When I was small, we kept a pretty strict clothing budget. One of the department stores in town was rumored to have great prices, and seemed, to us kids, like a good way to stretch our dollars. My mother said no: the clothing, she explained, was cheap because its construction and fabric were cheap; they would not stand up to the bike riding, tag playing, base sliding, tree climbing, and overall horsing around of one daughter, let alone two.
By the time we had both outgrown a piece of clothing, regardless of where we had procured it, it was often consigned to the scrap heap. I'm not sure what became of these scraps. A vogue for traditional crafts like quilting sprang up with the American bicentennial (as my patriotic patchwork blouse, ca. Christmas 1976, aptly if somewhat humiliatingly attests); but, one ill-fated foray into the world of corduroy patchwork pants aside, nobody in my family made patchwork things then, and nobody would for another 15-20 years. So I know we never used any of those scraps in quilts.
Lightly worn ceremonial clothes, like prom gowns and fancy baby dresses, faced a brighter future than the scrap pile. Some were saved to be passed down as "vintage" items to the next generation. A very few, handmade or otherwise special, were put away as family heirlooms. They sit alongside our great-grandmother's intricately engraved pocket watch, her impossibly small dove grey fingerless gloves, our grandmother’s spotless lace baby gown... All are precious treasures now (even more so when we can pair them with their stories).
The delicate and pristine nature of our ancestors' things speaks eloquently of their refined and proper natures, and of a world in which these qualities were much valued in ladies. I wonder what the things we choose to keep will say, 100 years hence, about the kinds of people we were, and the world in which we lived.
Go to part 2
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