A stitch to the past Spools of thread – edited with the Waterlogue app

I belong to a Facebook group called We Pretend it’s Still the 1970s. The rules are simple – post personal photos from that decade and comment on them as though whatever is pictured has just happened. No past tense, no mentioning the future. It’s an exercise in time travel that is both humorous and poignant.

I have yet to post anything on the page, but I’m a loyal lurker. The images remind me that I lived through that era. Scrolling through Olan Mills family portraits, prom snapshots, and polaroid pics of smiling girls with that Farrah Fawcett shag haircut – I can indulge in happy memories uncluttered by the anxious reality of my teenage years.

The past seems so far away, as though the events of the 1970s happened to a different person, not me. In a way, that’s true. I’m far from that teenager now, but sometimes I come across things that bring the memories back so vividly that I can touch them and feel their weight.

We’ve been organizing our household, trying to clear some of the clutter and decide which items are worth keeping, donating, or selling. As I sorted through decades of sewing supplies, I set aside anything I wanted to keep. I’ll hang onto the thread – wooden spools either inherited or bought at antique stores and plastic spools sporting the small green Walmart price stickers from before the age of UPC tags. There are at least two dozen spools of turquoise blue thread that Mom bought on clearance. It was a really good deal.

Me and my mom circa 1970s – I’m wearing a dress I made

My mother taught me to sew. First by hand with needle and thread, and then on her classic black Singer sewing machine. A junior high school home economics class rounded out my seamstress education. Throughout the 1970s I sewed dresses, skirts, peasant tops and anything else that could be whipped up over a weekend.

I don’t sew much now, although I do still own a sewing machine. Recently I took up quilting and I’ll hand stitch together the pieces while I’m watching television. It’s a relaxing hobby and it gives me an excuse to hold onto the boxes of thread. Eventually I might even use the turquoise color that my mother found so lovely. I think she would have liked that I found some use for it.

Patterns from the 1970s