When Margaret Burgess was growing up on Serpentine Road, Pembroke, her family did not buy a Christmas tree. Instead they would go looking for cedar branches to decorate their home. “I would crochet a lot of the decorations,” Ms Burgess remembered.

At 99, she is still making her own Christmas magic.

This year she decided she did not want to shop for a Christmas tree.

“I kept thinking and thinking about what I could do instead,” she said.

In the end, she fashioned a Christmas tree out of a closed beach umbrella and artificial Christmas tree branches.

When she was done the underlying structure was invisible. Her creation, decorated with gold ornaments, looked like any other Christmas tree.

The retired seamstress loves creating. Needlepoint, knitting, crocheting, dressmaking, cooking and baking are just a few of her hobbies.

She attended St Alban’s School on St John’s Road, the precursor to West Pembroke Primary.

“I had a good childhood,” she said. “I do not have any regrets.”

When she finished primary school, her godmother wanted her to go to The Berkeley Institute, but Ms Burgess did not like the idea. To her young mind, Berkeley students seemed too sophisticated.

Her father, Oswald Braithwaite, was strict, but never one to force her to do something. He accepted her choice.

“He never pushed me,” she said, a little regretfully. Her parents were from Barbados.

Her father came to Bermuda to work as an engineer in an ice cream factory in Hamilton. A few years later, he sent for her mother, Doris, as they had been engaged to before leaving for Bermuda.

“She came here in 1925 to marry my father,” Ms Burgess said.

Ms Burgess was born nine months and nine days after their wedding. She had two younger twin brothers.

Her mother and grandmother were both seamstresses. At about 13, Ms Burgess resolved to follow in their footsteps.

One of her first jobs was altering dresses for Christine Diel, wife of William Diel who ran Salsbury Construction in the Fifties.

“She had dress alterations done everyday,” Ms Burgess said.

Mrs Diel – the head of the Bermuda Art Association – launched Gunpowder Cavern in St George’s as a tourist attraction in April 1950.

The underground space was part of Fort William in St George’s, famously used in 1775 to store the gunpowder secretly supplied to American revolutionaries.

At first, Ms Burgess was nervous about being in the bowels of Gunpowder Cavern.

“When you were in there, you couldn’t tell what was going on outside at all,” she said. The walls were very thick. “I got used to it.”

However, when her son Steven was born, she left the Diels and went to work for the now defunct AS Coopers department store in Hamilton

“I was with them for 33 years,” she said. “I loved doing alterations. I had the ladies’, men’s and children’s departments.”

One of her favourite assignments was making a dress that looked exactly like the green frock on one of the Royal Dalton figurines the store was selling.

“I had to look at the doll and then make the exact same dress for a person,” Ms Burgess said.

Ms Burgess was proud of the result, although a little disappointed that she did not get any credit in the resulting press coverage in 1984.

Over the years she stitched dresses for countless wedding parties including her daughter, Eunice Hart’s wedding dress.

She also enjoys making lace through tatting, a sewing form once popular in her parents’ native Barbados.

“A cousin down there showed me how to do it,” Ms Burgess said. “Not many people still know how to do it.”

She was married and had two children with Maurice Burgess, but found that she was better off on her own.

“I educated my two children by myself,” she said. “I worked hard. Sometimes I would see daylight coming in and I was still working on the sewing machine. At least they got their education which is exactly what I wanted.”

Ms Burgess will be 100 on February 23.

She is still active and sharp with a treasure trove of memories of days gone by in Bermuda.

She read with interest a recent article in The Royal Gazette by Cecille Snaith-Simmons about a now gone neighbourhood called Parker’s Hill in Pembroke

“Goslings had a warehouse there,” she said. “There used to be a lot of people living there. They took that down and now you can drive right through. There have been so many changes in Bermuda.”

Her own neighbourhood has become more commercialised. Her house sits on a hill overlooking Gorham’s and Belco.

“Our school playing field was down there,” she said. “We also played where the Bermuda Telephone Company is today. We ran all through our neighbours’ homes. We were all really close. Today, half the time, we do not even know our neighbours.”

She has had some trouble with her throat, but still feels relatively healthy.

“I love getting out in my backyard with my hoe,” she said.

The lifelong Pembroke resident admitted she never thought she would live to be 99.

“My father was around 66 when he died,” she said. “My mother lived to be 92. She was working for a family in Point Shares right up until the end.”

Ms Burgess said she has lived her life and done everything she wanted to do. She travels a lot, particularly to Barbados.

“I was just there in June,” she said. “I have a cousin there who just turned 100. I went down for her birthday.”

Ms Burgess also had an aunt who lived to age 101.

“My goal is to live to 101 or 102 like my aunt,” she said. Laughing she added: “I hope I make it over that.”

She loves spending time with her two granddaughters, six great grandchildren and three great-great grandchildren.