It has been on my to-do list for months. I can’t say why I have avoided doing it, but I even chose to paint my bedroom over doing this task. I have had the materials for several weeks and my sister’s sewing machine has been in the mud room for at least half that time, but there was something about this project that made me keep procrastinating. But as my first week of Winter Break wraps up, I wanted to finish up as much of my home to-do list so I could move on to my school list – one that is equally as long and daunting. So, today, with no time left to delay, I had to tackle making the guest room curtains. Even as I got started on it today, it was reluctantly and with much grumbling. I had already spent time measuring and writing down the steps I would need to take to make them. All that really was left was the “doing” part of the job, but it just kept feeling like the one thing I didn’t want to do at all.

I have sewn many valances in my life, but all of them, and I mean, all of them, were over 25 years ago. So, I settled in at my dining room table with the sewing machine, duvet cover that I was using as the fabric, scissors and measuring tape and set to work, anticipating a long day of tearing out seams and cursing at the machine that wasn’t to blame at all. It took a couple of YouTube videos to help me get the bobbin threaded and installed correctly but once I got that figured out, I found myself puttering along like I had been sewing just a week ago. The cliche about riding a bike seems to apply to sewing machines as well as I remembered things like leaving the needle down when I needed to adjust the fabric and reversing just a bit at the start of each seam to keep it from unravelling.

If sewing wasn’t stepping back in time enough on its own, I also dug out my ironing board and iron, both of which have been tucked away for about as long as my sewing skills. And between ironing and sewing, I found myself thinking an awful lot about my mom. I turned on a Spotify playlist full of John Denver and James Taylor and hummed along, just as she would have. Guiding the fabric under the needle, I felt joy at knowing Mom was still guiding me today. The curtains I made today would have earned me a B- at best in a Home Ec class, but I think Mom would have been quite proud, given how long it had been and how little practice I have had. Her lessons have stuck with me and even being used in a very basic manner, I was able to sew some very nice curtains without much hassle at all today all thanks to her.

As I hung them in the guest room, I thought about all the projects I have accomplished over the last week. I have hung curtain rods and painted rooms and assembled furniture and hung pictures and now, sewn curtains – all tasks that required skills I learned from my parents. Using a drill, Phillips screwdriver, iron or sewing machine might seem outdated or trivial, but they were the very tools that I needed the most right now as I change the feel of my living space to one that reflects “me” more than “us.” And even though Mom has been gone for more than half my life and Dad and I haven’t worked in the woodshop together for quite some time, the skills they both taught me are ones I will remember and use for a lifetime. Especially the ones on how to make a house a home.