This weeks episode features mother and daughter, Alayne Fitzptrick and Karen Davern. During our interview, they discuss their love of fashion, their family’s sewing history, the Hudson Valley fabric stores history, and mask making during the pandemic. This interview was conducted via ZOOM on Oct. 8, 2020.
Music: https://www.purple-planet.com
Sewing Community is part of ArtsWestchester's Folk Arts Program, made possible in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
This weeks episode features mother and daughter, Alayne Fitzptrick and Karen Davern. During our interview, they discuss their love of fashion, their family’s sewing history, the Hudson Valley fabric stores history, and mask making during the pandemic. This interview was conducted via ZOOM on Oct. 8, 2020.
Music: https://www.purple-planet.com
Sewing Community is part of ArtsWestchester's Folk Arts Program, made possible in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
In school, when you would fill out with your parents did for a living, I would write trimmings, not knowing what the heck it was when they opened up the window in the sweatshop. I used to go play on the flute. Is that a great place where you can play? I said, God, didn't let the morning come quick. So I can go to my sewing machine. I think I'm not. Hello and welcome to sewing community podcast for local Westchester area residents share their life and fabric and thread. I'm your host Aaron Page, director of folk arts at arts Westchester. The officially designated arts council for Westchester County, New York in December, 2019, arts Westchester began working with Amanda Browder, a Brooklyn based fabric artist to transform our nine story building and white Plains into a cascading colorful large-scale fabric installation. All the stories heard in this podcast were collected from individual volunteers. Who've been involved in the building of this monumental work of public art while this project is currently on hold because of COVID-19. Our hope is that the story shared here will in some small way, sustain and deepen the social fabric of our selling community. This week's episode features mother and daughter and lane Fitzpatrick, and Karen Davrin. I recently met up with Elaine, Karen virtually on a zoom call during the interview. We discussed their love of fashion, their family, sewing history, the old fabric stores of Rocklin and Westchester counties and mask making during the pandemic. Eileen, how are you?
Speaker 2:Good. How are you? Pretty good. Hi, Karen, how are you doing? Hi. I made it. Oh, you have a cat. You see him? Yeah. I have a cat too. I think he wants to go. Oh, we all have cats only. I can't pick my cat up. Uh, he wants to go out the window. Hold on. Um, Elaine Fitzpatrick and I'm 78. I started sewing when I was, I think, nine, I think. And I lived with one of my grandmothers, my mother's mother at colder Nana. She had a sewing machine in her bedroom at the time when I was in high school and junior high school. I remember we were, we were wearing dirndl skirts and dirndl skirts were gathered skirts with a waistband. I don't know that we put a zipper in or not. We would wear saddle shoes and either a blouse or a sweater on the top. So I made my dirndl skirts at a corduroy and I loved them and I couldn't believe how easy it was to make. They were really rectangles that we gathered at the waist and put a waistband on that. My first attempt at sewing, my other grandmother, Nanna airman. She, uh, had a treadmill machine trying to get used to that machine, get my feet going in my hands go. And I never was good at that. It was different. She also was a hand sore. And one thing I remember about Nana airman was every year at Christmas or her birthday, it was so easy to buy her a present because she needed three yards of cotton. And I used to buy like little tiny flower prints on the car and she loved blue. She had one pattern, all her dresses looked alike except they were different material. And she was in Florida and she didn't have a machine anymore. And she hand sewed. And I used to say, doesn't it take you so long? But she loved just in the evening having something to do. The one thing I remember about my other grandmother, Nana Nolan, the one who taught me how to sew. She was German. And she believed in getting the most amount of the pattern out of a smallest piece of material. So I never learned the, um, the arrow on the pattern, which is supposed to be for the grain. My grandmother didn't care about the grain. She cared about getting the most amount of material out of from the patterns. That was how we put the pattern on the material. Is that something that you embrace? Yeah, I still do that, but now I do the grain. I sewed all the way through high school, skipped college, I think. And then I moved to New York city. I was, I was a nurse and I, the first machine I bought