MONROE -- Mary Burri's two-bedroom apartment at Twining Valley Retirement Community in Monroe is neat as a pin. But she laughs about the state of the spare bedroom she uses as a sewing room.
"This table never gets empty," she said, patting her sewing table.
The table holds piles of tops, pants and jackets, alteration jobs Burri takes in. Those jobs are just her immediate plans.
Behind the doors of a double closet, Burri stores colorful fabric, beads and other sewing notions for projects she is working on.
"I have no time for a drab life," Burri said about retirement.
Burri has been sewing professionally since 1945, and taught tailoring at night school in the 1950s and '60s.
She said she loves to sew, but admits the craft didn't appeal to her at first.
"My mother taught me to sew. I was her worst pupil," she said.
When she attended Kansas State University to study dietetics, she started sewing to save money. And then Burri discovered an attic at the college.
Filled with bits and pieces --
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"I love the idea of putting colors together," she said.
While other students were painting still-life, Burri started creating pictures using bits of fabric, beads, ceramics -- anything she could find.
"Fabric bends, and I can't paint," she said.
After college, Burri worked for a couple years before joining the Navy, where she met her husband, Dave Burri.
When Dave's uniform came back from the cleaners one day with a torn pocket and a stain on the back of the jacket, Burri said she couldn't think of anything to do, but make a new one.
"He wore that uniform for 14 years, and nobody knew the difference," she said.
When Dave retired from the Navy in 1958, the couple moved to Monroe. They were married 52 years before Dave died in 1996.
Among her many sewing projects, Burri has made four suits and four sets of drapes for her homes as the military moved them around 29 times. She also has sewn bridal gowns and bridesmaid dresses. Sometimes she uses a pattern, but she likes to "drape the material, pinch and pin" to fit the girl.
With her 91st birthday coming Nov. 27, Burri complains that her hand has started to shake when she writes, but she can sew stitches so small nobody can see them.
"Someone said I must use the two sides of my brain. I said it was a good thing I had another side," she said.
