During my childhood, I often saw the women in my family – and here and there also men – knitting and doing embroidering. Of course, there was also a sewing machine in every houshold, but that was something different. When sewing, my mother would sit at the machine; the pieces of fabric had been neatly cut out according to a pattern from a Russian Burda magazine and laid out ready for further steps. There was something dynamic about sewing: women sewed so that the dress would