This Willow Glen resident learned to sew at a time when sewing was a craft expected of women and continues to sew even through the cultural shift toward feminism. Time might be hard to find and clothes cheaper to buy in the store, she says, but nothing replaces the uniqueness of a handmade item, the satisfaction in creating something new, and the joy of giving it away.

In the 1960s, Marrone learned sewing from her mother. The Wisconsin woman knew that the next generation of women was heading into businesses, not homesteads, and believed school would best prepare her girls for the future. So she taught Marrone to sew at home, on her old Singer sewing machine.

Today, Marrone supervises open-heart surgeries and the intensive care units as a Stanford Hospital nurse, but her mother's early lessons are one of the threads entwined in her daily life.

"If I can sew an hour a day, I feel really energized," Marrone says. "Sometimes I can't sleep at night because I'm thinking of some fabric I want to do something with."

To keep up with her lifelong hobby, Marrone has transformed her basement into a sewing room. From floor to ceiling, the room is brimming with fabric, which are part of current and past projects. And the source of these accomplishments is a high-tech sewing and embroidering machine—>a gift from her husband—that is a far cry from the old Singer she learned on as a child. That relic is also in her sewing room and was the only possession of her mother's she wanted when her mother passed away.

The basement is home to five machines, with Marrone passing the lessons she learned a generation ago on to her 10-year-old daughter, who works at her own machine.

Projects in this sewing room are like pieces of a quilt that, once stitched together, tell Marrone's family history. There is the red velvet dress with gold trim she made for her daughter's Christmas photos when she was younger and her 13-year-old son's "Big Daddy" Halloween costume, complete with velvet and zebra print. There is the quilted tote bag made from a fabric of ships and sails in gentle hues as a gift for the friends who lent the Marrones their beach house last summer.

And, of course, there are the projects Marrone works on with her children. Her daughter, Gina, is hosting a makeup-themed sleepover and is making individual pillowcases for each of her friends. Each pillowcase is made out of fabric dotted with makeup and will be embroidered with each girl's name as a take-home gift.

Marrone's son, Phillip, sews, too. But he was skeptical at first, questioning whether it was a "girl's task."

"Do boys sew?" Marrone recalls him asking.

"Of course; men are tailors," Marrone told him.

Now, Phillip is helping with the decorative stitches on a Christmas quilt. "He has fun doing it; he couldn't believe he could do it," Marrone says.

And with her two children at Willow Glen's St. Christopher Elementary School, Marrone sews many items for the various church fundraisers.

"I give away much more than I keep," Marrone says.

For several years, Marrone staffed a booth in the church's November event, Holiday Boutique, with fellow St. Christopher mother Monica DePalmo.

DePalmo learned from her mother, too. She had been sewing since the age of 8, and by the time she reached junior high's home economics classes, she was ahead.

"My mother had taught me so much that the teacher let me do whatever I wanted," she says with a laugh.

DePalmo worked for years as a mechanical designer until she had her two children, Clair and Charlie. That's when she decided to start a home sewing business.

The business was a good way for this Willow Glen resident to earn money and spend time with her family. Simply by word of mouth and nearly 12 years later, DePalmo has more business than she can handle.

The for-hire projects include embroidering soccer coaches' collared shirts on her computerized embroidering machine to completing a blue and purple quilt started by a woman who died of breast cancer before she was able to finish it, at the request of her daughter.

DePalmo can be found with fabric in hand at her children's volleyball games or piano lessons. When they see her coming, DePalmo says, her friends tease, "What do you have today, Monica?"

But 13-year-old Clair and 11-year-old Charlie are used to it. "When they were little, 2 or 3, they were sitting on my lap watching what I was doing on the machine," she says.

Her son is even adept at threading the complicated embroidery machine. When his older sister's Girl Scout troop came over to embellish shirts to donate to Goodwill, it was Charlie who helped the girls with the machines.

Cultural Fabric

Sewing, to these women, is a legacy from their mothers' generation. Today, each woman finds ways to keep the old tradition relevant in a different era.

Unlike a generation ago when sewing was more economical and fabric stores were abundant and sewing was taught in the schools, people can now buy clothes cheaply at low-price-retail chains like Target and Wal-Mart. It is a change in garment-making that Sherral Morford understands fully.

Sherral Morford comes from four generations of sewers. When her grandmother, Elsie, was raising six girls, she would drive into Sacramento from Roseville and buy a bolt of cotton and make identical dresses for each of her girls.

Morford's mother, Kathryn, only worked in the summer selling tickets at a swimming pool, so sewing became a favorite pastime of hers throughout the year. These skills also helped the family save money, Morford says.

