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From Taiwan to the
massive, white frame home on the edge of this central Nebraska town of
1,000, she has brought an enthusiasm for the oriental art of pattern
making. She wants t o spread the
word. Painstakingly she has
fashioned her methods and 1300 drawings into a 194- page guidebook for
other would be at home designers.
She paid to have the first 500 copies of “Sarah’s Key to Pattern
Drafting” printed by a firm in Lincoln, began doing her own
demonstrations and promotions, and now is hoping that a nationally known
publisher will do the rest.
“I got so excited myself,” said the
petite, young homemaker. “It
was such a terrific thing, that I wanted to share it. I’ve made things I never dreamed
of making my own.”
These days give her some old newspaper and
about 20 minutes and Mrs. Doyle is confident she can come up with a
pattern for just about any wearing apparel her family of eight might have
in mind.
“They’re always way ahead of me,”
she said. “When they come
to something they like, they’ll say, ‘Hey, do you suppose you can make
me something like this?’ and I can.
They just turn down the page to remind me.”
There are a lot of turned down pages in
the magazines and catalogues around the Doyle house – and a lot of
clothing in the closets.
She has lots of reasons, practical ones,
for her pattern making: Saving
money, creating exactly what she wants, having an exact fit, never having
two outfits alike.
Her statement that “I guess I’d rather
sew than eat” is just as much a part of it.
Mrs. Doyle got her exposure to pattern-
making, Oriental style, during a three-year service-related stay in
Tainan, Taiwan. While her
husband, Reuben, an Air Force tech sergeant, looked after their six
children, she would catch a bus and join young Taiwanese women in sewing
and pattern-making classes for three hours, four nights a week.
For the Taiwanese, such lessons are a
traditional prerequisite to marriage.
A Taiwanese friend she met in church helped Mrs. Doyle bridge the
language and cultural barriers.
The motivation came from several sources.
She had been sewing since her grade school years on a farm near
Pawnee City, Neb., and remembers being frustrated when she couldn’t find
the right pattern.
Then four years ago, it became a family sort of project when she
and Reuben combined households – his four children, her two.
Taking in sewing supplemented the budget.
“He’d lay out the material and maybe
help cut it,” she said. “I’d
do the sewing. We could do a
lot more that way and it was pretty neat doing things together.”
They were both excited when orders came
for Taiwan. They had heard of
Oriental sewing. They decided
Sarah should learn - - and he would learn from her.
Doyle wasn’t the only one who learned
from her. She was barely
through the beginner’s course – one of three classes she would take
before perfecting tailoring – when other air force wives were caught up
by her enthusiasm.
She suspects part of the reason was the
difficulty getting patterns in Tainan.
“We had a PBX ,” she said, “and you
could order patterns. They
weren’t the latest ones and the selection was really limited. Supposedly you could get them in
three days. Once I ordered some, but when I went to pick them up they’d
already been sold to someone else.”
Mrs. Doyle, in classes of up to 10
students each, provided them with an alternative -- designing their own. She began working on a book to
make the teaching easier.
Women were asking her to set up still more
classes when Doyle got the orders they had hoped for. They would be returning to the
Midwest – to the Silver Creek, Neb., Air Force Station, near Genoa. Mrs. Doyle’s father, Warren
Bloss, still lives on the family farm in Pawnee City. If Florida-raised Reuben can
tolerate the cold winters, they plan to retire in the area when his 20
years in the service ends in 1977.
The best she could promise her would be
pupils was “I’ll send you a copy of my book.”
She kept her word. Even before the
furniture had arrived from Taiwan last July and before the curtains were
sewn together, Mrs. Doyle’s book was at the printers.
Her method, she believes, is as simple and
basic as is possible. She needs 22 measurements from the person she plans
to sew for. With those
figures she constructs a standard set of three patterns – bodice,
sleeve, pants – that can be used as the standard for any creation.
She
considers it a practical kind of designing – useful clothes, rather than
fancy New York high fashions. Hers
is sketch-it-yourself style, using old newspapers for the patterns “because
they’re around.” She compares the learning difficulty to that of typing.
Mrs. Doyle sews like she believes like
most homemakers do – between other household duties. Her own sewing machine is set up
in a nook off her kitchen, where she can interrupt a project to stir
something on the stove or help one of the children with a lost item.
The afternoon we visited, winter coats
were the project next in line – for Tim, 14, Robin, 13, Cynthia, 12,
Anthony, 11, Denise, 7, and Michael, 5.
They would be wool ones, pile lined, the kind that might cost $25
each in a store. She
estimated her cost for all of them at $42.
“I guess you could figure my time, too,”
she added, “but I don’t count that.
I spend my time doing something.
It might as well be constructive.”
So far copies of Mrs. Doyle’s book have sold
mostly by word of mouth. She
also has been demonstrating her concepts at get-togethers similar to the
popular jewelry and house wares parties.
"It’s pretty discouraging trying to
find a publisher," she said, "but the demonstration parties have
been quite a bit of fun."
It’s
just that she would like to spend more time at her sewing machine.
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