Peggy Robinson, Nandita Sinha & Katherine Creag Gafner

This episode featuring sewing stories from White Plains resident and upholsterer Peggy Robinson, Pelham resident Nandita Sinha, and WNBC TV News Journalist Katherine Creag Gafner. The interview with Peg Robinson was recorded in Hawthorne, NY at the India Center of Westchester on February 8, 2020. The interview with Nandita Sinha was recorded on February 29th at the Pelham Arts Center in Pelham, NY. The interview with Katherine Creag Gafner was recorded on March 6, 2020 at ArtsWestchester in White Plains, NY.

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.   

Transcript

1:27 
My name is Peggy Robinson. I live in White Plains, where ArtsWestchester is. I love that building so I am really happy to be a part of this project.  I sew a lot. I have a tailored by Peggy, little company that I do sewing for. I work with some decorators and I work with a lot of people doing tailoring for them. For the decorators I do upholstery and pillows and all kinds of custom jobs. Curtains and window treatments and things like that. I’ve always loved fabric and have pretty much sewn since I was a little kid when I had a little plastic sewing machine. It started there.  I love fabric. I love arts and crafts and working with my hands. This project is calling my name. It is so cool because it is putting everything that I love about art and fabric together, and I am really glad to be a part of this.  

Fabrics lighten me up. Fabrics stores are like candy stores to me. I am a kid at a candy store in a fabric store. You see how excited I get. Some of this fabric is just so cool. Amanda is so cool and so talented. It’s so unique, Im so glad that it is coming to White Plains and coming to Westchester. It’s great. I am just so thrilled and the community is involved.

My mom of course sewed. She would make matching dresses for her seven daughters. Not her son, poor thing. Of course we always hated having to wear the same dress that mom made, but we had to wear them. She just knew how to fix things and that was important. I thought that was cool that you could hem and you could fix fabrics.

 I’ve done some work for the Women’s Club in White Plains. Some of the pieces that I’ve donated you can see there, on things that are upholstered there. In other people’s homes. They’d have fabrics and I’d ask “do you want it back?” and they’d say “no, you keep it.” And I’ve held onto it because I love fabric. It tells a story. And it’s kind of neat that it goes into these things because other people will see it too. It’s such shared memories. That is such an important part of the fabric of this whole thing. There are so many lives and intertwining of memories in the whole thing, and that’s an extra. But Amanda appreciates that. 

I am in a book club and I am with people who I may never have chatted with. Or if know they are interested.  Like a guy came over the other day. He had read about me on a local website, the nextdoor or something. “Use Peggy she is great for tailoring.” So he called me and said you are highly recommended and I need some patches sewn on. Patches, that funny. So he comes over and they were like sports patches and he was a die-hard fan. He gives me this hat and it is like the Russian hats, and Im like “what the heck is this?” He doesn’t look…and he lives in my neighborhood too. Never met him. He lives around the block, though I didn’t know who he was. And he said “It’s kind of a long story.” The things you find out from people. He said “well, im a body builder.” He didn’t look like that either.  He is big, though he didn’t look muscley, but kind of fat. He does heavy weight lifting. So he said “ I work out and my trainer says that it is really good to go to a sauna after. Do the steam and the sauna. And it’s a place in New Jersey. There is one in New York and there is one in New Jersey. The one in New York is in Brooklyn. But the one in New Jersey, the one he goes to, is Russian.” I’m like, “what the…!?” This is something I didn’t know anything about. Its so interesting. And he says “they all wear the hats, because it is good for you to keep the heat in on your head.” He was wrapping a towel around, but they all have the hats and they have their hammer and sickle insignia on them. So he ordered online, on amazon, a patch of a gold dollar sign. So he wanted me to sew the gold dollar sign onto his hat as a goof thing. The things you find out from people. I had to ask, you know. “What’s this for?!” You know, you find out things through fabric. 

 
 5:33 
Hi, my name is Nandita Sinha. I was born and raised in India, in the northeastern part called Bihar. I moved to the United States for further studies. Currently, I live in Pelham, New York. Growing up, we always had exposure to sewing and to experimenting with different fabrics…handmade fabrics, handwoven fabrics…we call it khadi which is pure cotton. It can be silk, which is more expensive. As kids we were not given that much of privilege to use it, but we experimented more on cotton and some polyester fabrics. We loved to do stitching. We made our clothes at times which was not one of the fanciest, but we tried. If we really needed a good one, we’d have to go for tailoring. Experimenting with simple things like making pillow covers, bed sheets, quilts, table covers…those were the common ones we did. Like shopping bags from old clothes. 

It is very common…when we were growing up there weren’t too many ready-made clothes and people going out for clothing. You buy fabrics and stitch. So my mother, my older sister, aunts and my grandma…some of my neighbors were very good and could help with cutting the dresses. It was very helpful. I think it is a good skill to have. Even now, you shouldn’t feel very dependent on someone to fix our clothes if it is a little bit off.  I remember, we had household help and we gave our clothes for a festival and she wanted me to stitch a dress for her. It was funny. She didn’t want to give it to someone else because she thought it would take longer. In the middle of that I lost one of the sleeves and then she kept on waiting and I had to buy another fabric to match and make it for her. It was not a very good experience for her. This project is really awesome. I am glad I came to check it out. I am sure the girls are having fun. They will ask for me to bring them again tomorrow. 

 
8:17
I’m Katherine Creag Gafner. I live in Manhattan on the East Side. I started sewing when I was in High School. I wanted to be a fashion designer and I sewed dresses and I sewed skirts. All those things that are square and are very easy. I wanted to be a fashion designer but I can’t draw. I wanted to go to Parsons School of Design, but because I can’t draw I ended up going to NYU for journalism. And that is what I do now. I am a TV new journalist and I work for NBC, WNBC Channel-4, NYC. I learned sewing in home ec, and I remember one of the first projects we had, it was a windsock. And it was easy and it was fun and it was rainbow and I was in high school. It was so much fun. I loved it, I loved home ec. My mom had a sewing machine. We just started sewing anything and everything. Then that sewing machine from 1985, we still have it. Because my parents are immigrants from the Philippines, they put dates on everything…you know it’s like everything is so valuable. So I still pull the sewing machine out to sew whatever and it says December 19, 1985. It still works great.. I sew everything now too by hand. I’ll mend a lot of things. Whereas my friends will go the dry cleaners and pay $10 to have a button sewed or hemmed. I can do that and I do it for coworkers and friends. Cause it takes no time, but I love sewing.