Dorothy Allen recently turned 100 years old and has lived in Yellow Springs nearly a century — since she was six months old. Over the years, her skills as an accomplished seamstress have been a creative outlet and helped her connect to the community.
She learned how to sew from mother when I was little. When her mother would patch and the pieces would fall, and she would be on the floor, taking scraps and making new little dresses.
"I was sewing before I even got into home ec," Allen said. "Then when I did get into home ec, I didn't care about cooking. I liked to sew."
When they did sew in home economics class, the teacher would have her show the other students how to do it.
Allen's reputation as a seamstress became known around the village, and soon people started asking her to make clothing for them. The first time she sewed for someone else, she made a skirt for a woman for a dance.
"I made my dress too, it was a blue polka dot dress. And, we had a good time," she said. "We would do the jitterbug. And during the dance, he would throw me over his shoulders, and between his legs, and then we did the twist. We were doing the twist before the twist came out. We were doing it all."
Allen remembers dances as part of the vibrant social life available to young Black people in Yellow Springs in the 1940s.
"We had dances. There was a little band, a small band from Springfield, and we hired them and they came down," Allen said. "And we had dances and sold hot dogs and pop."
In the 1970s, Allen's sewing skills led her to open a women's boutique in Yellow Springs with Jackie Blackmon in the building that is now the Wind's wine shop at the corner of Senior Avenue and Quarry Street.
"There was a place in Columbus that we could borrow money from, and so we borrowed $6,000 a piece," she said.
They made clothes and did alterations — the only place in the village that women could go and buy clothes at the time.
"People would ask me to make the prettiest little girls' dress," she said. "And I loved to make little girls' dresses with the pinafore and all of that."
Allen is still living in Yellow Springs with her daughter and enjoys frequent visits from her grandchildren.
