Sleuthing Sweater Projects

“Knit with confidence and hope through all crises.” ~ Elizabeth Zimmerman

Why is choosing a sweater project so difficult?  SO.  MANY.  QUESTIONS.

Does analysis paralysis overwhelm you when you think about starting a sweater project?  You’re not alone!  I’m right there with you, which is why I wanted to post this topic.  When there are too many choices, we sometimes don’t even know how to make a choice, much less actually make one, so I’m here to try to help you break a big decision down into micro-decisions.

The good news is that this doesn’t all have to happen at once.  This is a process of considering, pondering, cogitating, perhaps even asking for a second opinion from someone who knows you and your personal style well.  This is also going to give you some good tips on how to leverage Ravelry.com to your advantage without falling down a rabbit hole of half a million search results.

Let’s start with this:  I want to make a sweater.  What kind of sweater?

A sweater I’ll wear.

What, exactly, does that mean?  This is a good time to take a hard look at your closet and be honest about the pieces you always reach for.  At some point in my early adulthood, I had to face the fact that I LOVE fussy, complicated construction, but do I wear things that have fussy, complicated construction?  NO, I do not.  I want a dumb, plain pullover made with comfy yarn that feels like an elevated sweatshirt or a cardigan I can toss over anything from pajamas to a dress.  Is that so wrong?  Only if I spend 60-80 hours and triple-digit dollars to knit a sweater I’ll NEVER WEAR.

Here’s the first tip:  Start with what you happily wear often, whether it’s you-made or store bought—whatever your favorite go-to is, or your top three go-to’s—and then work backward from there.  Study how they are constructed and take measurements of both yourself and the piece(s) to figure out how they fit.

Then start checking off details. For a jumpstart, CLICK HERE to download my helpful Sleuthing Sweater Projects Checklist for free – add it to your cart, then click on “View Cart” and enter the coupon code SWEATERLIST at checkout for your free copy. (Make sure you click on the link under “Downloads” on the right hand side of the confirmation page to get your PDF–clicking on the link under Product will shoot you back to the website.)

Based on what you know and love in your own wardrobe, or want to add to your wardrobe, what kind of sweater do you want to make…pullover, cardigan, poncho, other?  What kind of neckline do you prefer?  What kind of fit do you prefer?  How long do you like your sweaters to be?  Want kind of sleeves do you want (both sleeve type and length)?  Are you willing to seam the pieces together or do you want to knit it all in one go?

And parallel to that, do you prefer working flat or in the round?  Do you have preferred gauge/yarn weight?  Do you like tricky designs and multiple colors, or would you rather keep it simple?  What kind of fibers do you like and wear?  Does it need to stand up to frequent wearing and washing?  How excited are you about complicated stitch patterns or construction?  What are you wearing this for (e.g. every day, wedding, holiday)?

If you can answer these kinds of questions explicitly, it will help reduce the overwhelm and point you in the direction of a narrowed search.

An overarching consideration as you begin your search is your current skill level.  How hard do you want to work to make this new thing?  Do you want something that looks way more advanced than it actually is, or are you looking for something that looks effortless but may require advanced techniques?  Or something in between?  You know I’m not here to judge–this is an opportunity for you to take honest stock of where you currently are in your knitting journey and decide whether a sweater project is the place to use the skills you currently have or to advance your skills.  If it’s your first time knitting a sweater, the instructions and construction alone will probably be enough of a challenge without adding in cables, colorwork, textured stitch patterns, complicated construction, and possibly fussy fibers (ask me how I know!).

Once you have your checklist of constraints (see what I did there?  You didn’t even know you were setting up guardrails, did you?), it’s time to search.  I always start with my own Ravelry library and favorites, but there are a million ways to search for patterns besides Ravelry or Google.  Go to your favorite yarn seller website, local yarn store website, Etsy, Pinterest, or ask your fiber loving friends for suggestions.  Knitting patterns are everywhere!  But if you do use Ravelry for your search, I highly recommend using the Advanced Search features, based on your checklist and your answers to all these other questions, to narrow results to a manageable number of accurately recommended and appropriate patterns.

By the way, if you’re interested in my Navigating Ravelry webinar, click here to join the waitlist and I’ll email you when it’s available!

If you’re still fighting against too many choices or a feeling of overwhelm, pop over to my other posts, Conquer Analysis Paralysis and Creativity Under Constraints for more insight.

Click here for your freebie downloadable Sweater Sleuthing Checklist (add it to your cart, then click on “View Cart” and enter coupon code SWEATERLIST at checkout) to help you keep track of your new project “assignment” and what you want to focus on while you’re looking for a sweater pattern.

Stay tuned for more and feel free to sign up for my email newsletter if you haven’t already!

What Lies Beneath

“A person always has two reasons for doing anything:  a good reason and the real reason.” ~ J.P. Morgan*

I was thinking the other day about the students who find me and the first conversation we have with each other, which is usually me asking them what they want to be able to make.  The interesting thing about this exchange is that it often involves much deeper insight into the person’s hopes, dreams, desires, and sometimes even damage than just a simple answer as they explain what they want to learn and why.  The quote above resonated with me because it seems to be true…the people I’ve taught always have a good reason for wanting to learn something new, but what they tell me at first is not usually the true reason.  I discover as we make our journey together that there’s almost always something else going on beneath the surface, something hoping to be encouraged, healed, supported, motivated, or just plain validated.

When we consider what drives most of us, several things can come to mind.  We make commitments, so we feel compelled to keep them.  We need and want things, so we work toward getting them.  I’m not sure we spend a whole lot of time even thinking about why we’re doing what we’re doing.  Some of it is programming and habit, like brushing our teeth or making coffee in the morning, and some of it is dreaded necessity we can’t seem to escape.  Grocery shopping, cleaning, yard work, driving.  (Am I the only one here who abhors having to deal with the never-ending pile of laundry?)  Most of us probably don’t stop to think, “Hm, why am I on my way to the grocery store again?”  We just do it because we need food or supplies.  It’s part of the routine.

