Pivotal to the plot of The Winter Waif is a sewing machine that almost becomes a character in the story itself.
My great-grandmother, Mary Phillips née Harman, was a seamstress of sorts. She owned a Singer treadle sewing machine which I only really got to see after her death when her house was being sorted out.
For a while, it remained at my grandmother’s house (her daughter) and finally, it was given to me.
By then, for some reason, the treadle had been removed, so I was to use it as a hand machine.
I admit to not being the top of the class at needlework at school, but I had acquired some rudimentary skills. I could thread a machine and sort the bobbin out, plus I could sew a straight seam. I also knew how to cut out and tack a garment beforehand.
I never liked following patterns though, you know those Simplicity patterns with several views of the garment on its exterior and several sheets of tracing-like paper in its interior. So, I used to draw around garments I already owned at home: tops and skirts mainly. I’d draw around them on a sheet of newspaper and cut out my own pattern. Or sometimes, I’d cut around the pinned garment directly from the piece of material I was using at the time.
I didn’t think my creations were all that fantastic, but I did receive a couple of compliments about one outfit in particular from friends – so they can’t have been all that bad – and yes, I did wear them, even the summer dresses I wore throughout one of my pregnancies (which I did use a pattern for).
The Winter Waif begins with twelve-year-old Betsan Morgan watching her mother at work at her Singer sewing machine, coincidentally, just like the one my great-grandmother used!
However, without giving too much of the plot away, the familiar sewing machine is removed from the house against Betsan’s wishes and she’s devastated. The machine is the only thing, apart from a portrait of her dear mother, that connects her with Mam.
Later in the story, Betsan has a chance to show off her own sewing skills which leads her into a job which will further her prospects in life.
I sorely regret not keeping my great-grandmother’s sewing machine. I was in my early twenties when it was given to me, and I suppose, I thought it old-fashioned at the time. A few years later, I part-exchanged it for a newer electric model that I did get some use out of, but it lacked the history – the story behind it – the story of my great-grandmother’s life, the woman who was born around the same era as the main character in my book. The story is also set in the same area of Merthyr Tydfil where she and some of her descendants lived. So young Mary Harman would probably have visited the same areas as Betsan Morgan in the book.
Through the sewing machine in The Winter Waif, you’ll get to read the story surrounding it and just what it meant to a twelve-year-old girl and her future hopes and dreams.