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Excerpt from interview with Louella Odessa Saunders Ama

Excerpt from interview with Louella Odessa Saunders Ama

Mrs. Amar talks about sewing and self-sufficiency in the 1930s. 

Audio File: 

Excerpt from interview with Louella Odessa Saunders Ama by LEARN Digital History

Duration: 
1:12
Transcript: 

In the wintertime the women usually made quilts and things. Weren’t doing a lot of crocheting then — that type of stuff — that came later, but they did everything by hand. And I had an aunt who lived in Roanoke. No sewing machine — when I would go to visit her sometimes, we would go downtown, to the better stores, like Porch and Childress, somewhere or other, and… “Well, baby, do you like this? Oh, isn’t this pretty.” And if I liked it, then we would go back to Kresge’s which is a Five and Ten Cent store, like G. C. Murphey’s or something. And she would find some material. And she would — no pattern, no sewing machine, no nothing — but her needle and thread, and scissors. She didn’t even cut a pattern out of paper. And she’d sit down and make that, whatever she had seen that she had thought would look pretty on me. (And I’m not spoiled either. (laughing).)

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