I was 8 years old and my sister was 10 when we began riding the subway from Spanish Harlem to Manhattan's Fashion District every weekend to work with my mother. Raising us alone and living in Spanish Harlem, Mom worked relentlessly to be the best seamstress. In Puerto Rico, my mother had sewn for upscale clients, so she was confident about her creations when we moved to New York City in the late 1950s. When she began looking for work, she visited four or five factories that were affiliated with some of the best designers in the city. A couple of the factories were clean and organized, with superior sewing machines. Others looked like rundown prisons, with windows so dirty and dusty that you couldn't see daylight. Fortunately, my mother found work in one of the better factories, at least in part because she knew how to operate many of the specialty sewing machines. She soon mastered a particular machine called a Merrow (an industrial overlocker), and from that point on, her work was always in demand.
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