The first time McHenry seamstress Maria Burrafato picked up a needle and thread, she was 4 years old and making dresses for her dolls in Sicily, Italy.

Now 83, the last day Burrafato sat at her sewing machine was April 8. After 46 years of altering and fixing clothes for clients, Burrafato was forced by health issues to retire from Maria’s Alteration Service.

She isn’t happy about it, either.

“I wanted to work until God took me,” Burrafato said, but added her health challenges that necessitated her retirement were probably also a sign from God.

Burrafato woke up the morning of April 9 with “excruciating pain” in her leg. What her doctors found after an MRI was that, in addition to a bulging disc in her back, Burrafato had a fractured leg.

Her years of bending down to sew and pushing the pedal on sewing machines – combined with osteoporosis – had taken their toll.

“I didn’t want to quit, to retire like that,” she said.

Sewing is what she loves, Burrafato added. Not even her mother could stop her from sewing as a child.

“She thought I would cut my fingers. ... She would hide the basket” with the needles, thread and scissors, Burrafato said, adding she would find the basket and keep sewing.

“I like to sew ... making dresses made me happy.”

At age 9, she graduated from doll clothes to working for a tailor in Sicily “who was impressed with what I could do,” Burrafato said.

Later, as a teenager, her grandmother sent a photo of Burrafato to a friend in the U.S., and that photo was shared with Joseph Burrafato. The two began courting, writing letters back and forth for a year and a half. They fell in love and married in Italy. A few months later, she moved to Illinois with her new husband.

They’ve been married for 63 years and had five children – “three with us and two in heaven,” Burrafato said.

For her first 15 years in America, Burrafato worked in a Crystal Lake factory, raising children and learning English. In 1980, Burrafato was ready to get back into what she really loved.

“I took the chance” to start her own home-based alterations business, she said, and put the Maria’s Alteration Service sign outside their Crystal Lake Road home.

In the decades since, Burrafato has developed a loyal fan base, and not just from McHenry.

“Harvard, Wisconsin, Arlington Heights, Chicago” are among the areas her clients come from, she said.

Over the years, she’s gone through probably 20 different sewing machines as she took in or let out clothes and fixed seams and rips. She wasn’t one to make clothes from a pattern, but loved to work on the “fancy dresses” for proms and weddings.

“Weddings in the summer is my favorite work,” Burrafato said.

There are fewer people who do what she does, tailoring clothes for customers. At the end of 2025, Tony Wirtz retired and closed Tony’s Family Tailor Shop in downtown McHenry.

Burrafato’s absence is one people have noticed. On a McHenry-centric Facebook page, posts in early June asked what happened and noted the Closed sign in Burrafato’s window. She hasn’t had the sign by the road taken down yet, but plans to soon, Burrafato said.

One client came knocking, concerned about the sudden retirement. That customer gave her a new angel statue, to go with the many deeply religious items Burrafato has collected over the years.

Two months after her official retirement, Burrafato is caring for Joseph, now 90. She also has four grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, but is spending most of her days at home.

Joseph wanted her to retire three years ago, but she wasn’t ready then.

Now, “God showed me a different way to retire,” she said. “I am sorry that it happened so suddenly. I didn’t want to retire, and I have to accept this.”

To her customers, she says thank you.

“Thank them, from the bottom of my heart, for the loyalty over 46 years,” Burrafato said.