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The Threads of Women’s Lives
Author Linda Sittig’s passionate quest
As a child, author Linda Harris Sittig sometimes wore homemade clothing. Her friends in her northern New Jersey neighborhood also wore cotton dresses, corduroy pants, and pajamas sewn by their mothers. Although those other moms might have been excellent seamstresses, none could compete with Mrs. Harris’s tales of her grandfather’s Philadelphia fabric mill. They didn’t know which Irish towns wove the best linen. None rivaled the care she took to assure her daughter wore quality fabric.
Before purchasing a dress for Linda, Mrs. Harris ran her hand over the fabric to gauge its texture, turned it inside out to measure the seam allowances, and scrutinized the crispness of the pattern. She preferred to buy clothing from the sales section of a high-end shop than bargain clothes from a cheap one. Tellingly, Linda’s mother firmly steered Linda away from shoddy cloth and shoddy workmanship. Linda grew up “with a fine appreciation of fabric” yet wouldn’t learn the family backstory till decades later. The result would propel her Threads of Courage book series and her Strong Women in History blog.
