Willie W. Bonvillain
November 20, 2013
Patterson still alive after hard-fought victory
November 27, 2013
Tucked behind a coffee house and close by a sports bar at a Houma strip mall, is a tiny shop where garments are mended, and minds and spirits along with them.
Angelic Alterations got its start because of one woman’s necessities years ago, functioning now not only as a place for sewing but an ersatz community center and home to art as well as commerce, and hard, hard work.
“Sewing is an art. It’s hard on your eyes, neck and back and nothing goes fast,” says Jan McKim, who started the business with women like herself, former employees of a state social services program that lost its funding nearly two decades ago. It is also a treasure chest of metaphor, relating the art of sewing to elements of the human condition. The business gives McKim a unique portal on elements of global and domestic economy. “Patience is the key. You have to look something over completely and look over all sides of it before you decide how you want to deal with it. And isn’t that how we should be dealing with people as well?”
The daughter of a Marine Corps seamstress, McKim began making pocket change for sewing, from the time she was 7 or 8-years-old in Rhode Island, where she grew up. But she didn’t let her mom know about the side jobs because of a perfectionist maternal bent. Sewing continued through high school and after marriage to her husband of 45 years, Robert, a diver with whom she moved to Florida and then Louisiana.
While raising two daughters she worked for the Terrebonne Associated for Retarded Citizens, aiding in vocational training, and then for a non-profit corporation which aided people with a different set of challenges, diseases of the mind.
During her time with the agency, called START, McKim assisted people with mental illnesses to draft and write resumes, and find businesses that would give them job opportunities. As someone who has dealt with mental health issues in her own family, McKim took well to the work until state funding dried up around 1993. She – along with other agency folks – entered the ranks of the unemployed.
Sewing endured and McKim expanded her clientele, training former co-workers and even a few of their former clients how to help for pay, as the load increased.
For reasons she herself couldn’t fathom – partially due to branches from her existing social network and partly through fate – McKim found that many of the women who hooked up with her as private sewing contractors were mentally ill.
In some ways she found that the spectrum of diagnoses – anything from major depression to schizophrenia – affecting some help-mates aided the process of sewing and that, in turn, the work helped them learn living lessons about coping.
For McKim, challenges come more from coping economically and commercially with lifestyles of the 21st Century.
It’s not that there isn’t enough business. There is more than enough work to go around, in McKim’s estimation, for the three or four businesses like hers in the Houma-Thibodaux area.
But a nationwide tendency to throw things away rather than repair them creates some curious dilemmas.
At one time manufacturers made extra zippers in abundance for clothing their workers made. But with most people tossing a jacket, trousers or a dress and buying new ones rather than getting repair work done, that isn’t the case anymore. And finding the right replacement zipper can be like seeking the proverbial needle in the haystack.
“Ten years ago the average housewife was sewing and they were buying from fabric stores,” McKim explains. “Now they have all gone to work to get the things they couldn’t afford and these sewing businesses are not being supported.”
Even the availability of Internet sources has not proved sufficient, despite global reach. “The companies dropped most of the olive green line in zippers. I used to get five different colors for olive green. A third of the available colors have disappeared.”
One day in November a customer showed up with a casual jacket that required zipper replacement, and McKim was in a tizzy trying to locate a suitable substitute.
“My stomach gave me a lurch because I knew I wouldn’t meet their needs right away, it would take some time,” McKim said.
She and an assistant, Theresa Edens, examined the garment like a pair of emergency room doctors triaging a patient. With the customer’s agreement, they went on the hunt for a suitable zipper after finding that nothing in stock could be suitably adapted.
While the challenges of getting proper help and appropriate supplies can be daunting – there is always room for seamstresses who can stay for the long haul and McKim admits burnout comes quickly – satisfaction outweighs frustration.
“There are people I sewed baby clothes for who come now to get dresses for graduations and weddings,” she said. Graduation gowns in many instances – sometimes with some added material – are reborn as wedding gowns.
There is also the pride that comes from ample business related to uniforms. The military – and especially the Coast Guard – are a big source of business as are local police and fire departments.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill resulted in a lot of special work relating to Coast Guard uniform patches.
While the profit margin is slim, the intangibles are enough for continued encouragement, and lessons continually learned.
“The first is trust in yourself, have faith in yourself. If someone put it together you can have the ability to look at it and know how to take it apart in order to put it back together,” McKim says. “It’s no different than men working with tools. If you have a few screws left then you have a problem. I have a blessed life.”
Theresa Edens and Jan McKim examine a jacket in need of a zipper replacement at Angelic Alterations.
