I just sewed an eye back into a prom dress.  (I hope we are clear on the fact that I am referring to a strangely-shaped little metal gizmo, half of the device known as "hook-and-eye", and not to an organ of vision.)  It's been quite a while since I engaged in an activity of this kind, and it took only a matter of seconds for me to conclude that my right hand has lost its cunning, and my left is, if anything, worse.
I found myself muttering, "My mother could have done this with no trouble." *  She could have, too.  She would not have dropped the thing twice and had to hunt for it, and it would not have skittered maliciously away from the thread with which she was endeavoring to ensnare it.  She could, in fact, have sewn the whole dress, and her sewing machine would not have broken down, the way sewing machines do-- in a tangle of bobbin thread-- when they see me coming.
There was a time when I actually thought her dressmaking ability would come to me, eventually.  I purchased a sewing machine (now stored in a closet; see above) and had visions of being able to make things with interfacing, and lapels.  Ha.  That ability puckishly descended only to my oldest sister, a Manhattan-based immunologist who will not need to do her own sewing unless every tailor in New York is wiped out by some form of fashion warfare.
Of course, I don't actually need to do much sewing, either, except in moments like these when wardrobe malfunction looms unexpectedly.  But while I was sewing the eye on, and wondering whether my thumbs have always been this large and klutzy or whether this is what really came with age, I also wondered how I would have managed had I lived in a time and place that did require me to do all my own sewing.  Thinking back to those children's books set on the frontier, I pondered.  Would I have learned, out of necessity?  Could I have knitted mittens and scarves, and whipped up dresses and sunbonnets by candlelight?  Or would my family have been dressed in a way that caused Ma Ingalls to click her tongue and become yet more smug in her conviction of the superiority of ethnic Scots? 
I must say that the Little House series, along with Caddie Woodlawn, had far more appeal in the days when I identified wholeheartedly with Laura and Caddie;  reading these same books as an adult, and a mother, I had a tendency to shudder.  I am confident that I could have cooked over an open fire, and being less of a clean freak than Caroline would probably have made things easier for me.  I might even have been able to endure being housebound during interminable blizzards, living on an ever-dwindling supply of potatoes, and not gone stark raving mad--although I would not want to make book on that one. 
But I am afraid I would have spent an inordinate amount of time urging my hoydenish daughters to be more careful of their clothes.  ("WHY on EARTH would you fill your POCKET with STONES?  You think I don't have enough to keep me busy?  Look, YOU cut that pig up and make headcheese; your days of playing with the blown-up bladder are OVER, missy!")
No wonder people were thrilled when that massive Sears, Roebuck catalog put in an appearance.  Mass-produced clothes!  Woo-hoo!



*You may suspect that I was muttering other things, mostly unprintable.  You would be wrong, but perhaps only because under the circumstances "Darn it!" seemed quite appropriate.  Yes.  I do like puns.