For the love of home economics
Susan Dunphy demonstrated the art of making things by hand during Old Home Week
Susan Dunphy can make almost anything with her hands.
“If I see something, and I don’t know how to do it, I will sit and work on it and figure it out until I can do it and then move on to the next thing.”
The Greenvale woman first became interested in handcrafts after taking a home economics course when she was in the ninth grade.
She went on to take home economics in college and learned everything from fashion to food preparation.
After she graduated, she went to work in a hospital as a food supervisor.
Dunphy passed on her handcraft skills to her daughter, Shannon Evans, who is an art teacher at Three Oaks Senior High School in Summerside.
“She got some of my talents, I guess,” Dunphy said with a laugh.
Dunphy says she can’t sit at home without making something. She quilts, cross-stitches, sews, designs jewelry and makes crafts.
“It just calms me down,” said Dunphy.
“If I have a bad day, I will go and pick up something in my hands and it’s gone.”
Dunphy said she does it for the fun and has a box full of bits of pieces from sewing through the years, making her granddaughter prom dresses and wedding dresses.
“I just keep all the scraps and figure someday I will use them,” she said.
Dunphy brought a bunch of these scraps to the handcraft, horticulture and arts show during Old Home as she was one of the 11 demonstrators featured during the seven days of demonstrations.
Dunphy showed how to make fabric flowers on head bans and pins.
“I brought everything so that they can sit down here and work on it with me if they want.”
She makes fabric flowers with a piece of fabric, doing a running stitch along the bottom with needle and thread. She then pulls it tight and wraps the fabric around itself so it looks like flower petals and then glues the petals together.
“If I see something, and I don’t know how to do it, I will sit and work on it and figure it out until I can do it and then move on to the next thing.” Susan Dunphy
“You have to get your hands toughened up to the glue though,” says Dunphy holding up her hand showing a burn.
Dunphy, who is a member of the P.E.I. Women’s Institute, feels the art of home economics is getting lost with the coming generations.
“I think people’s lives have changed. When this started (P.E.I. Women’s Institute) the woman was home all the time, it was out of need, you had to make blankets or quilts to keep warm… or you had to make clothes for yourself.”
“People have gotten away from that. It’s a throwaway society now.”
Dunphy hopes her demonstration inspired people to pick up a needle and thread and try something like this at home.
“That is what this is all about, to try and get people interested in kind of coming back to doing things because they are getting away from it.”