Handmade and heartfelt
CRUCIBLE – It began as a normal week Monday for the workers at Salvation Army in Greene County as they opened garbage bags and containers of folded and unfolded clothes, placed them in piles, sent them off to be washed and then began the process all over again.
But then Rose Townsend walked in. The small, 86-year-old Crucible woman came to the Waynesburg store with 68 pieces of homemade clothing that included hand-stitched dresses, shirts, shorts and play suits for boys and girls.
“This is the first time that anyone has made clothing like this,” Greene County Salvation Army Director Audrey Quinn said as she looked at the small, pink flower stitching in one of the dresses. “I wasn’t expecting all the variety and the different trim and lace, and this stitching. Can you believe it?”
Instead of going in a bin or being mixed with other clothes, Quinn hung the 68 pieces together on their own rack with a sign advising people to take no more than two.
“So somebody doesn’t come and take all of them at once,” Quinn said. “So everyone gets a chance to have one.”
Seeing this kind of care for her clothes warmed Townsend’s heart. She had been working on the collection since November and put a lot of time and effort into making each piece conform to her standards.
“I have been sewing since I was 6 years old,” she said. “My mother taught me.”
Although her mother could do things that she never learned to do – such as making intricate designs on clothing or finding garment measurements by just looking at a magazine photo – sewing for Townsend quickly transformed from a hobby to her passion. This love for sewing led her to a long career in the sewing factories for nearly 38 years.
“You know how other people say they hate working in sewing factories?” Townsend quipped. “Well, I loved it. I just loved it.”
She was known at her job as the woman who looked asleep as she worked. It was effortless for her to run the fabric through the serger, following the lines and turns of the cuts, slowly pushing and letting off the pedal. Decades later as she talks about those days, she can’t help but let her hands dance in front of her in that rhythmic sleeping way imagining the machines in front of her once again.
Even after working those long days in the sewing factories, she would come home and spend the night in the designated sewing room in every home she has lived in, making dresses and clothing for her daughters and others.
Sewing at her machine has always been therapeutic for her. If she was upset or having a bad day, she would go into her sewing room, close the door behind her and enjoy the complete silence except for the machine’s darting noise of thread piercing material.
It was where she belonged, and now it is all she has left.
After beating cancer twice and undergoing heart surgery in 2006, which led to a stroke that took away the sight in her left eye and left her partially paralyzed for almost eight weeks, she is unable to do many of the things she used to. She can’t help at Jefferson Baptist Church with vacation Bible school or typing church information. She also can’t do housework because her legs have become too shaky.
But she is still passionate about sewing.
“It is the only thing I can do for the Lord anymore,” she said. “It is the only way I can help.”
She questioned at the time whether she would ever sew, crochet or knit again, yet with her left side still paralyzed she tried. She took a ball of yarn and placed it between her feet, with the crochet hook in her right hand, the small piece of afghan held up with her neck and her shoulder and she was able to make three stitches in an hour, a task that would have taken her seconds before.
Luckily, the paralysis was temporary and Townsend went back to doing what she loved, just at a little slower pace.
“I will probably die in front of my sewing machine,” she said with a slight grin.
The idea to make clothing for needy boys and girls of Greene County came as another way she knew she could help. Her daughter gave her the idea to give the clothing to the Salvation Army.
Within two days of the clothes being on a store rack, more than half were gone. Townsend plans on making at least 30 more pieces for the Salvation Army by August.
She can’t estimate the number of hours she spent over the past seven months working on the clothes, the number of muscle spasms she had to rub out of her hands or the number of bobbins her husband had to thread into her machine.
The only thing she wishes for is personal and, in her opinion, maybe a little selfish.
“I would just like to stand back and one day see one of the little kids in one of the dresses or shirts walking by,” Townsend said.
“She doesn’t even know that I made it or anything like that and I wouldn’t tell her. I would just love to see that.”