'99 years young' and still sewing

STAFF WRITER

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In her 99 years of life, Lucille Brooks has called Portales home for more than 60 of those years.

Staff photo: Matthew Asher

Lucille Brooks

displays a “trip around the world” style quilt she made.

Born Jan. 12, 1917, in Ralls, Texas, Brooks may only have hearing in her left ear anymore, but she still has the dexterity to participate in her favorite activities: Sewing and quilting.

“I’ve made quilts, dresses for children mostly,” Brooks said. “I like making blouses. I made all the clothes for my daughters until they went to high school, took Home EC. and learned how to do it themselves.”

Brooks, who is a mother of seven children, a grandmother and even great grandmother to many more, started sewing when she was 10 years old, starting with making clothes for her younger sister’s dolls.

“They’d bring me a scrap and say what they wanted,” Brooks said. “I’d take the doll, measure it and make the dress.”

As Brooks grew, so did the clothing sizes she made. In addition to making clothes for her daughters, Brooks has made prom dresses, Maypole outfits and many, many quilts.

“She’s quilted more than 150 quilts,” friend Ruth Sikes said. “She likes to be known as the seamstress.”

Before settling down just outside of Portales, Brooks’ first home in New Mexico was in the nearby town of Melrose.

“I was raised in cotton country in Texas,” Brooks said. “My father wanted to quit raising cotton, so we moved to Melrose. I went to high school there, graduated and got married.”

Brooks met her husband, J.D., and the two were happily married for 62 years until J.D.’s passing in 1996.

“J.D. once asked his parents why they didn’t give him a real name,” Brooks said of why her husband just had initials to his name. “They said, ‘So you could spell it.’”

During those six-plus decades of marriage, J.D. provided for his family as a farmer, using eight horses to plow his fields.

“That was before tractors, so you had to plow with horses,” Brooks said. “Our neighbors always said he had the straightest rows in the country.”

While Brooks isn’t quite as busy sewing nowadays, she still works on pieces when the mood strikes her. And with six sewing machines in her house, she’s capable of fulfilling nearly any sewing request.

“She has six sewing machines,” Brook’s caretaker Grace Fair said. “She has an antique foot-pedal one. A Columbia. She’s really proud of it. She also has one that just does buttons.”

Brooks said while she takes sewing orders, she has one simple rule.

“If (a customer) brings me a pattern I don’t like, I tell them to get another pattern,” she said.