She was grieving in Alaska. Him in Ontario. How an old apron pattern helped these strangers heal

A woman in the nearby community of Two Rivers, Alaska, was offering sewing lessons. Filled with trepidation, Billingsley signed up and bought a Singer machine on sale. To her surprise, she discovered not only that she loved to sew but she was “actually not bad at it.”

She began to make aprons, eventually seeking inspiration in vintage patterns she purchased online. It brought her joy thinking about the women who originally made them. What, she wondered, were their lives like? Did they realize their dreams?

Meanwhile, more than 6,000 kilometres away in New Lowell, Ont., Eric Mabley was struggling with his own loss. His wife and oldest sister had died suddenly within a year and a half. His daughter had recently announced she was pregnant with her first child, making the absence of his wife even more acute.

June was particularly tough, the anniversary month of both his wife’s death and their wedding.

But then a package arrived a couple weeks ago in the mail, from Alaska.

“I was blown away,” says Mabley.

It was a gift of kindness — one that began with an old sewing pattern and an envelope postmarked 1943, and with a bit of sleuthing, eventually stitched together the lives of these two strangers, helping them both heal in the process.

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One day earlier this year, while hunting for historical patterns on Etsy, Billingsley came across a seller offering not only an apron pattern but the original mailing envelope. The address caught her eye: 7 Centre St. E., Richmond Hill.

That wasn’t far from Aurora, where the London, Ont.-born Billingsley had been raised before setting off for a life in the North. Billingsley had landed in Alaska 20 years ago, lured by a summer mushing job and stayed for love.

With her recently acquired sewing skills, the 59-year-old retired education worker had been focused on making aprons — drawn by their hominess and memories of her apron-wearing grandmother, a phenomenal seamstress. But Billingsley had been using modern patterns.

It wasn’t until the self-professed “history nerd” went down the rabbit hole of online research that she discovered a whole community of collectors of vintage patterns.

She ordered an apron pattern from the 1920s and another from the 1930s. But this post — from an Etsy business in Toronto — was different. The pattern and instructions came with a worn envelope and clues to who owned it. 

The postmark was 1943. The sender, the Toronto Daily Star Pattern Department. (Newspapers in Canada and the U.S. regularly featured articles on garment patterns, selling them under different names, including Marian Martin in the Star, but all connected to a company in New York). The pattern, an apron made of one yard of material, with contrasting pockets reminiscent of potholders.

The customer, a Miss Helen Ransom of Richmond Hill.

“It struck a chord in me in. She hadn’t been far from where I grew up,” says Billingsley, who purchased the package for $10. “I wondered if I could find something out about her” and incorporate that into the garment.

She searched the Richmond Hill Historical Society website and obituaries, finding Ransom’s death notice in 2014 and a mention of Eric Mabley, Helen’s now 59-year-old son.

“This is going to sound really strange,” Billingsley recounts, describing how she tracked down Mabley last April, reaching him on Facebook messenger. “I’m not some weirdo stalker and I’m not a scammer. I don’t want any money. I just want to tell (your mother’s) story, and is that OK with you and can you tell me a little bit about her?”

Mabley, who describes himself as the family historian, was profoundly moved by this stranger’s request.

What followed was an exchange of texts and messages, Mabley sharing the deep roots of the Ransoms in the Richmond Hill community, from the family-run barbershop on Yonge Street beginning in the 1880s to a park named in their honour.

His mother would have been only 17, the oldest of three children, when she wrote to the Toronto Star, requesting the apron pattern.

“I found myself thinking back to what Mom and her family were doing at that time, in the middle of the war, what she was doing to entertain herself,” says Mabley, who recently retired from a career in manufacturing.

Helen would go on to nursing school, working at Toronto General Hospital and then as director of nursing at Vaughan Glen Hospital. She did all this as a single mother of four children after her husband left.

“She was a strong lady and instilled immense family values,” says Mabley, recalling that after she died, they discovered everything in the house had been labelled with a name so that all her kids and grandkids would have something to remember her by.

The Carlton Ware, which sat in a hutch in the kitchen, was left to a niece. Helen had adored the English pottery, which she had collected on her honeymoon. She loved the colours, the greens, the reds, the yellows. Billingsley took note.

“It brought a lot of joy to me to have someone reach out like that and be able to share all this history with someone who didn’t know it,” says Mabley, who also wrote to Billingsley about his wife and sister who died in 2021 and 2022.

“It helped from a healing standpoint, in that people are really never gone as long as you remember their names. I’m going through a really difficult time right now but having this lady ask me about my family helped me immensely.”

Mabley asked Billingsley if perhaps he could buy the apron once it was complete.

He had no idea how the pattern made it to the online seller (the online seller did not respond to a message from the Star) nor if his mother actually made the apron. But multiple pin holes and newer folds that do not follow original creases indicate the pattern had been well used.

Billingsley carefully traced the fragile pieces on new paper and made a copy of the instructions. Then she got to work.

In June, a gift arrived in New Lowell, a half-hour west of Barrie. A handwritten note from Billingsley, the original envelope and pattern, and not just one apron, but three. One for Mabley, one for his sister and one for his pregnant daughter.

The colours? In bright floral shades of Carlton Ware.

Mabley reached out to Billingsley, full of gratitude.

“Grief is always bubbling just below the surface, and I know it does for Eric, too,” says Billingsley. “And so yeah, I cried, he was just so happy and excited. And, um, I just thought...,” her voice breaking, “I just thought of my mom and my grandma. And my dad would have just loved it. I told Eric that it helps me feel connected. When you lose so many people in a short period time, you become cast adrift.”

Mabley is going to frame the apron. For Billingsley, the experience has been an affirmation, she says, that she is “on the right track” for what she wants to do and how she wants to make a difference.  

She wants to share the life stories of regular people, maybe through a podcast, but most importantly through the historical aprons she will continue to source and make. Having recently acquired 12 more patterns from the 1940s and ‘50s with envelopes, she “may need an intervention,” she says jokingly. “I’ll have some work to do to track down folks and see what I can find out.”

For now, this Saturday at the local farmer’s market, she intends to sell aprons based on Helen’s pattern. Pinned to each will be a note about a 17-year-old girl who went on to become a nurse and mom.