Ramona Walhof

Ramona Walhof

Sewing

by Ramona Walhof

From the Editor: The following
article appeared in To Touch the Untouchable Dream, the fifteenth in
the NFB's Kernel Book series of paperbacks. It begins with Dr. Jernigan's introduction:

Ramona Walhof grew
up in a small farming community in rural Iowa. She and her brother and sister
were born blind. Yearning for something to do during one long, dull summer,
Ramona asked her mother (who was an accomplished seamstress) to teach her to
sew. The story that follows is her account of a lifetime of satisfaction and
practical good--from hobby, to employment, to family budget-stretcher--gained
from this rapidly disappearing art.
Along the way Ramona
(who was widowed in her early twenties) also raised two children, owned and
managed a commercial bakery, taught school, and directed employment programs
for the blind. Today she operates a very successful public relations business
and is President of the National Federation of the Blind of Idaho. She also
serves as a national officer in the National Federation of the Blind. Here is
what she has to say:

When I learned to sew, I never thought
much about blindness. I didn't avoid thinking about blindness. It was a part
of me. But when I needed a method to do something that others did visually,
I just did what seemed most likely to work. Nobody suggested that blindness
should prevent sewing until I knew better.
As
I grew older, I came across blind girls and women who had been actively discouraged
from doing things I learned as a child. Sewing for me has provided employment,
relaxation, challenge, and accomplishment. It has helped me to learn about fabrics,
styles, and colors. There are things I never attempted (some because of blindness)
but most because of lack of time. Perhaps one day I may still take up some new
kinds of sewing such as quilting. I know it would be delightful to do if I ever
got to it.
When I was a young child, summers
were boring. My brother, sister, and I attended the School for the Blind during
the school year. We were very glad to go home at the end of May each spring,
but we didn't have a lot of friends in our home town, and we got tired of not
having enough to do. We took swimming lessons, participated in local church
activities, helped with cleaning and cooking (washing dishes was the worst),
visited with grandparents and cousins. We hauled as many Braille books home
from school as we could fit in the car with all our clothes and other possessions.
My brother managed to talk our Dad into some ham radio equipment and entertained
himself with that. My sister and I generally rationed our books some and got
Braille magazines, but there never was really enough to do.
One summer (the one after my fifth
grade year), I decided to try to solve the problem. I announced to my mother
with the diplomacy customary for me at the time, "This summer you are going
to teach me to sew." My mother had been making clothes for us as long as
I could remember. We got some school clothes from stores and from catalogs,
but the ones she made were always nice, and we could help decide what they would
look like. Several people in our family sew, and my mother had a buttonholer
on her machine, so people would bring their garments to our house to do the
buttonholes. So it seemed natural for me to want to sew.
My mother didn't resist at all.
She responded with a question, "What do you want to make?" I never
asked her what she thought about it, but I really don't think she was shocked--only
a little uncertain about some of the techniques. Actually techniques were not
a problem. I told her I wanted to make gym clothes. I figured a few mistakes
could be tolerated in gym clothes. I think that neither my mother nor I knew
that blindness was much of a factor, so it wasn't.
We decided that the gym shirt should
have a plain round neckline with cap sleeves. This was my idea so that I would
not have to gather the sleeves and set them in. My mother cut a pattern out
of newspaper, designing it from something else she had. I pinned the pattern
on the material and cut it out. Then my mother realized that she had forgotten
the cap sleeves, so they had to be set in after all. This made the project more
complicated for a beginner, but the gym shirt looked great to me. I learned
to guide the material through the sewing machine using a quilting guide my mother
had. I learned to pin seams and hems closely and remove the pins just before
they came to the presser foot. I learned to move the gathers on the gathering
thread and put them where they should be when I pinned the gathered piece to
the one it needed to be sewed to. Really it wasn't as hard as I had feared.
I wore that gym shirt all through sixth grade. I don't think we ever got to
the shorts.
Marking darts could be done with
pins or basting threads. There were so many different kinds of darts that it
took some practice to get them all figured out. Gradually I got so I could judge
the size of darts pretty accurately without having to use the marks from the
pattern itself.
When we came home for Christmas
that year, I made a yellow skirt. It turned out all right too. This time I used
the tissue paper pattern. My cutting technique seemed obvious to me, and my
mother never commented on it. Only later did we learn that blind people weren't
supposed to be able to cut around tissue paper patterns.
I held the scissors with my right
hand, the way most people do. I looped my left hand over the top of the scissors
with the thumb and fingers opposite each other right at the part of the scissors
that did the cutting. If the edge of the pattern was at the top of the bottom
scissors blade, I could feel tissue paper on one side and fabric on the other.
If the scissors were not right at the edge of the pattern, I would have paper
or fabric on both sides of the bottom blade. The more practice I got, the better
I got, but even as a beginner, I could cut reasonably well along the edge of
