For The Home Dressmaker

Southland Times, Issue 21431, 27 June 1931, Page 17

For The Home Dressmaker

EXTENSION SERVICE FOR WOMEN. SECOND LECTURE A GREAT SUCCESS. It was good to see so many women from the country joining the townswomen at the St. John’s Memorial Hall on Saturday afternoon, when yet another link was’ formed between them by that splendid welder of links—usefulness. Over 100 women, of all ages, including a number from outlying districts, assembled to hear the second lecture of the series organized by the Home Science extension service of the Otago University. In introducing her associate, Miss Macmillan, who was to explain and demonstrate the method of making a paper dressform, Miss Reid, tutor-organiser of the extension service, and assistant to Professor Strong, said they were overwhelmed by the numbers present and the many country districts represented, and hoped it could be taken as an indication that they were forming a wider scope for usefulness. Miss Reid, who was introduced by Mrs Ward, president of the Women’s Division of the Farmers’ Union, briefly explained the meaning and purpose of the extension ■ service, which had its beginning after the visit of a member of the Carnegie Trust to New Zealand. Although he came as a tourist, Professor Strong of the Otago University interested him in her movement for adult education for the rural women of New Zealand, to such good effect that his return to New York resulted in a grant of a big slice of the Trust for the use of the women of Otago and Southland; so that it is actually American money that has made Mrs Strong’s scheme possible.

Miss Reid returned several times to one point—namely, that this extension bureau in Dunedin was to be regarded by all the women in both provinces as a channel of information, working in close association with medical, dental and plunket societies for the betterment of health, the smoother running of homes, and a general improvement of citizenship. It was their wish to be regarded as agents for information which women need, carrying it about from one place to another in the two provinces. They tried to have not only the help of the medical and dental laboratories at one end of their work, but the co-operation of the women of both provinces at the other end, to complete the cycle. Their work did not consist alone, she said, of giving information ; they considered themselves excellent vehicles, too, for receiving information born of the practical experience of the women they met, and passing it on. Questions were always welcomed, and they did their best to answer them. The amount of correspondence they attended to personally was increasing daily, and they hoped soon to have a special staff to deal with this section of their work alone. At present the lecturer travels six weeks in every eight, devoting a fortnight to the Southland districts, lecturing both' afternoons and evenings. The lecturers wanted to be used, and, Miss Reid concluded, Professor Strong’s own message was: “I want you to feel you have a place in Dunedin you can use—please use us.” During the building of the dressform on a long-suffering model, Miss Macmillan illuminated difficult points by demonstration, and many women from the audience went forward and learned the knack through helping under guidance. Fully typed and illustrated directions were distributed and sold for a small sum covering their cost. Before the meeting concluded Miss Reid referred to their “box” groups, of which there are well over 100 in Otago and Southland alone. Any association of women throughout the two provinces receives these boxes free, paying the railage only one way. The boxes are prepared over a comprehensive range of subjects—health, child-dressmaking, nutrition, teeth, clothing, agriculture, history of furniture, renovating the home (including the making

of cushions, lampshades and humpties)—by specialists, and each box is accompanied by charts, models or patterns- relevant to the subject. A group consists of not less than six and not more than sixteen members, from which a leader is appointed to draw attention to different points in the written lecture, each woman receiving a copy lor homo study. ’

Saturday’s large audience went away from the lecture delighted at what they had learned, and on many lips was the assurance that the future would produce home-made frocks and coats whose collars sat perfectly, and whose sleeves went into their armholes without crease or wrinkle.