Even though Thomas was no expert in children’s fashions, he could see that his mother had been twenty years ahead of her time when she originally designed his baby clothes. The baby clothes that Mary had purchased for their son the week before were almost exactly the same design as what his mother had created during his infancy. Except for some of the silk-screened cartoon motifs on Bobby’s clothes, they were virtually the same design. Sesame Street figures were in now, but the Disney characters and Winnie-the-Poo motifs that his mother had used were still popular among mothers. Thomas reflected inwardly when he saw his baby clothes that some children’s characters were timeless. Mary had no way of knowing that his mother had hand silk-screened many of the images onto the cloth herself with expensive high quality German aniline dyes forty years before. As a seamstress, his mother had been the consummate artist in her craft.
When his mother was in her prime, she could create anything in fabric that her imagination could conceive. She was a master of every skill of dressmaking; from creating original designs in hand-knotted Irish lace to silk-screening unique designs of her own. She even had a small hand-loom where she custom-made richly ornamented fabric tapes that complimented her creative couture.