Do we treat jobs like part of the same routine?  Maybe yes, maybe no.  As much time as we spend working, we’re bound to go on autopilot every so often.  There are jobs in my past that I worked out of necessity and the only reason I did them was to earn a paycheck so I could live in my own space.  Sometimes, though, I’ve had a thoughtful job—one I intentionally applied for and actually wanted because I liked doing what it required.  One example is when I worked for a local fabric store in the middle of Missouri when I was fresh out of college.  I liked almost everything about that job.  I merchandised the front windows, sold sewing machines, unpacked and stocked new patterns and fabrics, taught sewing classes, and made class samples in addition to the usual retail routine of customer service.  It was an intentional job, and although it didn’t even pay minimum wage, I knew almost every day why I was doing it.  It provided several things I deeply needed at the time, like camaraderie to combat the loneliness of being on my own after college, satisfaction with starting and finishing projects, support from those who encouraged my creativity, and feelings of success when customers came back to see me again and again.

Something happened along the way to occlude my previously clear vision and intention, though, both in the daily mundane things and in the bigger picture of working for a living.  Call it adulthood, call it emotional trauma, call it challenging experiences, call it whatever you will, but it continually clouded me in a way I didn’t even notice until several years ago.  I was doing all the things, going through all the motions, but there was something underneath it all that I couldn’t quite seem to reach.  This thing that eluded me had no specific description or “feeling,” but it sat just far enough below the surface for me to notice it but not be able to bury it.  I discovered that the discomfiture rippling under everything I was doing was a source of truth.

I had pushed truth, my own truth, out of the way and was so busy doing things everyone else wanted or expected me to do that I nearly lost myself.  I was overly focused on the good reasons for doing things, but I had lost the grasp on my real reasons for doing any of it.

Truth can hurt, sometimes badly.  Finally looking inside myself and being honest with myself gave me answers, but not the ones I expected or wanted.  I had to accept that I had disappointed myself, I had given my time and ambition and any iota of joy away to others who didn’t deserve it (and still don’t), and I had pushed away my own soul’s desires and needs for so long I didn’t remember what it felt like to be myself.  That realization felt like someone cracked open my sternum and punched me right in the heart.  It was hard and heavy and I hated it.  But it was the truth, so I had to accept it and find a way to give myself the same grace I give everyone else.  Some days have been easier than others while trying to reconcile these things.

I still have good reasons for doing things.  I decline sweets because I hate working out.  I water plants in to keep them alive, not because I enjoy gardening or have a green thumb.  I cook because we need to eat, but you won’t ever catch me intentionally subjecting myself to something that takes more than 20 minutes to prepare.  Those seem like pretty good reasons, right?  Sure, but let’s look at the real reasons for these behaviors or tasks.  Not eating sweets:  I really want them, but I like my body the way it is and would like to keep it that way.  Plant care:  it sometimes feels like a waste of effort in this Texas heat, but my spaces need to include living things, so I keep trying.  Cooking:  I’d rather spend money on crafting supplies than on takeout food.

My question at this point, as both a teacher and a maker, is why do you make things?  Why do you want to make things?  Why do you need to make things?

Of course, all of us can answer these questions to provide practical reasons, good reasons.  But what are the real reasons?  We’re all healing from something, so perhaps that’s your reason.  We’re all running away from something and toward something else, so maybe one of those is your reason, or both.  We all need encouragement and support and camaraderie, so we might be searching for one or all of those things.

No matter what our real reasons are, they are as valid as our good reasons.  In fact, they might be more valid than our good reasons because the real reasons are our truth.  What lies beneath is the essence of who we are and what we need, and we should be brave and answer to it, even if it’s hard and it hurts at first.

I want you all to know that I am here to support and encourage your truth, your real reasons.  I want each of us to acknowledge that truth, squeeze it tightly, and tell it we love and accept it, no matter how prickly it might be.  And then hug yourself for me and thank yourself for being true to you, because the world needs you to reveal and share what lies beneath.

*NOTE:  I changed “man” to “person” (for a myriad of reasons), and I’m not altogether certain this quote can be accurately attributed to J.P. Morgan.  Multiple resources list other names but Morgan’s is the one that shows up most frequently.  If I have made an error, I’ll be happy to correct it!

The Art of Coping

“It may be that art is simply what we call our most constructive coping mechanism for the incomprehension of life and mortality…”  ~ Maria Popova

The Marginalian is one of my favorite blogs, so I have no hesitation in recommending it.  It’s beautifully written and always gives me something deep to ponder, such as the quote I’ve listed above.  Which of you readers out there have turned to your art or craft at some point in your life to help you cope?  I have done this many times, often not even realizing I’ve been doing it until after the fact.

I’ll be honest.  I hide in my sewing room when I’m stressed.  It’s my own space and it’s full of my stuff, my efforts, and my soul (oh, and usually several flat dogs).  Sometimes I literally sit in there and stare at the walls, not even trying to plan a project or make something.  I just sit.  There’s something extremely soothing about being in that space, even though it’s usually a chaotic mess.  What is it about this room that gives me comfort and makes me feel less like I’m being chased?  Maybe it represents good things and happy feelings of satisfaction.

Thinking all the way back to my childhood, as I’ve written about in other posts, sewing was all I wanted to do.  It came easily to me and wasn’t something I ever struggled with.  I was (and still am) good at it without a lot of effort.  This is not to say I’ve learned everything and I’m perfect.  There’s no such thing as perfect, and I’m a lifetime learner, so there will always be new things, some of which I won’t be good at doing.  Sewing was my go-to safe place—I could lose myself and time in it and there was no judgment.