the pattern.
Patterns come in an envelope in
big sheets, and my mother would cut the pieces apart and trim them on the cutting
lines. She never really read the instructions to me. Rather she taught me basic
concepts about how to set in sleeves, turn down a skirt band over the seam,
set in a zipper, assemble and attach a collar, etc. She also taught me to identify
pieces of garments by their shapes. Sleeves tended to be round at one end and
square at the other. Blouses and dress tops had big arcs cut out where the sleeves
would be attached. The curves at the front and back of slacks and shorts were
shaped differently from sleeve curves. The curve at the back was bigger than
the curve at the front for slacks patterns, but the curve in the front of the
top where sleeves are inset is bigger than the one at the back.
Much later I learned that the instructions
printed with the patterns could often be helpful when taking on a new style
of garment. I am sure my mother read the instructions, because she often used
them when we were laying out fabric before we cut it out. But we often found
better ways to make efficient use of the material than the patterns showed.
I don't remember what I made during the summer after my sixth grade year, but
I am sure there was something.
In any case, when I enrolled in
home economics in seventh grade, I already knew some of the basics about sewing.
Our teacher was new that year and had no background working with blind girls.
Our first project was to make an apron. There was no cutting. Everything was
on a straight line and could be torn with the grain of the fabric. The aprons
had a blue border at the bottom with a flowered print above. The bands and sashes
were straight pieces. The sashes had to be hemmed, and the aprons had to be
gathered and attached to the bands.
There were eight girls in my class,
and most of us could sew a hem fairly straight by the time the aprons were done.
The teacher really didn't want us to run a machine without having her present
to watch. I disregarded this instruction without too much teacher protest.
I learned about the seam guide in
that class. You can buy a little metal hump that screws into the top of the
machine cabinet, which works better than my mother's quilting guide. For the
rest of the first semester our home economics class cooked. Second semester
was the real sewing class. My friend and I decided to make tangerine skirts,
but they were different patterns.
The teacher's first notion was that
she would cut out all the patterns. Unfortunately for her, I was there to object.
So I cut out my own pattern. I also offered to help other kids learn to do it.
Some of the girls really didn't have much trouble. Some tended to place the
fingers of their guiding hand at the end of the scissors instead of where the
cutting occurred. They were constantly being warned to be careful not to cut
themselves. Since I thought everybody knew better than to close the scissors
with fingers between the blades, these warnings seemed unnecessary. Certainly
some of the students were more fearful of scissors than they needed to be. We
also learned how to assemble all our different patterns.
When I cut out my blouse, I made
an error. I should have laid the back on the fold, but I cut it on the edge
of the fabric, thus requiring a seam where there should have been none. If I
had not been so determined to do it myself, the teacher would doubtless have
caught this error before it happened. Some students were much too cooperative
in my judgment and did not do as much of the work themselves as they could and
should have.
We could all thread a regular needle
using a needle threader with a fine wire loop. When the wire loop is in the
eye of the needle, the thread is brought through the loop. When the needle threader
is removed from the needle, the thread passes through the eye. Large-eye needles
made this easy. Our teacher encouraged basting, but most of us didn't like to
do it. We all learned to baste, though, because we were required to baste zippers.
We also learned to hem garments with an overcast stitch. It was desirable not
to see the thread on the outside of the hem. With practice, some of us got pretty
good at this.
Threading the machines presented
another challenge. When threading the machine, one needed to pass the thread
through several metal or plastic loops. No one had trouble learning where to
put the thread, but we would not notice loops of thread that got caught in other
places while we were doing the threading.
It took me a while, but I finally
realized that, if I kept the thread taut from spool to needle while doing the
threading, I could tell if there were errors or loops where they should not
be. We always blamed the tension if something went wrong, and I feel sure that
we did inadvertently turn the dial controlling the tension sometimes.
With experience I learned to tell
from the stitching itself when the top and bobbin tensions were balanced. My
mother was casual about making constructive suggestions on things like this
and more helpful than anyone else before or since. She would tell me what she
looked for, and I could try to learn the same information by touch. More often
than not it worked. Everyone (including me) tended to rely on somebody's eyesight
for certain judgments at first. If a sighted person wasn't conveniently available
to help when wanted, this became a nuisance and provided motivation for all
of us to develop techniques that a blind person could use independently.
It is surprising for me now to think
about how difficult it sometimes seemed to feel proper stitching. If we had
expected to be able to do it from the beginning, we all would have found it
easier. As it was, this took some time and experience.
I continued to make clothes during
vacations and in home economics. I enjoyed the making and the wearing of the
clothes. I also enjoyed making things for others, but seldom had enough confidence
