Aunt Nellie

I’ve been sewing for 57 years! My aunt got me started when I was two. She gave me a little pink round sewing kit that was like a suitcase with the hinge side being flat, had a little doll in it and some dresses cut out where all I had to sew was the edges and the little dress was made. I remember how hard I worked learning to thread the needle and make my stitches even. I never had trouble threading a needle. My aunt worked for Singer and had a little store in Goulds, Florida. She could drape a dress form with fabric and you’d swear she had sewn a dress. She was my mom’s best friend and we called her Aunt Nellie. She always drove a Buick and we knew it was her by the holes in the fender. I used to sit on her lap begging to drink some of her coffee and she would tell me no, that coffee made your knees black. I’d get off her lap, go under the table and raise her dress up over her knees, roll down her stockings below her knees and declare that she didn’t have black knees. Aunt Nellie would laugh and I’d crawl back up into her lap and she would let me sip her coffee with her. Nellie Tolbert was her name. I last saw her in March of 1969. Good memories.