When my parents got divorced while I was in grade school and both remarried not long after, I mostly hid in our basement and stitched for as many hours as I could when I wasn’t at school.  It was tough being traded off from one household to another on a regular basis, and as someone who doesn’t always handle change well, it was difficult for me to express that frustration in a productive manner, so I channeled it into making things.  If I recall that period of my life accurately, it spurred several new hobbies.  I was happiest when my hands and head were busy, so I was always looking for something different to do.  Doll clothes, lacy cut snowflakes, ribbon barrettes, friendship bracelets, origami…my child brain was desperately trying to feed a soul that constantly felt starved.  I filled my desk at school with folded paper frogs and cranes as I tried to cope with the confusion and sadness that resulted from a broken family.  I filled my heart making things that I thought were pretty and unique.

Once I graduated from college, I had planned to go to grad school so I could eventually direct operas.  Unfortunately, that didn’t work out the way I had hoped because I couldn’t figure out how to pay for it and I already had $20,000 in debt from my undergrad degrees.  It was devastating and I felt hopeless, as if all my dreams had been dashed in a blink.  I moved back in with my parents and took the first job I could find, a soul-sucking retail position.  Once again, I sought art and craft as solace and escape.  I acted in community theater productions.  I sewed stuffed animals and handbags.  I made jewelry.  I sang.  I filled my schedule with as many rehearsals and performances as possible, trying to push away grief and feelings of utter failure.  Again, life felt better and easier in the midst of making, even though I didn’t realize it until years later when the habit of busying my hands returned during my own divorce.

I’m an intensely private person, so divulging some of this feels a little like standing naked in front of a crowd.  However, I’m compelled to share because I believe that if we deny ourselves the things that truly make us feel good and safe and content, then we’re denying ourselves a fundamental part of living.  We each have gifts that beg to be shared with others, and if we don’t share them, we die inside and the people around us don’t benefit from what we could offer them.  Art and craft (if you can separate the two; I discuss this in my past post “Are You an Artist or a Crafter?”) are deeply personal means of expressing ourselves and our thoughts about the world that we’re unable to articulate.  Creating can help make us feel more centered and calm, especially when everything around us seems scary or volatile.

It’s no wonder so many of us turn to creating when we’re trying to cope in difficult situations and process discordant feelings.

Back to my sewing room, perhaps it best represents an old, trusted friend who warmly welcomes us back into their comforting space and arms no matter how many times we’ve stumbled, fallen, beaten ourselves up and says, “It’s safe to be yourself here.  Make your magic.”

And on that note, I’ll quote the Olivia Newton John song, Magic:  “And if all your hopes survive, destiny will arrive and bring all your dreams alive for you.”  Click here if you’d like to hear my studio recording of this song.

Do you find solace in art and craft when you’re trying to cope?  If so, I’d love to hear your stories if you’d like to submit comments.

Cut It Out

If I asked you what your least favorite part of sewing is, what would you say?  I’ll wager a guess that it’s laying out and cutting.  My students frequently tell me how much they dislike cutting or how bad they think they are at it, or how tedious laying out a pattern is.  This is when I remind them that “sewing” is typically about 90% preparation and 10% stitching.

If we think about sewing like we think about any other skill, what comes to mind is the amount of practice it takes to get really good at it, and masters spend most of their time going through processes and practice that yield only a relatively small amount of “performances.”  A professional basketball player spends years going through drills and taking practice shots to be able to net those 3-pointers consistently at the games they play during each short season.  A ballerina spends years doing barre, combinations, and choreography to be able to dance in a few stage performances each season.  A sous chef spends years boiling, chopping, grilling and sautéing thousands of times before they can lead a kitchen.  It seems funny to me that someone who is relatively new to sewing assumes sewing preparation and practice will be easy.  Like everything else besides blinking, breathing and swallowing, it’s a learned skill, and it takes years to master.

I’ve wondered what it is about laying out and cutting that’s so distressing or off-putting, and the conclusion I keep coming to is that it’s time-consuming and takes skills a person might not yet possess when they’re just starting out.  Laying out a pattern is a skill.  Cutting with scissors is a skill.  These are not things we’re born knowing how to do.  Once we get past grade school, there’s no more construction paper in the curriculum, so unless we help our family clip coupons or cut hair, most of us wouldn’t have occasion to hone that skill.  It can also be scary cutting into that fabric we paid for with our hard-earned money.  I remember one student saying to me, “I’m so terrible at cutting.  It’s really frustrating!”  I gently explained that unless she’s been using scissors in this manner for the past 20 years, it’s going to take some practice before it gets easier or before she’s better at it.  The best way to get better at it is to practice.

Laying out fabric and a pattern is a valuable and learnable skill.  There’s no secret or magic to it, but it’s utterly important to first understand what’s meant by on-grain, selvage, cross-grain, and bias.

• On-grain (or grainline) is the warp of the fabric, which are the threads that run the full length of the yardage.
• Selvages (sometimes spelled “selvedges”) are the finished edges, or “self-edges,” of the fabric that were attached to the loom and run the full length of the yardage.  Sometimes selvages have tiny holes in them from the loom pins.  They can also have brand names and dye samples printed on them, in the case of many quilting cottons.  Remember that the grainline is parallel to the selvages.
• Cross-grain is the weft of the fabric, or the thread(s) that were woven over and under the warp threads.  Cross-grain is perpendicular to the selvages.
• Bias is diagonal to the grainline at a 45° angle.

Knowing the above terms is important because most garments are cut on the lengthwise grain, meaning they hang vertically from your shoulders or waist toward the floor.  Fabrics are stable and hang properly when they’re cut on-grain.  Fabrics have some give on the cross-grain.  Garments or curtains cut on the cross-grain can sag and bend with gravity, which is not a particularly good look.  However, the stretch is an advantage for cuffs, waistbands, and bindings, so many times these are cut on the cross-grain.

