ABSTRACT
The smell of Mama’s chicken soup on the stove, learning my ancestral Spanish in college, and sewing doll clothes the way my great-great-grandmother Mimi did: all activate memories that serve to connect my individuality to the universal community. Mimi took the skirt, ripped out the seams, and sewed it back up again. Consider a woman whose life’s work and creative expression manifest in what she puts into making a home. The satisfaction and value of handiwork develop as one cultivates techniques over years of training. High-quality sewing is more than an aesthetic choice; it is a practical one, too. Mimi’s perfection extended the lives of those garments, so that her effort provided those clothes with longer life, necessary during times of shortage and scarcity. Mimi was the first person in the family to be born in the United States since the family fled the pogroms in Lithuania.
