By: W.C. Reader

Did any of you teenagers – or your parents, for that matter – ever wear patched clothing during the earlier years of your life? No? Well, why not? That was a way of life for most of us rural folks during the early years of the last century. You probably don’t even know what we are talking about, so you better go out on the front porch, sit down at the knees of grandma and grandpa, and let them bring you up to date on the fashion habits of old timers like them during their childhood days.

They would probably start out by telling you that economic conditions dictated that their wardrobe be much smaller than the one you have today. Accordingly, they bought less than you do, and they had to make it last longer. They probably would faint if they would see some of the articles that you discard today and put aside for charitable donations and garage sales.

Comparing their plight with present-day conditions, how did grandma and grandpa get along with so little money and so few clothes? Ah, well, they had their ways and we are not going to try to detail all of them. We are just going to concentrate on one little area, and leave the rest to them.

Now the rest of our remarks are going to involve grandma’s sewing kit. This useful object took on many sizes and shapes, and it varied from cigar boxes and shoeboxes to a small wood sewing cabinet which gramps might bring home some year after having a good cotton crop. And don’t laugh about the latter part of that last. Gifts were useful in those days; not frivolous.

Into these kits were put such items as scissors, needles, thimble, spools of different colored thread, safety pins, straight pins, tape measure, buttons, snaps, hooks and eyes, and so on, along with scraps of cloth. You might say these are the tools of trade of a woman who is bent on keeping the clothes of her family in good repair. Maybe not so much nowadays, but it used to include such things.

Now! We have pinpointed the problem, which is torn and threadbare clothing of young children in years past. Next, we have identified the tools and materials which had to be used in solving the problems. And finally, who was going to solve these problems, which were many and varied. Why, Mama, of course!

Now what were a few of these problems that were tossed in Mama’s lap. Well, from young girls came the likes of holes in socks, runs in silk (not nylon) stockings, holes in coat and dress sleeves caused by leaning on a desk while trying to write the multiplication tables, and hoes in underwear caused by sitting on the ground or cement sidewalks while playing “jacks”. Those problems presented by active young boys usually dwarfed those of the girls. Just a few include holes in trousers caused by kneeling on the ground to “shoot” marbles, tears in the seat of pants brought on by sliding down the banks of rivers and creeks, three-covered tears in shirts caused by barbed wire brought on by too hasty an exit from the watermelon patch of a mad farmer, holes in socks, and so on.

But damaged garments like the ones we mentioned were minor inconveniences, when those dear, old-time mothers would grab her sewing kit and take over. She would take out her needle, thread, and scissors, and within minutes replace missing buttons, repair holes in the seat of well-worn pants, stop a run in daughter’s stocking, lower the hem in the skirt of a growing girl, mend a pocket in Dad’s trousers, and rip out a seam and replace it in a dress.

You don’t see many people wearing clothes with patches on them any more. But then, you don’t see many seamstresses today that are as skilled with needle and thread as Grandma was.

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