Fabric is extremely stretchy across the bias, which can be both an advantage and a disadvantage.  Advantage:  bias-cutting allows a garment to hug the curves of a body, making for lovely blouses, skirts, and dresses.  Disadvantage:  bias-cut pieces must be cut, handled, and stitched very carefully to prevent stretching or distortion.

A pattern will indicate how the pattern pieces need to be laid out on the fabric.  Each pattern piece usually includes a two-ended arrow that indicates the grainline.  This arrow should always be placed parallel to the selvages.  If it’s slightly skewed, your piece won’t hang quite straight.  If you’ve ever purchased a cheap t-shirt from a fast fashion retailer, you’ve probably seen side seams that have twisted toward the front and back of the shirt.  The reason for this is cheap clothing manufacturers skew pattern pieces so more will fit on less fabric.  Because the side seams aren’t cut on-grain, the entire shirt will be skewed.  The same will be true if our own pattern pieces aren’t aligned properly with the grain of the fabric.  When in doubt, measure from the selvage to the grainline arrow at both the top and bottom of the pattern piece.  If the measurements aren’t the same, adjust the pattern piece slightly until they are.

I realize at this point I have an unfair advantage with cutting tools.

My mom let me use metal scissors when I was four years old.  I was cutting fabric with shears at the age of nine and I did Scherenschnitte, which is fancy, lacy paper cutting (Google it to see all the pretties) just for fun during junior high and high school.  Knowing this gives me a great deal of empathy and patience for makers who have not spent their lives wielding sharp objects.  This is precisely why I take the time to teach my students how to cut confidently, whether they’re cutting up a pattern or cutting their fabric.

Here’s one of my most frequent cutting tips:  open the scissors as wide as your hand will allow and cut in one stroke all the way to the tip of the scissors.  Avoid the short chop-chop-chop cutting because it leaves an imprecise, ragged edge that will be hard to align with other pieces or turn under for a hem.  Choppy edges also make keeping a consistent seam allowance rather difficult.

And here’s a cutting practice tip:  draw random shapes, some big and some small, on a piece of paper and practice cutting them out using the long cut method (with paper scissors, of course, not the fabric shears!).  You can also cut shapes out of a coloring book or cut out pattern pieces you know you won’t need.

My best suggestion is to give yourself the necessary time and brain space for laying out and cutting.  Accept that it’s all part of the process and practice of sewing.  Reward yourself when you finish, if it makes you feel better!  And if you get into a groove, cut out more than one project at that time so you can spend the next time stitching.  You can do this—I believe in you!

If you want to build more confidence with laying out and cutting, join me for a lesson or a class!  I offer private sessions (click here to email me for details) as well as classes (click here for upcoming classes).  My instruction is inclusive, safe, judgment-free, and fun!

What is Presenteeism?

I heard a strange word the other day.  It was “presenteeism.”  Having no idea what this word meant, I looked it up.  It has a dictionary definition, but other descriptions I found of the word were much more enlightening.

Simply put, presenteeism is being physically at work, but being mentally out of it.

I don’t always trust Wikipedia as a citeable source, but its description of presenteeism makes sense in this particular context:  “Presenteeism or working while sick is the act or culture of employees continuing to work as a performative measure, despite having reduced productivity levels or negative consequences.”  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presenteeism )  The other sources I found primarily address presenteeism as a business productivity issue, meaning it has financial ramifications and they attribute lowered performance to “illnesses you take to work.”  (https://hbr.org/2004/10/presenteeism-at-work-but-out-of-it)

This word is interesting to me for several reasons, but I immediately wondered whether mental health has been included in the research, and to what extent.  Like many illnesses, depression, anxiety, and overwhelm are hard to see, so they’re fairly easy to hide unless they’re acute enough to render a person unable to function normally.  Or at least they were easy for me to hide until I ended up in a job I didn’t like, and then things started to go sideways.

How many of us have shown up for work with other things going on in our minds and bodies, and how many times have we done this?

If I’m being completely honest (which I try to be because that way I never have to remember what I said), while I was working for someone else, I was sometimes distracted or even consumed by situations that had nothing to do with work.  A cold is one thing…you feel awful and foggy for a few days and then you’re usually right as rain.  But when things happening around us make us feel totally overwhelmed or out of control, that’s a whole different ballgame.

Let me give you an example.  A few years ago, I was working full-time in a corporate job, and I had a heavy workload.  My husband, Dan, and I had a 17-year-old toy fox terrier, Gracie, who was going blind.  Because she didn’t see well, she walked into something outside that injured her eye.  We didn’t notice it at first, but after she’d held her eye shut for several hours, we took her to the vet, who told us we’d need to take her to a specialist.  The injury was extensive enough that Gracie’s eye had become infected inside the cornea (ouch!) and the specialist wanted to do everything possible to avoid having to remove the eye.  They prescribed three different kinds of eye drops that had to be administered in a specific order with military timing.  Mind you, heavy workload—and then putting drops in my dog’s eye every two hours got added to that list.

At this point you might be wondering if I mentioned any of this to my employer.  Well, about that…far prior to that time I had figured out I was in a toxic working environment.  I didn’t particularly trust anyone I was working with, especially not with something so deeply personal and unrelated to work, and management habitually defended clients’ bad behaviors and undermined employees’ efforts to create efficiencies and improve deliverables.  Their actions didn’t match their words.  All I could envision was a reaction that might be something to the effect of, “Gee, that’s too bad,” accompanied by a heavy dose of prejudice.  I chose not to share.  It was too personal, and I was doing my best to keep my act together.

