Not that the clothes had a homemade look; in fact, quite the opposite was true. His mother had been an extremely talented professional seamstress in her youth before she married and had made all of Thomas’s baby clothes herself. Her creations were better made and more stylish that any clothes that she could have purchased off-the-rack for her baby boy. As a consequence of her work, she owned professional snap-setting presses and special jigs for her “industrial model” Singer sewing machine to make button holes that would have been the envy of any clothing factory’s quality control manager. Indeed, his mother had even made her husband’s suits after they were married. The resulting products were so perfectly tailored that everyone assumed that his father commissioned his suits at expensive Italian and British haberdashers. His father’s job in international sales of heavy-duty assembly-line equipment required that he travel extensively to foreign countries, so the conclusion was natural for anyone who didn’t know about his mother’s talents. The year before, Thomas had purchased a Babyloc serging machine and dressmaker’s steam press for his mother, but the advancing arthritis in her hands had prevented her from making much use of her son’s thoughtful gift.
Little Doubting Thomas Scene 3
