“I earned my first ‘real adult’ sewing machine when I was somewhere around the 5th grade, around 1970. I made appliques for and sewed them on a bedspread with it, which matched the drapes, for a custom home that artist Thornton Utz was building on Siesta Key. His wife Maude hired me through a mutual acquaintance I used to spend summers with (babysitting). The machine was a 1940′s Necchi with its own cabinet and it was almost like driving a stick shift car in that everything was manual with levers. It was not unusual to have your right hand engaged with the machine while guiding the fabric with your left hand. It also had a knee lever which was a totally new concept for me. In retrospect, I am glad that I learned on such a machine, it helped me develop a good bit of sewing know how and coordination. I started making money with that machine shortly after.

I will never forget the Utz home either. It was a seven level split floor plan; it had nooks and crannys and spiral stairs all over the place and the front door was a (real) castle door that had been imported from somewhere in Europe. It was massive and concave and his studio must have been at least three stories tall with windows just as tall. I will never forget that experience and it was nice, just now, bringing the memory into the 21st century.”