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After 37 years of hemming pants and mending seams, the owner of Dina's Alterations will close her downtown shop in December. 

But Favaro, who will soon turn 80, already stopped taking new work this summer. On a sign in the door, she wrote that she has enough old work to keep her busy through the end of the year.

Sitting Thursday in the Genesee Center shop, surrounded by shirts hung over seat backs and jeans piled atop ironing boards, Favaro said some of those clothes have sat there for a couple years. Their owners told her they could wait until whenever the seamstress got to them. Some of them may have even been forgotten. Still, she doesn't want to retire with any loose ends.

"Like it or not, I gotta finish," she said in her grandmotherly Italian accent. "I don't want to close with a bad reputation."

That relationship with her customers made Favaro a beloved part of the Auburn community. Louis Contiguglia, whose law office is located around the corner from Dina's inside Genesee Center, brought his clothes there for about 20 years. So did his wife, Carol. They both praised Favaro for her warm manner and wise advice about the alterations they asked her to make.

"She was a gem," said Louis, who noted that he was currently wearing a pair of pants Favaro fitted for him. "If she felt I was going the wrong way, she had a nice way of turning me around."

Favaro opened her shop on Nov. 2, 1982. But she began working with clothes much earlier in her native Bari, Italy.

The second oldest of three boys and four girls, Favaro became the assistant of a nearby tailor when she was 8. She spent about four years there, learning the ins and outs of working with fabric.

It was also in Italy that Favaro met her first husband, an American, and had a son. The family later moved to Boston, but the marriage ended after five years. In another few years she met her second husband, Sergio Favaro, and moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where they had four daughters. Sergio would pass away in 2008.

With Sergio and her five children, Favaro at one point returned to Italy, which she called "her dream." They lived with her family in Bari, and Sergio's in Abruzzo. But he wanted to move back to America, so he proposed settling the family in the area where she enjoyed visiting his relatives while on vacation: Auburn. 

A few years later, Favaro was 47 and looking for her first job in the city. "Italian men don't believe in women going to work," she said. And her English was limited, so her job opportunities were, too.

Then, a friend who knew Favaro could sew recommended she open a shop downtown.

"The talent you have, you don't need to speak English," Favaro said her friend told her.

Within a year, Favaro had paid off the money she borrowed to open her shop in Genesee Center. Making wedding gowns, a passion of hers, was part of the business for its first few years, but Favaro soon found alterations easier on her schedule, and more profitable. She worked by hand at first, but steadily collected a few sewing machines.

Favaro also collected several longtime customers, particularly from Auburn's professional class, she said. And she's proud that her work for them put her children through college. But after 37 years, she wants to spend more time with those children, as well as her 12 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Favaro also plans to travel to Italy, where her son lives. 

And as the seamstress prepares to thread her last needle, she's grateful for the people who made Dina's Alterations possible.

"I'm going to miss everybody," Favaro said. "I love my job, I love people. That's it."