was a featherweight. And I love that sewing machine. I had it in my apartment in New York city and I got engaged and I was getting married and I made a lot of my clothes. I live with one other roommate in an apartment. And then we moved up to a big apartment in the bridge complex and there were five roommates and they all thought I was a little crazy sewing, but I loved it. When I met my, my husband, his sister learned two things for me. One was that I had contact lens and she never heard of contact lens. So she went out and got contact lens and she wore them until she died. But the other thing she found out was that I sewed. So they had in, in their dining room, they had a big dining room, a solid machine, but nobody ever used it. Margaret. My sister-in-law wanted to learn how to sew. So I taught her how to sew. She surpassed me in sewing. She made beautiful things, just stunning. She had, she had a real, a fashion style somewheres in, in that period of time when I was first married, I did take a fashion design course. And I also took a lot of classes from it's a group out of the Midwest and it's called stretch. And so, and it was when knit materials were very big. We learned how to make pants tops at a knits bathing suits, launch, hooray. It was in saddle river, New Jersey. It was a special store. They had the best, uh, teachers and I loved it. And then later on, I went to the Hartsdale fabrics and they had phenomenal teachers. We took a lot of courses there, my girlfriend, Barbara and I, and then along the way I taught Karen had a, so when she was younger and then I gave up, so for a long time, and then I met Amanda with you and I really enjoyed it. I, I sat down at the sewing machine. I didn't want to get up. I was exhausted after the first day with Amanda, I think I sewed for two hours straight. I don't think I took a bathroom or a coffee. I just, I just loved getting back to the sewing machine. It really brought back all these old memories and everything. And then the last thing I did was make the mass. When we went into the coronavirus and I was at, for some reason, I, I got, uh, elastic from, uh, a home economics teacher who bought it at a garage sale. And I was the only one around here in Westchester, Rockland Bergen County who had elastic. I was sending a Lastic 40 yards of elastic all over the United States. And people wanted to pay me for the elastic. They wanted to pay me for the postage. And I said, no, this is my volunteer work for people to get mass since I'm a nurse. And I wanted people to wear a mask and the nurses didn't have mass. And so we were making masks for the hospital and then we started making it for the community. Now I'm not, I'm not making masks anymore. I'm wearing the paper ones.
Speaker 3:How are you designing those masks?
Speaker 2:The pattern on the internet, but also when we were making them for Naya cost spittle, they had to get the mass approved by the New York health department. So we had, we had a specific directions when we made them for the Naya cost.
Speaker 3:Were you thinking of as aesthetics as well or were these just, just functional masks that people could wear?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Whatever, whatever we, you know, the pattern that they put out, I afterwards when I was making it for the community, I made easier mass because I didn't have to follow the directions.
Speaker 3:Could you maybe speak a little bit about what it is about sewing that drew you in that can capture your attention for stretches of time and why you have returned to it, um, over and over again throughout your life?
Speaker 2:Well, my mom was a very fashionable person. Her hair was always done just so her clothes were always just so, so I think a lot of people loved the way I put clothes together, the colors, the scarves, the jewelry, and I've always gotten compliments, but I know I got that from my mother and she just knew I had to buy clothes and dress. And then w when I was younger, um, we didn't have that much money and I loved wearing different clothes and it was so cheap. So that's why I, I, I always love fashion and it was very inexpensive to, so
Speaker 3:One thing to love fashion, and then there's another too and long hours, you know, behind a machine. How would you describe your relationship to the machine itself?
Speaker 2:I love the sound of the sewing machine when it's working. I, I, there's just something very relaxing and meditative and it, and it's gotta be a well-run sewing machine. Otherwise I got to get it fixed. It's got, it's got to have that certain sound. Yeah. But it's, it's, there is a certain feeling that I get when I, so at one point when Karen was young, we belonged to a Nyack field club and I played tennis and I made all kinds of tennis dresses and they were different. Nobody else had that dress. How old were you when we were in the field club?