It was a Friday afternoon when I slipped up and forgot to email someone a document.  I was standing in the lobby of the eye specialist when management texted me to ask about it.  I confessed I’d forgotten, and they asked if everything was okay.  My reply was simply “no.”  I didn’t say anything further because I didn’t want to sound like I was making excuses.  It never came up again and I eventually left that position.  I’ll fully admit that period of my life was the epitome of presenteeism, even though I didn’t know the word for it at the time.  I was working, but work didn’t have my full attention.  My precious Gracie did.

Gracie’s eye eventually healed, and my schedule went back to normal, so the presenteeism didn’t hang on during those last few months in that job.  However, remembering that situation makes me think about how many of us might have been or might currently be stuck in jobs that leave us empty and spent, that suck away our souls one day at a time.  It’s unfortunate that we have to make money in order to have a roof over our heads and food on the table, but it’s even more unfortunate to know that some of the working population—myself included until recently—is just earning a paycheck without the fulfillment of enjoying what they do for that money.

It makes me wonder how many people are phoning it in and just doing the bare minimum because they’re languishing inside.

I certainly don’t have life figured out and I might never.  I’m fumbling my way through my second half-century learning how to be self-employed and trying to make a living as an educator and wearable art creator.  However, this is forcing me to be fully present on an ongoing basis.  Nobody else is going to show up and do the work.  Nobody else is going to put money into my bank account.  Nobody else is going to track my progress or hold me accountable (at least not in a management capacity).  These realizations are as terrifying as the are freeing.

I’m curious to know if there are other people like me out there who feel or have felt they couldn’t divulge a personal situation to an employer for fear of criticism or treachery.  Are you languishing in your work?  Are you at risk or in the midst of presenteeism?  Do you think your employer would be understanding if you told them the truth?

I Am My Mother’s Daughter

I mentioned my mother briefly in a previous post, Adaptation.  She’s not someone I speak of very often because she died very suddenly last November and it’s hard to talk about her without reliving the phone call following her accident.  She died of a traumatic brain injury after stepping off a curb and hitting her head on the pavement.  Her brain hemorrhaged, leaving her in a vegetative state.  I’m still in utter shock.  I don’t know if it will ever feel real.

I think of her every time I write these posts because she contributed to my maker self in so many ways.  Learning how to sew is one of the few crystal-clear memories I have of my childhood.  Mom taught preschool and sewed for other people when I was a toddler.  I remember standing at her elbow while she sewed, watching her stitch pieces of fabric together and listening to the whirr of the sewing machine that still sounds exactly like it did when I was four years old.  Sometimes my younger sister and I played around underneath the sewing desk, which was a huge no-no and usually resulted in being called by our first and middle names to get out from under there.  I don’t know how many times Mom had to re-thread her machine after one of us knocked the knee control with our head.  That clearly did not please her.

Watching Mom sew was magical.

I didn’t know how she made the machine work or how any of the pieces fit together, but she could take something that looked like a rumpled mess, push it through a machine that made choo-choo train noises, and pull out a fully finished garment for one of us to try on.  I was captivated.  I wanted to know how it worked and how to do it.

At some point, Mom either got tired of me asking too many questions or she finally figured out I was serious about wanting to sew, or possibly both.  I was about seven years old and the sewing machine sat in a dark corner of our dingy, low-ceilinged basement.  That’s also where the washer and dryer lived and I was often in charge of laundry, so I was well familiar with the austere space and only slightly afraid to be down there by myself.  When Mom was down there with me, the place seemed to transform into a cheerful crafting room with the background track of a whirring sewing machine, scissors clattering onto the sewing desk, and the rattle of the lid back onto her hand-carved wooden pin dish.  It was the only place I ever wanted to be.

I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but I do remember her tone of voice when she finally decided to teach me.  It was a teacher voice, firm and authoritative but kind.  I can still hear her say, “Sit here.  I’m going to teach you.”  It was not so much an invitation as it was a command, which is what made me think I’d been a pest.  I was too excited to care, so I immediately complied.  The machine was already threaded (I wouldn’t be trusted with that task until much later) and she handed me a scrap of fabric folded in half.  She showed me how to push the control lever with my knee under the desk and how to control the speed.  I’m sure she probably also lined up my fabric properly under the presser foot and told me not to go too fast.

Then she stood back and let me try it all by myself.  That’s all it took.  I was hooked.

We were a family of six—two parents and four kids—so we had a large kitchen table.  It was the era of polyester double knit and Mom wanted new tablecloths.  My first real sewing project was hemming two tablecloths and six matching napkins for each of them.  Managing that much heavy yardage is no small feat when you’re barely three feet tall, but I was sewing!  It was thrill!  I probably would have hemmed twenty more if she had asked.

Mom wasn’t always the warmest or happiest person I ever knew, but she lit up any time I mentioned wanting to make something.  She was extremely crafty herself and did other things besides sewing like macrame, wheat weaving, paper quilling, crochet, floral arranging, and probably a myriad of other things I don’t vividly recall.  She often made favors for her sorority chapter or weddings and would solicit help from my sister and me to assemble them.  Making things with Mom was friendly and fun, and it didn’t involve the usual chiding for misbehavior or assignment of chores.

The only thing she loved more than crafting was shopping for fabric, and she usually took us with her.  My earliest memory of going to the fabric stores (she shopped at two local fabric stores) was that one, Calico Corner, had a playroom we inhabited while Mom shopped.  The other one, Missouri Mills, was quite large and had nowhere for children to land, so we’d hide underneath the displays or chase each other up and down the aisles.  Again, this did not particularly please her, but it didn’t ever offend her or anyone else badly enough that we had to leave because of it.  It’s unclear when I began following her around instead of clowning around.

