Do You Sew Like Your Mother?

Do you sew like your mother? Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't. Yesterday, as I was cutting out four aprons for a swap, I was pondering this question. It's funny how simple tasks can take you back in time. My mother has been gone for nearly three years, but her legacy lives on through her daughters. I must have been about eleven years old when my mother taught me to sew. By twelve years old I was sewing almost all of my own clothes. Store bought clothes were pretty rare in our family while I was growing up. My mother taught me to sew as her mother had taught her --- and her mother taught her. It is a family thread that continues down through generations. Sometimes the mother, grandmother , and great-grandmother methods of garment construction are not 'proper' nor 'by the book', but they were methods that worked for them. And they still work for me today. Yesterday I was able to cut out four aprons, one on top of the other without removing the pattern or pins from the first one. And I was able to get double the contrast pieces cut out of what the pattern said I needed for one! What a feeling of accomplishment! Although over time a degree in home economics ensued with classes in clothing construction, tailoring, and graduate level design classes that taught the concept method rather than 'how to', I find that there are times that I still revert back to the methods my mother taught me. They work well, those homespun methods of shortcuts and construction techniques. Thank you, mom!