Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Meeting people in a new town can pose a problem.  Mrs. Ernest Holmes had the skill and enthusiasm to solve this problem with little difficulty.

She put her sewing skill to work for her when the family moved to Troy nine years ago.  Mrs. Holmes has found that sewing for people in her own home highly enjoyable as well as financially rewarding.

“It is hard to meet people in a town where you don’t know a soul,” commented Mrs. Holmes.  “When we moved here from north Alabama, I decided to sew as a way to meet some people.  My sewing gives me a little money on my own, you, it is nice to be able to say, ‘I earned this’.”

“The customers really make the business.  Since I have been here, I have not had a single customer that I didn’t like,” she continued.  “I sew everything but men’s clothes.  Evening wear and wedding gowns are my favorites.”

Mrs. Holmes makes all types of women’s and children’s clothing from bathing suits through formal gowns.  At the present time she is working on back to school clothes for the most part.

With four children at home ranging in age from so to 18,  Mrs. Holmes says she does not do as much sewing as she would like to.  In addition to her commercial sewing, she makes her children’s’ clothing.  The Holmes’ oldest child is a student at George Wallace trade school in Dothan.

Mrs. Holmes said that she did her sewing when she had time.  “When I sew, I concentrate on the sewing and forget about the little problems that can brother you,  You have to concentrate on what you are doing or you end up with a mess.”

Commenting on the new pants and pant dress styles, Mrs. Holmes said that although they call for more material to work with, they seemed no more difficulty than the fitted dressed of a few years ago.

Mrs. Holmes has been making bathing suits for about three years.  “You can get a better fit when  suit is made especially for you.”  She said that the suits were more difficulty than many of the articles she sews.

“I enjoy sewing and I like my customers.  I can’t think of anything I would rather do.”

All of these articles can be found in previous editions of The Troy Messenger.  Stay tuned for more.  Dianne Smith is the President of the Pike County Historical, Genealogical and Preservation Society.