‘The steam iron only burps rusty on light silk fabrics.' It's the Murphy's law of sewing and it's pinned to a curtain in Jessie Wells' sewing room.

The sign also reads: ‘The magnitude of the muck-up is in direct proportion to the cost of the fabric.'

Tauranga's Jessie Wells in her element, sewing. Photo: Tracy Hardy.

‘And if you need six buttons there will only be five in your button box.'

'It's all true,” insists Jessie – and this from someone who has been sewing things for nearly four score years. Yep – 80 years.

'I love fabric – I love the look, the colour, the smell, the feel of fabric,” she explains.

She scrunches her face and hands. Fabric touches all but one of Jessie's senses – it's all very gratifyingly sensuous. I bet she would eat it too if she could.

'It's the enormous satisfaction from something well done.” And Jessie, seamstress, sewer, artiste, does 'well done” very well.

So why is this cynical old hack who can't sew a button and doesn't know his bobbins from his bodkins sitting in Jessie's immaculate sewing studio attached to her immaculate Papamoa home and talking to the equally immaculate lady?

There is not one scrap of ‘sensuous' fabric out of place here, not one loose thread. She must be a Virgo – obsessively insistent on good organisation – even in her own sewing room.

Well this reporter is here because Jessie is downsizing – downsizing her work, her lifestyle and especially a vast collection of fabrics she's accumulated over the years. Her kids insisted.

'I wanted to give it to Sew Retro,” she explains. That's a fundraiser for The Turning Point Trust, a mental health service providing activities including sewing and textile craft for people recovering from mental health issues.

But instead the trust decided to sell Jessie's fabric collection and so ‘Jessie's Stash Fabric Sale' was born.

‘One woman's lifetime collection from a time when every town had at least one fabric shop' says the flyer.

Jessie is a 150cm pocket battleship. 'I'm a tough old bird – I've had to be,” she says.

She has all the ordnance to be something bigger and more menacing – she does stuff, sewing stuff and gets stuff done.

And she stands for our hour-long chat, refusing to sit.

'I'm not a very interesting person; you could throw me out with the garbage,” she insists. Well you wouldn't throw Jessie out with the garbage. She's an icon from an era when women and sewing held things together.

'Once it was a lifesaver for women; a huge employer of women. In small towns sewing gave women work when men were unemployed.”

She came out of the depression and out of an orphanage. Her parents divorced and there was no place on the farm for a girl. So she endured years of a 'nasty old matron”, disciplined with the strap, and tripe and onions.

But she had sewing – from age seven or eight when she dabbled with a treadle Singer.

'Mother was a beautiful sewer,” she says. They reconnected during Jessie's teenage years. 'Christening gowns, layettes – you can tell when something is well done.” Now it's all 'stretch and grow”.

And because there was a shortage of fabric through the depression and the war they would 'unpick things and make news things”. The only resource was enterprise.

'It got around when you could sew. People soon knew I sewed, so they were on the phone.”

But this romantic, who spent nearly 50 years married to a 'lovely chap” called Charles, also loved wedding dresses above all others.

'The most important thing is to make a wedding gown fit perfectly. After all, a girl is on show.”

Now here's an interesting thing. 'No bride ever has a picture of the back of the frock.

'They have a picture of the front but haven't given the back a thought.”

But it's crucial according to Jessie because the backside, the stern that is, is the most viewed as the bride walks down the aisle.

And another interesting thing. 'Unpicking” is like a profanity, an expletive in sewing.

'There's a lot of unpicking with bridal wear, a lot of mind-changing,” says Jessie. 'And a lot of expensive fabrics like lace at $100 a metre don't like unpicking.” So avoid unpicking.

Which reminds me of another of Murphy's laws of sewing. 'The seam you meant to rip out is invariably the other one.”

Even a bloke can sense that frustration.

There have been no famous clients, but there was a standout gown. The ‘waterfall dress' – it shimmered and cascaded and involved a lot of fabric and a lot of effort. '[It was worth] $1500!”

That's seems like a lot of money for one outing. But it might have involved a lot of 'unpicking”.

There's another line on the Jessie's Stash flyer, a poignant one.

'The sale – on Saturday, March 14 from 9am-3pm at The Historic Village – will remind us what we have lost.”