A large chunk of my memory from the age of eight until about the age of eleven is stored somewhere I’ve been unable to access it, most likely because my parents got divorced around that time and both of them were remarried by the time I started seventh grade.  It was probably a tumultuous enough time that my brain is trying to protect me from remembering whatever happened.  Somewhere in there is when I began sewing doll clothes, maybe when I was ten.  I was almost finished with seventh grade when I made my first me-sized clothing.  It was a pair of purple culottes.  Mom helped me lay out the fabric, place the pattern pieces and cut them.  Then she went step-by-step through the instructions with me while I constructed them.  They were absolutely fabulous, and I wore them proudly.  No one believed I’d sewn them myself, but I knew, and that’s all that mattered.

I taught my sister to sew at some point in that timespan, as well.  By the time I was in eighth grade, she and I were hogging the sewing machine and Mom practically had to request time to use it.  We were making tops, capri pants, jackets, skirts, dresses, and doll clothes.  I made my first pair of fly-front trousers (jodhpurs, to be exact) during my freshman year in high school.  Mom walked me through that, too.  Then she taught me how to line a formal gown, insert boning and stitch on horsehair braid.  Despite her apparent distaste for most things teenager related, she never balked at helping me make things and never said no to fabric or craft shopping.  As I got older it was one of the few things we actually agreed on.

Once I was out on my own, our phone conversations and visits were often filled with “what are you working on” and show and tell, early on, at least.  As Mom aged, though, her hands got arthritic and she had back surgery to mitigate profound scoliosis, so it was hard for her to cut or stitch for any length of time.  She had spent years trying to dress a bent body and had all but given up on sewing anything for herself.  When she was finally straight again, she didn’t know how to fit her new frame.  It all had to be terribly frustrating and disheartening.  I tried on several occasions to get her to do a sew-along with me, but to no avail.  I made a few things for her and we still chatted about it, even recently before she died, but I think whatever sewing flame she had left might have already been fully extinguished.

I sat down at her sewing machine after the funeral.  It felt surreal, almost as if I was doing something I shouldn’t have been doing.  Memories came flooding back, all the good ones.  All the things I remember being in the drawers were still there, including the coffee can full of buttons.  I opened it up just like I always had, not being able to resist the urge to inhale that scent I could identify from a mile away…old coffee and old buttons.  (If you’ve ever had a box full of old buttons, you know what smell.)  I picked up her old Gingher scissors and set them down carelessly like she used to after she clipped threads, making that same clattering noise I remember so well.  The sound was like home.  I rifled through the patterns in the basket beside her machine.  Some of them were decades old and probably left over from when I was in high school.  I giggled at the shoulder pads.

I cleared away some of the clutter she had piled on the leaf of her sewing cabinet and there it was.  Her beloved wooden pin dish.

I realized as I sat there just how much of a metaphor that pin dish is for Mom and me.  It contains small objects that hold things together, just like sewing was a small thing that held us together.  I marveled at how many hundreds, possibly thousands, of times her fingers touched that lid and the pins inside and how many times mine did, too.  I wept, realizing I’d never be able to hold her hands again.  But there I was with her pin dish, and that was as close as I’d ever get to her in this world.

Mom’s pin dish now sits on my sewing cabinet.  All its original contents are untouched, but sometimes I take the lid off, look inside, and then gently drop the lid back onto the dish to make that familiar rattling noise in hopes that wherever Mom may be, she hears it and knows I’m thinking of her.

Adaptation

I am compelled to write about adaptation because it’s something I find very challenging.  I’m not terribly good at adapting and often have to be dragged kicking and screaming into any kind of change.  Status quo is safe, even if it’s not always ideal.  Minor changes are annoying.  Unless the universe poleaxes or blindsides me with some kind of unavoidable circumstance, I tend to tiptoe around and avoid newness as much as possible.  This seems odd in some way, given how much I’ve loved acting all my life.  I’ve never had the same role twice, nor have I ever played any two characters the same way.  Isn’t that adapting?  And why is it so much easier to chameleon into someone else’s world than it is to adapt to my own?  This might be ripe for therapy…

Adaptation.  Being able to adapt means you’re able to change your mindset, behavior, or anything else necessary for survival to better suit a situation or environment.  I guess a simpler way to say it is to go with the flow, be part of the water rather than in the water.  I’ll be honest and say that the unknown is too vast for me.  After having been through some things I would go back and change in a heartbeat, I’ve finally accepted that I have no control over anything but my own thoughts.  There’s not an iota of control I can exert over the world or the sun or the moon or life, any more than I can make someone else change.  We all run at our own unique speed and frequency.  What happens at my speed and frequency often includes me reminding myself to get out of my own way, be open to change and see what the universe wants to give me.  That’s downright scary, but nothing good has ever come from me trying to write my own future, so I have to calm the mind monkeys and tell myself everything eventually works out.

I notice this behavior sometimes in the things I make or the way I approach projects.  How have I done this before?  Did it work?  Stick with what works.  Very rarely do I wonder, “What’s a new way to do this?”  I do wonder about better ways to do things, so I suppose that could be considered adaptation.  (It’s not a hopeless case, after all!)  Doing things the same way and making the same things more than once is easy because it’s already in my mind and in my muscles.

To the contrary, I love learning new things.  The process of discovering something that makes my mind expand and wonder and contemplate is extremely gratifying.  Trying something new with my brain and hands and voice pushes me outside my comfort zone.  I’m forced to adapt.  The funny thing is that structured learning isn’t scary to me, but life learning—the wake up every day and make your own way kind of learning—is.  The difference between the two seems to be a sliver of the known, a glimpse of what to expect.

I wonder if there’s a way to make life adaptation feel more like learning adaptation.  What might that look like?

How would that kernel of familiarity present itself as we’re struggling and stretching and shedding and, if you’re like me, wishing we could screech to a halt?  Would we even know it if we saw it?  This might be precisely why most humans thrive on structure.  It’s an established pattern within which we can make minuscule, painless changes.

