A Blast from the Past

I decided to take a little walk down memory lane today.  I took some photos of the photos in my scrapbook.  A little more about that scrapbook in a moment.  If you know me in real life you may know that I have loved sewing for a long time.  My mom didn't teach me, I learned at school.  One of the only things I learned, but at least I learned something, right?

 This photo was from the early years of highschool.  I am sewing on my Mom's old, old sewing machine.  It didn't work particularly well, but I used what I had.  Later on they bought a new machine for me to use.  As you can see, Suzanne is working on a project for school and I am just sewing.  Typical.

 My sweet little sister, Karen.  She and I are 14 years apart in age.  I sewed a lot of stuff for this girly.  And I did her hair every day.  One day she cut it....  I cried.

 Me and Karen again.  I sewed that skirt in Home Ec.  It was lined and had darts and everything.  I also made Karen's dress (not the blouse.)  I just have to sneak this in somewhere - she's getting married!!  They just got engaged last weekend and we are all super excited!

 This was the favourite dress I ever  made for myself.  It was a comfortable rayon fabric.  My friend Anne took this photo in her dungeon bedroom. :-)  Hi Anne!

 My brothers might not be happy that I'm posting this photo.  Vests were all the rage back then and I made them matching ones.  They loved them and wore them out.  (Vests are back in, aren't they?  Not in this house yet.)

 My cousin might not appreciate me posting this photo either.  So I won't mention her name.  But wasn't she just the cutest thing?!  (She still is.)  I made her this dress once upon a time.  I really loved it and would put this dress on my kids even today.  Don't you find that kids clothes are less trendy that way?

 This is me in my favourite class room of the school.  Loved sewing class.  I'm not proud of this, but I was kicked out of class numerous times for being too rowdy in class and for sewing my friends difficult princess seams.  Just imagine a very petite, 5 foot tall, 65 year old, impeccably dressed lady with a strong Dutch accent (but soft voice) amidst 15 boisterous, energetic girls.  But still, I learned a lot.

 This was the coolest thing I ever did in high school.  Every week we had one extra block of time.  At that time most people studied during that time.  But I never liked studying so I hatched a plan to sew clothes for people out on our mission post in Brazil.  We got a ton of fabric donated to us and we sewed every block X.  This photo only shows a small bit of what we got accomplished.  (And totally cool - I was actually in Brazil when the shipment arrived and could hand out some of the clothes and see some of the kids wearing them.)

And being the total sewing geek that I was, I got one of my grad photos with my sewing machine in the foreground.  I didn't actually order this one, but I had a proof and that was good for me!  (And I really can't believe I am posting this photo.)

I mentioned a scrapbook earlier.  I have a scrapbook of all my high school sewing (with many, many projects) that I made to apply for a scholarship/award.  And I actually got it!  And I didn't use if to go further for sewing (there wasn't much available) but I did use the award portion to go to Brazil with!

So, for you who care, there's a bit of my history.  I actually have another post in my mind along these lines, but I need Suzanne's cooperation for that.  And another s-i-l might need to help me out a bit too.  One day.

Have a good weekend!