WHO MAKES IT · MADE IN AMERICA
The hands behind every band.
Erika Pasterak · Sewmaster
Every Glutivate band is sewn by hand by Erika, on the heavy-duty machines in her Huntington workshop. She’s been at a sewing machine for 80 years.
She made the first generation of bands, and now she makes every other band.
She learned on her mother’s pedal-powered machine in Germany at age seven, came to New York alone at 15, and has been sewing professionally for 70 years.
Read Erika’s story ＋
Erika grew up in a small town outside Nuremberg, Germany, where her mother ran a sewing business. By age seven, she was running a pedal-powered machine.
On her 15th birthday, her mother put her on a train to Hamburg with a suitcase and $10. The next morning, she boarded a ship for New York. Eleven days at sea and one hurricane later, she landed on Long Island, speaking no English. A month after that, the local principal told her she’d be in school the next day. She graduated.
In her senior year, a shop making slipcovers for J.C. Penney called the school looking for someone who could sew. Erika was the one. She ran the machines, repaired them, and taught the other girls to read patterns, all for a dollar an hour. She’s been sewing professionally ever since: 70 years and, by her own guess, close to a million yards of fabric. It paid for the house she’s lived in for 62 years.
Tony found her by word of mouth. A fabric shop on New York Avenue told him his band material needed a heavy-duty machine, and that they knew of one woman who could handle it, though they weren’t sure she was still alive. Tony called her anyway. “You’re not talking to a ghost,” Erika told him, and she invited him over. She knew right away what the material needed, including the second fold that most machines can’t sew.
Erika is 87. She says she’d like to travel more. Until then, she’s sewing your band.
See the sewing process ＋
Erika at the sewing machine in her Huntington workshop.