I already saved my chicken livers and the skin, now I’m going to have to start saving the chicken fat too, so I can try this.
Sounds like your Bubbie was a master seamstress. I used to have a very dear friend from Greece who could sew like that. I never even attempted to make a normal suit, but she did teach me many sewing tricks, and how to make my own patterns.
I did sew an entire and quite authentic Quaker outfit for my daughter when she was in elementary school. (She did a research project for school and had to learn all about how the early Quakers made their clothes including the kind of material they used, the colors of their garments, etc. All the students were allowed to dress in period costumes for their oral presentations. She was estatic when she learned that purple was actually a favorite color for many Quaker women, so of course she had to have her outfit made of purple cloth.) The entire outfit I made included all the garments including the skirt, jacket, hat, and all the muslin undergarments. It was all stitched by hand just as the Quakers would have done.
After making that outfit for my daughter, I can certainly understand how skillful your Bubbie was and appreciate what an expert seamstress she must have been to have been able to make a suit like that!
Back in her home village, she learned the same techniques that I think the Hong Kong tailors use. It is a system of 27 measurements and 9 ratios (IIRC) of the body to draft a pattern that fits the individual.
She came here with one of those manual sewing machines with a hand wheel driver and would sit outside the garment factories taking piecework. She was barely 18. Years later, she owned a tailor shop.
Sewing is pretty easy, really, although I detest doing it. I have done it for a living. I have made men’s jackets and slacks, back in hippie days, but it wasn’t tailoring, although I did finally learn to do those slashed pockets. My husband makes sails and so, he has an industrial machine, which is scary because it lacks a guard for the needle and has a lot of power. He can do drafting, so if push came to shove, I think he could manage a pattern from scratch. Not that I think there will be any huge demand for tailored suits in a major modern depression.
Back in the Ukrainian village, I think everyone learned a trade and several other craft skills. They were just expected to provide for themselves by trading necessary labor with each other. By the time my mother was a teenager, she says she was so used to grandma doing everything so well, she didn’t bother to learn as much herself, although she did learn highly accomplished technical knitting. I mean skinny wool boucle yarns and metallic intarsia on steel circular needles. She made knit dresses that were popular (and expensive) back in the 1950s. Literally awesome work.
I have major tension problems knitting on needles. I was a weaver and I have been playing with loom knitting, but I am thinking of trying needle knitting again this winter. On the loom, I can spot a dropped or twisted stitch relatively quickly and the tension seems to stay even, but it is a real challenge for me on needles.
I keep hoping it isn’t going to get so bad that I _need_ all of these skills, but I am less hopeful as time goes on.
As our FReeper Diana In Wisconsin says: “...a robust post-apocalyptic skill set”. I’ve stolen that in conversation a few times, Diana, and it takes people aback, after they laugh, nervously.
Oh, well, it will keep us busy and we won’t get bored, right?