"I grew up entirely in homemade clothes; sewing was an integral part of life," says Morford, who received her first store-bought dress as a present for her ninth birthday.

For her own daughters, Morford, a Willow Glen resident, sewed their Halloween costumes and prom dresses. But because of her busy schedule as a physical therapist, sewing is not a priority.

Marrone agrees with Morford, acknowledging that today's women spend more of their time out of the house, leaving less time for sewing. But the difference, she contends, is that women and men now sew for enjoyment and not out of necessity.

"If I had to make all their clothes, I'd probably feel pretty stressed. Now we sew things because they're fun," Marrone says.

Technology has changed the way people sew, too. Willow Glen's Viking Sewing Center owner Gordon Falk says that high-tech machines enable people to make a slew of other handmade items. The trend, he says, has been moving from clothing toward home décor like quilting and embroidery.

DePalmo, who teaches at a sewing shop in Mountain View, and Jean Thornton, who teaches a class at the San Jose Willows Senior Center, have also noticed sewing trends in their classes.

Since 9-11, DePalmo says, she has noticed a surge in enrollment. Many individuals are moving back to the basics, she says. They've wanted to sew for a long time and have realized that life is too short to wait.

There are also many women who don't sew but want their daughters to learn, since sewing has practically disappeared from the school curriculum, says DePalmo, who also sees new mothers learning to sew for their children.

Thornton, who has been an instructor at the senior center for seven years, teaches people ages 55 and older with a variety of sewing abilities, a handful of whom are men. Some of her students, now retired, take the class to sew for their grandchildren. This helps out their own children, Thornton says, who are often too swamped with their own work and family schedules to sew. DePalmo, however, says sewing for a living is not always fun, but creating and teaching are things that bring her pleasure. "I really enjoy helping others do something they didn't think they could do," she says.

Making Piece

While teaching, DePalmo stresses the importance of being creative. When her students make a mistake, she praises them, and presses them to be creative with the mishap since there's usually no fabric left to begin again.

"That's how you learn. It's not going to be perfect," she says.

For some, like Willow Glen resident Cassie Andre, making do with materials on hand is the only way to go.

When she was a child, Andre's family was poor and she did not have a sewing machine to use, so she practiced stitching with thorns and plants. She moved onto patching doll clothes and eventually sewed clothes for her family.

Years later, when Andre's daughter, Lygeia, was accepted to a weeklong tour of the Annapolis, Md., Naval Academy, Andre and her ex-husband Phil and relatives barely scraped enough together for airfare. Lygeia needed a dress for the Academy ball and barely had any new clothes, so Andre sewed an entire wardrobe for the length of her trip.

Such a task fits right into Andre's motto: "Build on what we have."

"When you start that way, you'll find your creativeness," Andre says.

Even today, when Andre wants to sew a new piece, she finds an old pattern, holds it up to herself in front of a mirror and brainstorms about how she can manipulate the pattern to create something new.

Those skills also come in handy when having to throw things together on the fly. Morford recalls having to whip up a Halloween costume for her daughter on less than a day's notice.

Morford ran to a fabric store that afternoon and found red material for a skirt. Paired with a black leotard, tights, and a hat from Disneyland, Morford managed to dress her daughter as Minnie Mouse.

Sewing Basics

Sewing is not only for those who are willing to devote hours to a project.

Judy Anderson, Realtor for Ventura Barnett Properties in San Jose, has been sewing since she was a child. But because of her schedule, her projects today are less labor-intensive, such as sewing pillowcases and reupholstering furniture. These projects, she says, are things anyone could do with a sense of satisfaction when beautifying their home.

For people interested in sewing, Willows Senior Center teacher Thornton recommends individuals take a class to learn the sewing basics and that they begin on easy projects, such as pillowcases. Also, new students don't need a $5,000 sewing machine, but just a simple machine that stitches straight and zigzag, preferably with a built-in buttonhole maker.

Eventually, sewers may find that the craft is very rewarding. DePalmo has turned it into a fruitful enterprise that allows her to stay close to her family.

For Marrone, the rewards are the time spent with her children, tapping into her creativity, and the gratification in giving.

And she says, "It's nice to work with your hands and produce something creative. It's a great way to balance yourself."

Viking Sewing Center is located at 1232 Lincoln Ave. For more information, call 408.298.5696. The Willows Senior Center, 2175 Lincoln Ave., holds sewing classes through the Metropolitan Adult Education District. For more information, call 408.947.2311.