Speaker 4:I guess anywhere from five to 15, somewhere in that range,
Speaker 2:Because I was working part-time at the time. So I was probably solid. When you were in school,
Speaker 3:Karen, would you, um, talk about your own religion, your own relationship to fabrics and sewing?
Speaker 4:So I'm Karen Davern and I live in the Bronx in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, as far as sewing. Um, I don't have huge memories, um, from when I was young, but maybe it's like my mom said maybe, uh, I was in school and she was doing projects when I wasn't home. I mean, of course I have some, and I, I, I have one that just stands out in my head. You're gonna laugh, mom. I was a teenager. And so we'd been sewing and mom had, at this point, like introduced me to sewing and there was definitely projects under my belt. I don't, I don't remember details, but, um, we made, we made a bathing suit and we're making bathing suits. Do you remember that? So for some reason we chose white, we made a white bathing suit. I remember it was a one piece, you know, like white nylon, you know, typical bathing suit material, but maybe because we made it ourselves and we bought the fabric, maybe it wasn't quite as thick as it should've been, or maybe we didn't line it properly, but so not too long after we made it. I remember we went to Florida and, um, my to visit Nini, my grandma, my grandmother, we called her Nini. And, um, she lived in Vero beach and she lived in one of those condo complexes, you know, and it had like the shuffleboard and the pool and mostly older folks, you know, like a retirement age type of community. And, um, so I met, I went swimming in my new suit. I just, I remember getting out of the pool and I was like, Oh, I looked down and, you know, the discreet parts, weren't so discreet. And, uh, Oh man, I don't know what we were thinking with that light fabric, but it was, it was, it was pretty bad. I, I don't know. I don't know how long I stayed in the pool. I think I stayed in the pools. I didn't have to get out of the pool, but that's one of, that's like my funnest funniest memory from my sewing days. So I think that tops, uh, my story.
Speaker 3:So a quick aside, uh, if you're wondering why we're laughing right now, um, well, I've been waiting for the right moment to share this story in. This seems like a good time, uh, while working on the project with Amanda, uh, we were traveling around from site to site and I was using the trunk of my car as a space in which I was storing large bags of donated fabrics and, uh, would take those bags out of my car for the different sewing days, bring them to our site, our community site, where we were doing our sewing. These bags of fabric held the pieces that were put together into these long strips, which would then be put together to create the fabric sculpture that would go on the side of our building a week after this sewing day with the Northern star quilting Guild, I was chatting with my wife and she asked me if I had dropped off her dresses for dry cleaning, the ones that she had put in trader Joe's bags that we had put in the trunk of our car, uh, at which point I thought back to this previous sewing day. And I remembered, um, a few people commenting on these beautiful dresses that someone had donated to the project and, uh, express some remorse, you know, having to chop them up and cut them up into pieces. But of course, if someone wanted to donate that fabric, we wanted to make sure that we included in the project. I was so busy, sewing myself. I didn't bother to actually look at what they were talking, but, you know, on occasion we do happen to, um, to get, uh, articles of clothing that are meaningful to people that they want to have in the project. So I didn't pay it much mind this all raced through my mind in the seconds after my wife asked me about her bags of dresses and I realized, uh, the grave mistake that I had made, we lost about eight dresses that day. Um, all very nice ones, all the volunteers and Amanda and eventually myself and my wife had a good laugh about the whole thing.
