ADVERTORIAL
Photos by: Jon Shaner
Elaine McPherson of A Stitch ‘N Time Her Needle is Magic Jill Long, Co-owner, with employees mixing up spices
E
By Sandi Tomlin-Sutker
laine is a true Asheville native, born on Woodfin Street next door to the Thomas Wolfe house downtown and raised at 19 ½ Biltmore Avenue. During WWII, her mother rented a 30-room hotel, then rented out house keeping rooms. Growing up there, Elaine experienced both the closeness of immediate family and the diversity of myriad strangers. She remembers the days when they didn’t have a refrigerator and the ice man delivered to their ice box. When her mother finally got a refrigerator, everyone in the house used it. “During the war a whole family would rent a couple of rooms, have a hot plate and often share the hall shower if they didn’t have a private one.” “It was wonderful growing up in Asheville then. We kids used to go to the Grove Park Inn and sleighride down the golf course in winter and play on the grounds in summer. The Inn was closed from Labor Day till Memorial Day; they would lay the rocking chairs up against the wall on the patio and we’d play around there, then ride our bikes to Riverside Cemetery and sit on O.Henry’s grave! I didn’t have a yard growing up, so my playground was the street.” She has been honored with a plaque on Pack Square next to the statue, Childhood (little girl sipping from a fountain), that is part of the Asheville Urban Trail.
It commemorates her childhood playing in the square as well as her four years dancing with the Grand Old Opry starting when she was 20. It was in that Biltmore Avenue house that, in third grade, her aunt Dot gave her the first needle and taught her to embroider. It was that moment, she says, “I realized the needle was magic!” She still has that first embroidery sample. At age 14 her father passed away and she used the Social Security money her mother collected to buy her first sewing machine: a Kenmore from Sears. Before that she had learned to sew on a treadle machine at her aunt’s house. “I’d go and borrow any machine someone would let me use and started making my own clothes at a young age.” The atmosphere at 19 ½ Biltmore fostered not only her sewing skills but her later artistry with drawing and painting. “There was one man in the house who did water colors; one who went out on the fire escape at sundown to play the fiddle (I thought that was so sad); my mother was a silversmith for Stuart Nye who then went out on her own to make and sell her jewelry designs.” continued on page 5 July 2019 | 50+ Living | 3
