Better Homes and Gardens Sewing Book

I write frequently about my grandmother, an extraordinary homemaker at whose apron strings I learned my love of all things pertaining to the home. She's never far from my thoughts, but I was thinking of her on Sunday as I hemmed some pants. Sitting in my bedroom in Astoria with a strong light and my reading glasses, how grateful I was that I not only knew from my grandmother how to sew, but how to push a needle through a tough fabric -- in her case, worker's denim; in mine, business casual cotton twill.

My grandmother never gave me grief for wanting to learn about homekeeping, even though it was not what boys were supposed to be interested in. In fact, she defended me against this prejudice -- standing up for me against relatives, teachers and sometimes my own parents. When other boys were on a baseball field, I was in the kitchen, learning how to roast and bake and can, or in the dining room, organizing yellow depression glass, or on the back porch, learning how to sew. And how grateful I am: sewing is a simple, satisfying skill, and in a world of precut clothes, a necessary one. I almost always have to hem pants, as well as take in (and, yes, let out) waistlines.

My grandmother's sewing area for clothes was on the back porch, a screened enclosure common to Western bungalows where she also kept the deep freezer and shelves of canning. There were also metal porch chairs wearing a meticulous coat of peach paint, a low table stacked with fashion magazines from a downtown rack, and flower boxes. Local ladies came by to have a glass of tea and flip through the magazines for an outfit my grandmother would sew for the cost of material plus a modest labor charge.

Near the machine she kept a ring-bound copy of Better Homes and Gardens Sewing Book. I loved to flip through it, because, just like a garment you've sewn, the details exemplified the thought that went into it. The tabs were set up so that the information was easy to get to by a busy seamstress or tailor wearing a wrist full of basting pins. There was a fabric glossary illustrated by a trail of fabric swatches. There were line drawings that made everything clear: how seams were ironed, how coats were cut, how shoulder pads were set in, how trousers were hemmed. Beyond clothes, there were instructions on sewing for the home, from simple curtains to a few kinds of bedspreads.

Learning how to sew served me well as I grew up. In college, one of my two work-study jobs was running the theatre department's costume shop (the other was being a writing tutor). In grad school, sewing literally kept me fed as I sewed costumes for cash: I still remember measuring dozens of feet of fishing line to seam stiltwalker's pants, and ironing down the lengths of the seams with the fishing line coiled like a boa around my neck. How impressive were the cutters who appraised bolts of cloth with unerring eyes before cutting dozens of pieces without wasting a scrap. They could detect the direction of the warp and weft threads by touch; thus their pieces always draped flawlessly. They noted with a raised eyebrow that, thanks to that fabric glossary in my grandmother's sewing book, I could identify most fabrics by sight, which got me promoted from the striped satin of stiltwalker's pants to the shantung and charmeuse detailing on the costumes for ring acts.

How often I wished for my grandmother's sewing book. I always looked for a copy in used bookstores and online, without much success. Those I could find were barely still together: pages tea-stained and taped, favorite pattern pages gold-starred, the binder held together by everything from duct tape to rubber bands. I have a theory that this book -- of which, as far as I can tell, there is no contemporary updated version -- is so precious that anyone lucky enough to have a copy can't be persuaded to part with it. There are plenty of good sewing books, but there is only one Better Homes and Gardens Sewing Book.

One more thing: yes, I finally found a good, usable copy -- that's a scan of my actual book up top -- and yes, I use it.