![]() At the time, I was too young to realize what an unusual decision this was for a woman of those times. My brother was still a toddler when my mother became a store owner. Marion Miller, in front of her shop “Sewing Basket,” ca. 27th Avenue and Custer Street, within walking distance of Multnomah. Soon after my mother became pregnant with our brother, Donnie, they made another move, this time to a house on the corner of S.W. When my sister Janis came along two and a half years later, our parents moved again, this time to a house on Shattuck Road, not far from the Alpenrose Dairy. It was a small two-bedroom home on Falcon Street in Multnomah, now remodeled and still standing. When I was born in 1947, Mom and Dad knew their apartment in downtown Portland wasnʼt big enough now that they had a child, so they bought their first house. I know that my female contemporaries will remember–fondly or not–the potholder, apron, and gathered skirt projects we had to complete, though itʼs unlikely we actually used or wore them! She taught me to sew when I was young, and by the time I took “Home Ec.” (a required course at Multnomah Elementary School for girls at the time), my skills were pretty much on a par with the teacher when it came to sewing. She was an accomplished seamstress and made virtually all the clothes my sister and I wore. While she had learned to sew growing up on the farm, she later told me that she learned most of her sewing skills working in the coat factory. After their marriage in May of 1940, Marion found work in a coat factory. Fred had been born in Hillsboro, grew up in Maplewood, and was working at the Oregon Journal. After high school, she came west to Portland, where she met my father, Frederic William Miller. Marion Jennie Croy had grown up on a farm in Cartwright, North Dakota, the fourth of ten children. In 1956 when I was nine, however, she did something quite radical for a woman of those times–she bought a business, a yardage store located on Capitol Highway next to the old fire station. At that time, most women were homemakers, which during my early childhood was true of my own mother, Marion Miller. The Sewing Basketʼs success reflected the interests of women during the post- war era. Many of your readers who grew up in and around Multnomah during the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s might remember The Sewing Basket, a fabric store that was located in three different locations in what is now “Multnomah Village.” (I canʼt get used to that trendy new name “back in the day,” it was just plain “Multnomah.”) Marion Miller, in her shop “Sewing Basket,” ca.
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