Sewing for Sisters, pt. 1

My oldest sister is a very good seamstress, and over the years made many gifts for our family. For Christmas 1976 she made a Christmas tree skirt and a wreath from this pattern (copied from the internet). The skirt even has a little note about our cat, which was her first Christmas. She used to eat the artificial icicles from the tree leaving us interesting items in the litter box, and would run up and down the trunk of the tree.

We are still using both the wreath and the skirt. The wreath is at our Lake house where it cheers the neighbors as the winds blow across Lake Erie in December, and the tree skirt will get its 30th use this Christmas in our home. The skirt is reversable.

This photo is from Christmas 1985, which shows the skirt around a natural tree. I'm in the background wearing an outfit my sister made for me. The jacket had roll up sleeves and large pockets and then she purchased a cotton knit turtleneck in a matching color to go with it. It's possible it was new that year and I'd opened it early, or perhaps it was from an earlier Christmas. It was very cozy and comfortable.


Behind my son you'll see my grandmother's 8 gallon "Superior Sanitary Churn" (sort of looks like a small cement mixer) in a wooden cradle patented in 1910. It would make 5 lbs of butter, my mother said, and they'd use that much in a week for cooking. It had a wheel that could be connected to the belt of the generator that provided the home with electricity. Grandma was a thoroughly modern housewife.