Speaker 4:Have you returned to sewing at any point later in life? Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I think for me, you know, I definitely did some of the close with mom, like mom and my aunt, Margaret, who my mom already mentioned. We used to like have days, you know, where we would get together. And I got introduced to the, the pattern, you know, those tissue patterns, um, those various brands. And I used to go shopping with mom, pick something out. So I'd pick out a pattern and then we would sell it, whether it be like a jacket or shirt or skirt bathing suit. So, you know, we, uh, we tried out some, uh, various things when I was younger, but as I got older, it definitely went in more of the domestic route. You know? I mean, I think curtains is probably the primary thing I've made in my life, but like, I, I still have stuff hanging in my house to this day. You know, some stuff I made years ago, some stuff I made within the last few years, uh, whether it be like a valance or a bathroom, a shower curtain, or bedroom curtains. Yeah. That's where a lot of my focus has gone as I've gotten older and somewhere is, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago, my mom bought me a sewing machine as a gift, a brother. Right. That was the brand. That brand was like fairly new on the scene. Remember when brother was new, I still have it to this day. It still works. I still use it. I brought it to one of Amanda's selling day. The first time I went to Amanda's community selling day, I brought it. I wasn't sure if she needed it. So that day I actually used it. But yeah. So I mean, some of the things my mom said really like resonated like that fashionable sense that I think I have it too. And I think I get it from my mom. I get it from my grandmother. I get it from my aunt Margaret. So you're seeing the trend. You're, you know, your, these are the people, those are the folks that really influenced me in sewing and fashion. I just, I love being frugal. I don't know exactly. I obviously it's been handed down to me and I, I love it. Like, there's just something about making something out of, not much or something that you picked out yourself and then you saw it through to a result. You know, something that you actually put your own little, uh, handprint on, so to speak. So it's fun. It's fun to get that sense of, you know, I created it. It's relaxing. You feel, you feel like you're doing something good. Um, I don't know there is that, that feeling. I don't have the can't. You can't quite put your finger on it. It's a few things wrapped up in one, my experience, which is limited. Um, the sewing machine allows you to achieve a state of flow where you can just really enter into something in a kind of a profoundly deep way. The other things start to fade away and you just kind of focus on the activity and it does. It feels good. And for me, at least there aren't that many things that allow me entry into that state. Um, music is one I love to walk. And I, as the older I get, I think it's more therapy than anything just to get out there and put one foot in front of the other and things start to melt away the stress of the day. And thoughts, thoughts become less important. And I've talked to several people now who've talked, talked about sewing therapy in their life and how they, they go to their machine as a form of therapy in times of crisis, or even during times of physical duress, too.
Speaker 2:Aaron, uh, what, uh, what Karen was talking. I was our grand, my granddaughter Karen's niece. Uh, Sarah. Oh, yes. I don't know if you can see, but she made, this is a school project. It's a vest that you can blow up. And it's for homeless people who can't get hugs. So she put it on a Teddy bear, but this one you got to see, this is what she just made. It's a outfit that she went out and bought. She usually goes to secondhand stores and buys clothes. And we doesn't, this one, she actually went out and bought material.
Speaker 4:That's funky. She sat in that. I'm so glad you brought her up. She is something else. Aaron, she's going places. If she is somebody at a young age, she's 18. She's in freshmen, in college, out in Colorado. And when COVID hit, she, I think just like you just explained, she went, she, she started out like doing embroidery drawing, kind of finding her way. And then sh uh, she started using the machine and her mom went out and bought her a secondhand machine. Oh man, she just, boom. She hit the ground running and she hasn't. And now she's in her first year of college and it's all just she's on this path.
Speaker 2:When we were on vacation, Karen and new grandkids and, and, and their mom, we rented a house and she broke the sewing machine with her. She cut up jeans and the legs harvest on Tully. So she had fabric that was probably three or four inches deep. And they were all different shades of denim. And then when she was finished, she went out and got a Clorox pen. And she drew on the denim, all these funky things. When she got to college, I said, Sarah did anybody remark? And she said, Oh yeah. People come up to me. Where did you buy?
Speaker 4:Well, she's unbelievable. And this, this mess that my mom showed you, this is a project for school. You had to come up with. Like, I think it was like kind of a community project. I don't even know if it was all textiles, but she went that route. It's a hugging vest. So there's like a little pump that you hold in your hand, a little bowl and it pumps it up and it gives you a hug. And so it's a, it's a de-stressor, you know how like hugs, you know, there's machines, hugging machines. You never know where that thing might go.