to do it. I made a shirt for my dad and a baby dress for a cousin, and I think
they were OK.
During college I did not have access
to a sewing machine and did very little sewing. Shortly after I was married,
though, a sewing machine seemed important to have. We bought a cheap one, a
portable one that weighed a ton. It was very heavy to lift on and off the dining
room table, so it stayed at one end while we ate at the other during many weeks.
I usually put it away on weekends.
I took a set of big bath towels
that had been wedding presents but were not being used and made my husband a
bathrobe. He was pleased and wore it a lot, which pleased me. We still have
a picture of him sleeping in a recliner in that bathrobe with our first baby
on his shoulder, also asleep. When I got pregnant, I knew I could save money
by making maternity clothes. I did make some, and my mother made me some too.
We didn't spend much. Then of course it is even more fun to sew for your children.
Knits were the big thing in the
early '70's, so I took a short course at the YMCA in stretch and sew. We didn't
sew during class. We took our assignments home, so the teacher had no occasion
to worry about blindness. If she didn't explain something, I asked, but this
was easy for all. I made pants and a shirt for my daughter, who was a toddler,
and a matching set for my son, who was a tiny baby. I also made a shirt for
myself. I offered to make my husband a shirt, but it never got done. It was
already cheaper to buy t-shirts than to make them.
After my husband died and I returned
to work at the Commission for the Blind in Iowa, I was immediately assigned
to teach sewing along with Braille. My students all wanted to sew with knits,
so the stretch and sew class was far more valuable than I had ever dreamed.
Some of my students were beginners, and some had far more sewing experience
than I. This concerned me at first, but I found that we could learn from each
other in wonderful ways.
Several of my students went home
and took up sewing a lot. Others did less but enjoyed it. One young woman had
been a professional seamstress in an alterations department for a big store.
She chose to make a jacket that had three parallel rows of top stitching for
trim that were supposed to be done in three different colors. I cautioned her
about this, but that is the kind of thing she liked. I thought that her control
as a newly blinded seamstress might not be as good as desirable for something
that showy, but it really turned out fine. I cannot say how many students I
taught sewing or how many outfits I made for myself and my children during the
next several years, but I gained a lot of experience.
It was during that time that people
began using machines with cams and other kinds of fancy stitches. These made
sewing even more fun. Making decorative items or decorations on clothes was
something we had to do. We just couldn't ignore these interesting new sewing
machine features.
When my daughter was in second grade,
she joined Bluebirds. They were supposed to make red felt vests, and none of
the mothers wanted to take on this project. I thought felt vests were not sensible
for second graders. One slip of the scissors would be ugly, and felt was expensive.
I offered to have the group make skirts at my house. Other mothers thought I
was crazy, but agreed. It was simple--use navy blue rectangular pieces of polyester
knit fabric. Turn down the top enough to pull three-quarter inch elastic through.
Turn up the bottom two inches and sew red rickrack around at the top of the
hem. Only one seam was required and no hand sewing. The girls could use the
sewing machines if their mothers would let them. The skirts were cute as they
could be, and the girls were proud as peacocks.
By the time my daughter was in sixth
grade, it was clear to me that she wanted more clothes than I was willing to
buy. I told her she could probably have more clothes throughout junior high
and high school if she would learn to sew. She was more than eager. She chose
to make a three-tiered white skirt with purple trim. The gathers on three tiers
wore her out, so I helped, but she did the rest. She wore it for her sixth grade
graduation and looked great. When she was called to the front for the top award
from the school, I had tears and wished one more time that my husband could
have been there to share the moment with us.
Anyway Laura was a confirmed sewer,
although she still had a lot to learn. We began to learn about new kinds of
patterns together. While she was in high school, she made casual clothes, but
I did the more formal ones. When kids need something for school, you don't always
get much notice. When Laura joined the orchestra, she needed a black formal.
Her friend's mother knew the right pattern, and I made it. For her first formal
dance, I made her a long, mint green satin dress with puffed sleeves and an
inverted "v" below the bust. She had a good bustline, and the dress
looked good on her. She took it to college with her when the time came. Now
Laura does more sewing than I do. She got practice during college and made a
friend's wedding dress.
Today for me sewing is a hobby,
but it is there when needed or wanted. I love to share this experience with
others. It is a way of being creative and busy. One summer I went looking for
clothes and just couldn't find much. Before long I switched to shopping in fabric
stores and had the clothes I liked. Making a work dress can be done in about
the time needed for two shopping trips, and if shopping isn't going well, sewing
is more satisfying. I also can make clothes fit the way I want them to. If I
ever have grandchildren, there will probably be things to do for them. Time
will tell.
If I have an opportunity to teach
sewing again, I will be much more confident about what projects my students
should attempt. One more thing: for a blind person who likes to read recorded
books and magazines, sewing is one of those things you can do while reading.