But then a monster entirely out of our control breaks a wheel off the machine.  Death.  Divorce.  Job loss.  Natural disaster.  Accident.  Illness.  Betrayal.  It’s tough to repair some of those wheels.  Sometimes we have to replace them, and worse yet, sometimes they’re irreparable and irreplaceable.  That kind of adaptation is what I fear most because I’ve been through it more than once and will, beyond a doubt, go through it again at some point.  I’m still here and I’m still standing, but there are cracks I have yet to fill and scars that will never go away.  I guess in some sense that’s the very essence of adaptation…the ability to still get out of bed every morning, breathe in and breathe out, and live through another day.

My mother once told me that if we all had a life playbook in which we could read ahead, she thought no one would sign up for their own life.

This was in response to me wishing aloud I knew what my future would look like.  It turns out she was right.  If I’d been able to read ahead and know what I’d face during all these years, I would have immediately tucked myself under the bed and never come back out.  Mine has not been an easy trip.  No one else’s has, either, and if you think you’ve never experienced a life-changing problem, you will eventually.  It’s inevitable.

Unfortunately, there are folks in the world who decide they simply can’t adapt.  They can’t face getting up every morning and breathing in and out and living through another day.  These are the ones who can’t face what they’ll encounter next from that playbook and cut their own lives short.  I know.  My 13-year old niece took her own life.  Two of my closest college friend’s fathers took their own lives.  My stepfather’s grandson took his own life.  My brother once made attempts.  It breaks my heart to think they were more terrified of life than even I am, and it makes me wonder what might have happened if someone, anyone, had squeezed them hard and said on a regular basis, “Everything changes.  It will not always be like this.”  We will never know, but it gives me impetus to continue fighting my way through.

There’s hope, though, for my scared self and for all of us.  Humans are infinitely adaptable creatures.  Our brains, hearts and hands are capable of things we cannot begin to fathom.  We have no idea what else is possible because we haven’t done it yet.  But we will.  That’s the balm.  That’s what drives us, yea forces us, to process what happens around us, and to us, and to manage how we react to it and assimilate it.  Some of it is really yucky.  Some of it is so lovely we want to repeat it forever and ever.  Most of it is somewhere in between.

My point in all this, as much as I’m encouraging myself, is to open up a conversation and gently remind us all that we each have a story, and it’s not going to be filled with all good things all the time.  We’re all living life and struggling and adapting at every moment of every day.  I don’t know if someone else can truly help us adapt or if that’s a wholly solo endeavor, but I do know it helps immensely to have other people who understand that we’re all trying very hard.

If you or someone you know is going through life adaptation right now, know that I and an army of people out here GET IT.  We’re here for you and with you.  You are here for a reason.  If that’s not enough, please be brave enough to ask for help.  This world needs you.

Creativity Under Constraints

In one of my recent posts, Conquer Analysis Paralysis, I explored the notion of having too many choices and not being able to make any kind of decision due to complete overwhelm.  I briefly touched on a way to reduce that overwhelm by assigning constraints to a project.  Since I wrote that post, I’ve discovered quite a bit of research that points to how much more creative we can be when we have limitations, whether they’re material, financial, time, space, or any combination thereof.  It seems counterintuitive.  Even thinking about the word “constraint” can conjure a myriad of negative connotations.  I have always thought that if the sky is the limit, we can stretch our creative wings as far as they’ll go, but apparently the truth is that constraints are good for our creativity.  

What’s a constraint, exactly?

You’ve probably read dictionary definitions in many of my posts because I have a researcher brain and I like to start with a source of truth.  However, in this case, I think a constraint could be many different things in the context of making, especially to different people.  For some, money might not be a limitation because there’s plenty available for supplies and space.  To others, money might be the first thing that keeps us from being able to make what we want to make.  Likewise, maybe feeling like we lack enough time prevents some of us from making when others are time affluent.  Here’s a list of things off the top of my head that I think can present themselves as roadblocks or limitations when we’re trying to make and be creative:

• Money (Can I afford this?)
• Time (Can I squeeze this into an already full schedule?)
• Space (Do I have room to do this?)
• Support (Do the people around me get what I’m doing and encourage me?)
• Materials (Do I have/can I get materials? If so, do I have the right amount, color, type, etc.?)
• Age (Am I too old for this or is it already too late for me to learn/do it?)
• Access (to classes, instructions, space, places to obtain materials, etc.)

What other constraints have you all encountered?  Feel free to comment if there’s something I’ve overlooked.  In the words of Mr. Rogers, if it’s mentionable it’s manageable!

We’ve probably all encountered at least one of these listed issues in our creative efforts.  Any one on its own can be frustrating and disheartening, but if the research (I’ve listed resource links at the end of this article) is accurate, we should somehow be able to leverage that frustration as a force to be more creative.

Now how do we take this annoying, possibly discouraging thing and turn it into something useful and good?

That’s a great question, and one I’ve long been pondering because there’s not an easy answer.  Maybe if we frame it as a “what if” kind of question we can sort it out.  For instance, “What if I made something with only what I already have?”  Or “What if I were to take a painting class even though I’m 74?”  Or “What if I were to ask my partner/roommate if they can help me clear a small space where I can sew or write?”  Or “What if I were to look somewhere like Freecycle or Craigslist for cheap/free supplies?”

Thinking about the niggling of a possibility can sometimes immediately spark follow on thoughts, like “Gosh, it doesn’t cost anything to screen shop, so why not check out free resources?”  Or “It can’t hurt to ask for help—the worst someone can say is no or tell me it’s a silly idea.”  Or “If I’m the oldest one in a class, that must make me the most experienced.”  Or “Wow, I’d forgotten I had this cool thing in my stash!”  At that “why not?” point, our minds are completely open—there isn’t a “no” lying in wait to sabotage our ideas.  We’re already thinking about the infinite possibilities, which is the magical Narnia passage to our creativity, the proverbial wardrobe into our fantasies.  Doesn’t that sound wonderful and amazing?  Are you willing to try it?  I certainly am!

