There are dozens of posts about “My mum sewed our clothes and curtains in the 70s and I learned from her”, “I made clothes for my dolls out of scraps”, “my grandma taught me to knit”….all true in my case, but I’ve never felt the need to write about it. Until today. I cannot explain the visceral reaction I had when I saw this sewing table in our local auction catalogue just now.
I mean, it’s almost 100% certainly not the one that sat in the corner of my parents’ very brown and orange William Morris sitting room; I imagine they were mass produced. But this is where I learned to sew.
I can’t remember how old I was when I was first allowed to use the sewing machine that sat on top of this table, but over the years I spent hours and hours and hours here. It was a terrible design. There was no room for your knees, and the foot pedal had to be out to the side because of the bar at the bottom. The wicker basket caught at your tights and snagged at anything stored in there. It was the wrong height, so you’d get terrible neck pain. The drawer could be slid out either way so sometimes you’d push too hard and the whole thing would fly out of the back, scattering pins, tape measures, bobbins and buttons all over the room. Looking at it now, I suppose it wasn’t designed to actually use the sewing machine on it and yet that is what we did.
I won’t be bidding on it. We have too much stuff as it is, and I have a much more practical set up these days. But I do love revelling in a bit of 70s childhood nostalgia.