ironing and a-mending

On Saturday mornings, when the timing works, I try to watch PBS' shows on quilting and needle crafts. As much as the show is about the projects that are demonstrated, the voices of the women on the show are melodic, rhythmic and relaxing. On yesterday's Pons and Porter show there was the rare sight of a man who was an expert on the history of the iron. He talked about its evolution from one solid iron piece heated over coals, to one with a wood handle (easier to hold), to one with coals inside of it (still used in parts of the Third World today), to the various stages of the electric iron.

When I was young we used to sing the song about "monday is wash day, tuesday is ironing day...". He explained that, at the beginning of electricity in the homes, electricity was only turned on at night so that people could read. But a man who developed the first electric iron (sorry, forgot his name), lobbied for the day of Tuesday to have electricity all day so that women could buy and use his irons. What a story!!!

In the song, there is a mending day (can a reader tell me which day that is?) and the woman on the show talked about how menders really aren't the patient people others think they are. Menders want to get things fixed and finished.

I remember my grandmother mending my grandad's heavy winter socks. She would pull the sock over a mending gourd and stitch as she told us stories or, later, as she watched the Ed Sullivan Show. My mom mended for awhile, too. Mending a few of my dad's socks, as I recall, and stitching hems and buttons into her eighties. I inherited most of her sewing and mending supplies along with the walnut sewing cabinet dad crafted in high school.

These facts and memories reassure me today and I contemplate my own practices of ironing and a-mending. Raised in the midwest, we ironed our own gym uniforms on Sunday night for Monday's PE inspection. Later, I ironed my nursing aide uniform, making sure the green belt had no creases, which my Irish nurse supervisor keenly monitored. Of course, I ironed my other clothes, too, and when I moved out of the house, I left many of my ironing practices behind. I have an ironing board but it hasn't been out of the closet in years. I made sure the small sleeve-styled ironing board that both my grandmother and mom used didn't get tossed into the Goodwill when mom died and it, too, in the closet. When I do my rare ironings, I toss a towel on the kitchen island counter and lay the clothing item casually and clumsily across the towel to iron. It's an act of stubborness against the mandatory past to not use the ironing board.

As for mending, I even more rarely do that. I can and do sew on buttons and occasionally stitch the torn fabric of my bed's storemade quilt. So the summer project idea of making a block quilt basket pattern seems a bit farfetched. Still, the project intriques me and I sense that rediscovering these lost domestic arts have something to do with my overall spiritual recovery. So, I will keep watching the Saturday shows and see where their stories and sewings take me.

In the meantime, the NY TIMES on Friday had a review of the American Folk Art Museum's exhibit on quilts. Check it out at: folkartmuseum.org