Adele Margolis 1909-2009

In response to my last post on Pattern Drafting Books Karin suggested the book Make Your Own Dress Patterns by Adele Margolis.

I had never heard of this book, so I decided to do some online research. Besides finding many positive reviews of this book, I also found Adele Margolis’ obituary from only this year and stumbled upon a very interesting life. Here are some tidbits from Adele Margolis' life as a sewing teacher, writer and , yes, also poet:

photo taken from boston.com

Adele Margolis was born May 21, 1909, presumably somewhere in Massachusetts. She was originally trained as a teacher, a profession that was more reliable than that of an artist, which she had wanted to become in her early years but never persued. She first began to sew during the Depression and used sewing as a creative outlet and as a means to recreate the fashions that weren’t available to her. Ellen Steinbaum, a writer and friend of Adele Margolis, quotes Margolis speaking about her learning process in pattern making: "From the start I was never daunted by the complexity of anything. If the pattern was too complicated, I simplified it. I invented my own way of doing it. If I wanted something I figured out how to do it."

In the 1940s Margolis started to teach fashion sewing classes and urged by her students she began to write her first book: Make Your Own Dress Patterns, which was eventually published in 1959.

She continued to write sewing books until her death on November 3, 2009 at the age of 100. Her last sewing book endeavor (in her 90s!) was Frankly Elderly: Sewing for and Fitting the Aging Figure. In an article from The Boston Globe Margolis is quoted speaking frankly about the problems of fitting clothes to an aging body: "You shrink in stature, your backbone shrinks, you grow shorter from your neck to your waist. The bodice is displaced from the seams -- they're not where you are. Your breasts sag […] Your hips spread, arthritis sets in. You can't stop that. These are things that happen." She seems to have been a funny lady indeed and was definitely on to a niche with her last book. Unfortunately the book does not seem to have been published (yet). It would make an excellent x-mas presents for sewing grandmothers.

But Adele Margolis was not only a sewing expert, she was also a poet. She turned to poetry at the age of 80 and published a book of poetry entitled Sometimes I Forget that I Am Old at the unbelievable age of 97. I don’t know if or where this book is available but the poems quoted online seem very interesting and playful. Here is one of them:

The years surprise me.
The numbers surprise me.
The number of years surprises
me.

That I am here surprises me.
That I am here when so many
of my contemporaries are not
surprises me.

Next year another birthday?
Surprise me!

You can read more about Adele Margolis in the articles from which I have put together this little tribute:

Article by Stephanie V. Siek in The Boston Globe
Article by Ellen Steinbaum in the Jewish Women’s Archive

Are you as fascinated by Adele Margolis as I am? This lady must have had quite some energy! And did you know: there isn't even a Wikipedia entry on her.