14. Needlework

One of my least favourite lessons is Needlework. There are many reasons for this. I shall list them here in order of importance.

• We are only allowed to make one of two things: a waistcoat or a circular skirt. I will never wear a waistcoat and I don’t like circular skirts, we are no longer in the 1950s, they are not cool, at all.

• Circular skirts have the longest hems which we have to sew by hand, this is difficult and tedious.

• Miss Lunn, the needlework teacher, is unbelievably uninspiring. She is pedantic, impatient, monotonous and mean, a terrible combination. And she has BO. And I know she hates me. I don’t know why she hates me, but she definitely does. She held my skirt up as an example to the whole class today. “This is how not to do a hem girls” she said. She took it and said she’s going to show it to the Lower Fourth too, to make sure they know what a bad example looks like. Well  the feeling is mutual Miss Lunn, I hate you too.

• It takes a whole term to make the one item. Sewing takes precision and patience, two qualities I do not identify with. In fact I didn't finish my skirt last term. Miss Lunn lost patience with me and decided to finish the hem herself, I think she couldn’t stand watching me botch it.

• We have to buy our fabrics from the only department store in Beaconsfield. They have a very limited selection of patterns and colours and they are all old fashioned and boring. I now have a beige and blue checked circular skirt with a wobbly hem and an uncomfortably firm waistband. What is the point of that?

• I seem to spend more time tidying up than sewing; picking up needles and pins from the floor, gathering tiny bits of thread, putting away the sewing machines, rolling the bobbins, folding the patterns.

• I would much rather learn practical things, like replacing buttons or fixing tears. Honestly, when am I ever going to make my own clothes? This is the 1970s! I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up but it definitely doesn’t involve sewing.

Really, I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. What are girls like me supposed to be? I suppose I’ll get married and have children. Mummy doesn’t work. She looks after Daddy and has dinner parties. Maybe that’s what I’ll do when I grow up. I don’t know what work Daddy does but I know it’s important. When we’re in Belgium and ‘the men’ go to Bubi’s study to talk, I spy on them from the hallway, behind the door. I wish I knew what they were talking about. The room is full of Bubi’s pipe smoke and they always seem very serious. Whatever they are discussing, it must be important. Mummy, Sary and Nena spend their time in the kitchen, cooking and washing up. They talk about the food and about the men. Audrey and I sit at the kitchen table colouring in doilies. I wish I could sit in the study with ‘the men’.

I do know that whatever I do when I grow up, it won’t involve needlework.

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For my seventeenth birthday, I asked for an electric sewing machine. Miss Lunn, I owe you an apology. Or maybe I just owe you my gratitude. I am no great seamstress. I gave up on the idea of making clothes some years ago. I did manage to make a few simple summer shift dresses (my mother was wearing one I made her just last week!) and some dressing up clothes for my daughter. In my forties I went on a an evening course to learn how to do buttonholes, zips, seams, pockets and other details. I enjoyed the focus and camaraderie of the sewing room. I tried making a linen wrap around dress but my patience for painstaking detail has not improved. That was my last attempt at clothing.

I have made countless piped cushion covers and lots of simple curtains. I like being able to whip out my sewing machine (I still have the same one) and make something quickly. That’s the key for me, speed. I have to be able to complete it in one sitting or I lose interest. I’m glad I’ve worked that out. Making something that takes time and patience (like a circular skirt) is just not for me.

I don’t know what I learned in Needlework at Oakdene but it certainly kindled my potential and made sewing something ordinary. Thank you Miss Lunn, you could have made it more fun, if we’d had more choice I might have found something I liked making and I am grateful nevertheless. What a good thing that the art of needlework was still on our curriculum.