throughout my lifetime about my disdain for stereotypical gender roles and, as a result, refused to learn how to sew - that is until I was an adult and, out of necessity, had to figure out how to sew on a button.

However, I never learned how to sew on a machine. My mother tried to teach me once or twice when I was a child, but I soon lost patience and spent my sewing lessons playing with my Barbies instead (because Barbie is not about stereotypical gender roles at all . . .).

For some reason, my brother didn't want the sewing machine, and my father's wife already had a machine - probably a newer model than my mother's 1960-something Signature from Montgomery Ward.

"We had it tuned up for you!" my father exclaimed proudly as he carried the machine into the living room, holding it from the bottom - like an over-sized box - since the plastic handle was broken. Apparently, sewing machines are like cars and require tune-ups every now and them.

"What do I do with it?" I asked.

My dad shrugged. He was just relieved to get it out of storage.

The sewing machine lived in our garage for a few years. Sometimes it would catch my eye when I was getting out of the car and I would say, "I should do something with that thing."

"No you shouldn't," the pseudo-feminist voice in my head would say. "Just because you are a woman doesn't mean you need to know how to use a sewing machine."

A few months ago, I was in a theater production where I had to sew curtains. I could either spend hours hand-stitching the curtains, or I could run them through a machine in about half the time.

So my husband and I dragged the sewing machine into our house, wary of inconspicuous spiders that may have made their homes in this odd contraption we were introducing into our abode.

We gathered around the thing, owner's manual from approximately 1968 in hand. Upon opening the manual, I was overwhelmed with words like "zig zag" and "monogramming" and "overlock," and I promptly handed it over to Dan.

I soon discovered that engineers make much better seamstresses than . . . well . . . me. Dan sat down and threaded the machine with a dexterity that I had not previously realized he possessed. And as you have probably guessed, Dan is a lot more patient than I am which is a necessary attribute for a skilled seamstress.

"Loosen the hand wheel," he said in soothing tones. "Now put the thread through the tension discs. And pull the thread through a hole in the bobbin - "

"What the heck is a bobbin? Is that really a word?"

Dan held up a little round metal object with multiple holes on the top and the bottom.

"This is a bobbin. You have to get the thread from that - " he pointed to something (that I now know is) called a spool "to this -" he pointed to the bobbin.

"How do you know all of this?"

"It's in the owner's manual," he said. (Finally, a man who reads the instructions.)

The first time I attempted to "wind the bobbin," the spool flew across the room.

"Is it supposed to do that when the bobbin is full?" I asked.

Dan frowned and picked up the empty spool.

"I don't think so. But that was pretty cool."

I also jammed the bobbin case in the machine when it didn't lock into place as quickly as I thought it should.

"You have to be gentle with it," said Dan a half-hour later, the amount of time it took him to undo the damage I had caused.

And with that, he petted it, murmured softly to it, and swiftly popped the case into the machine.

"You're the Sewing Machine Whisperer," I said, a little in awe of my husband's newly found talent.

Eventually, I was able to stitch straight enough to sew curtains. At first, while working on those infamous curtains, my thread kept snapping, and a nice woman at the theater fixed the tension on the machine (whatever that means). But I did finish the job and even accomplished it in less time than it would have taken me to hand-stitch.

Where is my sewing machine now, you may ask? Is it still in garage? No, it now sits in one of our guest rooms, right next to my miniature dollhouse. Has it been used since my curtain-sewing days? Well, no. After all, I wouldn't want to be forced into any sort of stereotypical gender role, especially not one that requires that much patience.