Speaker 2:I'm saying that my sister-in-law Margaret, she was a member of fit fashion Institute of technology. And she took me to two openings and both of them were phenomenal. And then she also introduced me to the costume exhibit at the metropolitan museum of art. And that's my favorite thing to go see when we can go see it. She got invited to the openings and of course her husband didn't want to go to a costume exhibit. I jumped, but the costume exhibit at the metropolitan is just unbelievable over the top. And Margaret unfortunately got outsiders, you know, as she got older and what Karen and I found was that she, she just wanted to be at the metropolitan. And she also liked it, like going up on the balcony and eating, and then talking to us, even though she couldn't really enjoy the museum itself in the exhibit, we, we took her because she just loved being there.
Speaker 4:The landscape of fabric shops in Rockland and Westchester. I don't know how long you've been living in the area for, but, um, if there's anything you want to share about fabric shops, places you've frequented that existed and no longer exists. I mean, I know Joanne's now is like the go-to, but I know that there were many more at one time Rockwell
Speaker 2:County. Well, I've been here, uh, a good 60 years and we had the most wonderful fabric shops. And then we were near New Jersey. We were near Westchester Pelham, had the best fabric shop. And that's where Margaret got most of her materials. So she would bring me over there and they lived, my husband and Margaret lived in Pelham in Rockland. We just had, we still have a place called Tillem. It's, uh, a Jewish Orthodox family that runs it. But now they're just upholstery. There's no dress. I mean, I can still go there and get curtains and slip covers made. First of all, doesn't pay anymore to buy, to make a dress. You can buy it cheaper, Joe, and well-made, you actually spend more today to buy a material and the time it takes to sell it, if you're going to put a dollar value on that,
Speaker 4:I remember till hymns. I mean, it was like this, you know, like I tend to use the word, you know, football field of fabric. It wasn't quite that big, but I'm like, God, the amount of merchandise, the amount of material in that place you on, you could almost get lost. It wasn't gigantic, but it was crammed crammed with stuff. I can't believe they're still in business. Wow.
Speaker 2:And the, the bolts are thrown. I mean, you got to go around.
Speaker 4:Yeah. It's messy. I read it was always messy. And then, and then the other real one, uh, Butch, I didn't know as well at Tillamook. So I probably remember the most, but, um, Hartsdale mom knew that place fairly well. Oh yeah. Better than me.
Speaker 2:The mom and the dad was in the sewing machine area. And so it was the son, the two sons, but, uh, the mom was out sowing. The mom was a very charismatic, I don't know if she's still alive. She might be, the dad died of pancreatic cancer, but she was phenomenal. What a sower and made it so simple for the rest of us. They always had a dress material upstairs and then somebody decided to open the basement and then they could all the quilting stuff in the basement and home decor. And it, it was double the size for them to go out of business. Want to cry?
Speaker 4:I think there's still calc O'Connor in. Um, that's something like the Chappaqua area. What was the place in Connecticut over the line? What was that?
Speaker 2:Banksville fabric. My cool spot. That was wonderful in Banksville Connecticut. That was even better than Hartsdale and Pell and fabrics. They had better fabrics. I remember that store to her parents' wedding. We had a few days in my house where we got together. And so things you gave all the girls, the capes that were making the Navy blue velvet,
Speaker 4:What else we did? So you know how you have to give a little gift to everybody and we, um, the things you do, you know, like in the height of all the busy-ness and we took paper duallys, you know, not super big and we sewed them and then we stuffed them with the candied almonds and we put them in everybody's saved. But I mean, pretty funny, you know, just that we sewed paper. I Oh yeah. We were busy at my house, like four or five times. Yeah. We didn't make Karen's wedding dress. Thank God. Well, thanks Erin. Thank you. We're very happy you proposed it so glad that we're able to do it. Um, and that, yeah, we were all able to get together in this fashion at this time. All right, Aaron. Thanks a lot. Thanks Karen. Bye. Bye mom. Bye
Speaker 5:[inaudible].