“What hobbies or activities did you give up when you came to the US?” This was the prompt for my weekly story.
Here goes:
“You are now old enough to stitch your own clothes,” Mummy said.
I was twelve.
Mummy took the fabric she had bought for my shalwar qameez. She lay it flat on the dining table, folding it lengthwise.
“Now get the qameez that fits you best,” she said.
I went through the shirts folded and stacked in my closet, picking out one. She folded it lengthwise and laid it over the fabric. Taking a scissor, she cut the fabric around it, making a curve where the sleeve would fit. She then lay the sleeve over the fabric and did the same.
“Now we stitch it,” she said. Mummy had me sit at her Singer sewing machine in the verandah, showed me how to thread the needle, place the fabric under it, and hold it from both sides. “Now very gently press on the pedal. If it goes too fast, take your foot off the pedal.” Whirrr went the Singer and the fabric shot off the machine, making stitches in all the wrong places.
“Let me show you how to unravel the stitches.”
I hated that part, so much that I had to learn to be patient with the pedal, go slow, just to avoid having to undo the stitching.
From that point on, I stitched my own clothes, all the way through high school and college. In Pakistan of the 1950s through early 1970s, there were only two ways to get outfits: S.I.Y (stitch-it-yourself) or support your neighborhood tailor. Fabric stores and tailors did good business. Aah! I didn’t mention the dyer. Need a new outfit? First stop: fabric shop. Second stop: tailor (or S.I.Y). Third stop: Dyer. Hand over the white chiffon for the dupatta scarf. He would cut a snippet off the fabric for the color sample with a promise to have it dyed in two or three days. Ready-made clothes—as we called them—were few and far between, very few and very far, and were frightfully expensive.
When I came to the US in 1971, one of my first purchases was a Singer sewing machine. After all, I had to stitch all my clothes. Right? When Khalid told me that ready-made clothes were ample in the US and I could just as easily buy them off the rack, my response was: “Oh, but that must be so expensive.”
When the sales lady asked me, “What will you be using the sewing machine for?”
“Oh, for everything. Clothes, linen.”
“Linen?”
“Yes. Bedspreads, cushion covers, place mats, table covers.”
I actually bought fabric and started stitching my pant suits. The sales lady in the Notions department asked, “Would you like a pattern for your pant suit?”
“Pattern?” Did she mean if I had a design in mind?
Khalid explained what a pattern was. Oh!
My plan was to use the ‘ready-made’ pantsuit I had bought, place it on the fabric, and cut around it. The idea of a ‘pattern’ sounded frivolous and amateurish. Me, the experienced SIY-er, with a bachelor degree from the College of Home Economics, didn’t need a pattern. Khalid convinced me into trying just one, showing me the fancy collar that I may not have tried making. I wrote a long letter home to my family and Homec friends about this ‘Sewing for Dummies’ thing.
At one time I recall asking the nurse who was prepping me for my pre-natal visit, “Is your uniform ready-made?”
“In America, all clothes are ready-made.”
Then the babies came, I got busy and had no time for stitching my clothes. Besides, I needed to keep an eye on the boys, and not on the needle; and to keep their tiny curious fingers from poking into the needle. I put my sewing machine away. When Mummy visited, she would sit at the machine to alter my shalwar qameez to make them fashion compliant or accommodate my expanding waist. The Singer stayed with me until I downsized to an apartment 40 years later, giving it away to my sister-in-law.
Every Pakistani housewife’s past-time was knitting. The cook would cook, the cleaning lady would clean, the dhobi would do the laundry, the ayah watched the kids, and the lady of the house would knit. When ladies went visiting, they carried their knitting with them, the clickety-click of the needles in rhythm with their chatter. They would glance over at each other’s handiwork, with a “Show me how you made this pattern.”
Mummy taught me to knit when I was just a little girl. I don’t remember how old I was. She brought these thick needles with rounded tips and showed me how to knit with fingers. I am not kidding. She wrapped the yarn over my left index finger, had me hold the ‘safe’ needle in my right hand, and watched as I slid the needle through the yarn on my finger, wrapped the yarn around the needle, and gently pulled it out, forming a stitch. If it slipped, the knot would unravel. I worked that, knotting, slipping, try-try-againing, knitting a long stringy thingy. Once I stopped dropping the knots, I was ready for the real thing, as in two pointy needles.
“You will knit a square mat for your doll,” Mummy said.
The fun part was getting to the end of the row, switching the needles to start the new row, and watching the square grow in length. I proudly showed my little pink square to the grandmas, the aunties, to all my friends, and my doll loved it. Scarves would follow, but not without me dropping a stitch and go crying to Mummy, who would retrieve it, and eventually making it my business to help the fallen stitch climb up the rows. Then I graduated to sweaters, first sleeveless vests, then full sleeve sweaters. I learnt to use multi colors to make a figure. That was hard. One stitch out of bounds and the hair got spiked and the nose a Pinnochio.
Preparing the yarn was a chore. It came in loose strands. Mummy would have me hold both ends in each hand, stretch it, and hold it there. She would then pick the end and start rolling it into a ball, going back and forth between my two outstretched hands. Get the picture?
Now it’s January 1971, and I am expecting a baby. Babies need sweaters, right? Mommy-to-be went off to the yarn store. Not knowing if it was a boy or girl, I picked yellow. And I yielded: got a pattern. When my friend Kausar saw the yellow sweater I had knitted, she said, “But it’s too small.”
“I know. But that is what the pattern said.”
Neither one of us had yet given birth, so what did we know about baby sizes. When Saqib was born, Khalid brought his yellow sweater to the hospital to bring him home in. The sleeves were too long, the shoulders fell halfway down his arm, and the sweater fit more like a blanket. It would be a few months before Saqib fit into it.
That was my first and last knitting item in America. Same issues: time, and safety concerns.
Need I mention embroidery. All the linen in my trousseau was hand stitched and embroidered by Mummy, as well as the wall-fixtures, with some token handiwork by Yours Truly. In my first few months in the States, I embroidered a Japanese lady in a kimono, had it framed and it adorned my walls as we moved from place to place. When Mummy visited in the mid-1970s, to humor her, I embroidered a huge tiger that glistened through the green and brown forest. That tiger now hangs on the wall of one of our family members—can’t remember who. If you are reading this, raise your hand and send me a photo.
Who was the wise guy (or gal) who said: There is a time and a place for everything?
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