I’m going to challenge myself in the coming months to assign at least one constraint to every project.  That seems manageable, right?  I don’t get to sew as much as I’d like to, but I wonder what might happen if I set a 20-minute timer each time I do sew.  How much could I get done if I know that’s all the time I’m giving myself?  Or limit myself to using only fabric and patterns I currently have at the writing of this post with no “but I really needed it” shopping exceptions.  What could I make with some of that yardage that’s been languishing in my closet for years?  I’d love to find out.

How about you?  What might you do to push your creative boundaries inside specific parameters?  I’d love to find that out, too.  Your mission, shall you choose to accept it, is to figure out what roadblocks consistently come up in your making journey and figure out how to work alongside them, how to use them as your secret weapons for genius creativity.  I’d wager we might all surprise ourselves.  At least I hope so!  I invite you all to tell us about your adventures and I’ll do the same.  Come along with me—this could be fun!

Research and Resources

(NOTE:  I selected original academic sources of truth that most of the other articles I found have cited)

Creativity and Innovation Under Constraints:  A Cross-Disciplinary Integrative Review

Creating When You Have Less:  The Impact of Resource Scarcity on Product Use Creativity

Learned Variability (This paper requires viewers to log in and answer a couple of questions for the download–it’s free and legit.  Just make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom of the “upgrade now” page to the “No thanks, just let me download” link)

Beyond Big and Little: The Four C Model of Creativity

How Ice Dye Is Like Life

If you’ve ever heard the expression “life imitates art,” then you’ll probably understand what I mean when I say sometimes the things we do as makers drive us more toward introspection and self-expression than we realize.  Making can give us brain space and change the channel, so to speak, to a place of sensory energy and spirit.  One of my favorite things to do is stand at my kitchen sink and stare out the window at the trees, birds and squirrels while I rinse an ice dye.  What I have discovered in this process is that ice dye is much like life in many ways.  It requires patience, it rarely turns out the way I think it will, it frequently results in something beautiful and surprising, and I notice something different every time I look at it.

Patient.  It’s the antithesis of how I typically feel.  I can be infinitely patient with a human or an animal, especially when I’m teaching, but when it comes to waiting on things—shipments, traffic, doctor’s appointments, grocery store lines, microwave meals—I get a little more than antsy.  Sometimes it seems as if everyone else is moving in a slower gear than I am.  (Shift, people.  Shift!)

I’m not exaggerating when I say ice dye is one of the few things, possibly the only thing, that forces me to slow down, to wait.  I have no choice because there is no way to hurry it up.  It’s a chemical process that requires time and trying to speed it up only results in half-done dye.  Ask me how I know!  Setting an ice dye can take as little or as much time as I want it to take, but once it’s set, it must be left alone for several hours.  This isn’t like waiting for a turkey to roast.  This is more like firing pottery, which can take up to 24 hours.  I set it and then I wait.  And wait.  And then I stare at it and wait some more.  The good news is that it’s a little like putting laundry into the washing machine or dryer—I can go do something else while I wait.

Ice dye, by its own nature, is unpredictable.

It never turns out exactly the way I think it will, even if I plan.  I can manipulate the fabric and place the dye very carefully, but then the ice and time do the rest.  This is not to say I’ve ever been unhappy with the results.  The point is this particular art form is further proof (like I needed any more), for starters, that I have zero control over anything but my own reactions to the world around me, and second, that this is okay.  It’s exhausting trying to exert control where we have none and never will.  What’s so wrong with only sort of knowing what will happen when I set orange, purple and aqua dye together?  Absolutely nothing.  I know how the colors will mix, but I don’t necessarily know how they’ll break or how saturated they’ll be or exactly where they’ll end up on the fabric.  I can only predict, and frankly, they always turn out better than they would have if I’d controlled those things.  The same is true for so many other moments in life.

Considering the control thing, you’ve probably figured out that I’m not really one for surprises.  But I’ll admit sometimes surprises are nice, and ice dye is consistently one of these surprises.  I’ve dyed hundreds of pieces, and every single one of them has been beautiful and unexpected.  What comes up in my hands through that ugly, black rinse water is vibrant, fresh, and sometimes even stunning (in the best way).  Fractured edges, bloom-like shapes, streaks, swirls, and pools of color play together to make unimaginable patterns—unimaginable in the sense that my mind could ever conjure up such things on its own.  It’s like a sliver of Monet mixed with something magical.  If I think about all the things that have happened during this half-century of being me, there have been at least a couple of times when something turned out to be extraordinary and I felt I’d accidentally captured part of a rainbow.  The most recent example of this was getting laid off in early 2021.  Yes, it was shocking and scary, but it turned out to be the very reason I can now make art and connect with all of you this way.

Ice dye is, of course, more permanent than a rainbow, which is wonderful because I see something different every time I look at it.

It’s a bit like lying outside and watching the clouds shift shapes to look like mythical creatures, sailboats, cartoon characters, and rocket ships.  If I stare into an ice dye, I can always see some kind of animal, and I often see landscapes or everyday objects, as well.  If I turn it upside down or sideways or flip it to the back side, I see different things.  When I walk away from it for a few days and look at it again, I see something entirely new.  This reminds me that we can often alter the way we see things in life if we look at them from a different perspective or step away for a moment and come back.  I think this ability to change perspectives and see something different may be one of the best ways life can imitate art because it’s essentially a second chance, another run at it.  (And if you want to read more about do-overs, check out my previous post, Unstitching.)

You can probably understand why I’m so taken with ice dye, and maybe you are now, too.  If ice dye isn’t quite your thing, I’m certain there’s something else in your creative life that can or does fill that space.  I’d love to hear about it!  No matter what it is, though, I hope it helps you slow down a bit and see new things about yourself and this world.