Crafty Moms

In this blog I'd like to explore creativity and how to incorporate it into a busy life. Last fall I began what feels like a very satisfying phase of sewing and crafting. I've passed through stages like this in the past (cross-stitching, beading, etc.), and I'm hoping that this time I'll be able to sustain this creativity for longer by blogging about it. My plan is to do something creative every day and have something concrete to show for it. I'm also trying to document my projects on a flickr page.

I haven't known how to start this blog, but, after a very satisfying talk about sewing with my mother-in-law tonight, I finally had an epiphany about how my creativity has been influenced by my moms (mom, stepmom, and mother-in-law). Since my latest obssession with being creative was inspired by my own kids (making their Halloween costumes and trying to encourage my son to improve his fine-motor skills through sewing), I think it's appropriate to start off by exploring how inspired I've been by the important women in my life.

I am fortunate that all of my moms are skilled sewers and/or knitters. I have learned so much from each of them recently and have received a lot of encouragement during my recent phase of manic creativity.

My mom is an expert seamstress and used to sew like crazy when I was younger. (She was a Home Ec major in college, so she really has the skills.) She made clothes for me until I was in middle school, when I became too designer-label conscious to wear anything handmade. I was so very picky about clothes, and in retrospect I realize that it must have been extrememly hard to sew for me. I couldn't stand anything itchy or tight, and I hated trying things on with pins in them. But I remember my all-time favorite outfit that she made for me. I must have worn it to school at least a few times a week. The pants were blue denim-weight cotton and had a very thin waistband so were very comfy. The shirt was a knit, white with orange flowers and had an elastic waistband. I think the shirt had a Peter Pan collar with a keyhole and button. I'm sure my friends must have thought I was strange, but I thought it was the coolest thing. My mom also went through an embroidery phase and made denim shirts with 60's/70's-era-cool icons--flowers, red and white mushroom, butterflies, strawberries. I wish we had kept those! (The shirt shown at right is an example from ebay, though it's nowhere near as elaborate and cool as the ones my mom made.)

And I wish that I hadn't been so ornery and hard to teach when I was younger. I just found it impossible to sit down and learn to sew the correct way that my mom did. I think I absorbed a little bit just by watching her sew, and I fooled around with her sewing machine when I could, and I made a pencil holder of my own design. Without realizing it I absorbed a lot of sewing basics that way (clip your threads after sewing a seam, reverse at the beginning and end of a stitch to reinforce, etc.), though I still have so much to learn.

My mom has recently gotten back to sewing now that she is retired from teaching and has more time. She's making a quilt for my youngest, who is blanket-obssessed. I admire how absolutely precise she is with her stitching and am trying to learn to focus, be patient, and concentrate on cutting more precisely, creating the straightest seams I can, and ironing and clipping seams. (Oh, and lots of seam ripping is involved!) I have the tendency to be so impatient to finish things that I rush through a project and get sloppy. I've been sewing reuseable shopping bags for SewGreen, a local sustainable-sewing group, and am practicing this new approach to getting things right. It's a lot less stressful--and much more fulfilling--to take a little bit more time and see a bag come together so nicely, with straight seams (mostly) and aligned edges (often). It's hard to explain the sense of satisfaction that I feel at the moment when I turn a bag right side out and see how these flat, straight seams that I've just sewn have morphed into this 3-D object. (Since our area media will cover anything, you can follow this link to see me and my daughter sewing at SewGreen's Community Sew-In this past weekend.)

My mom spent a few weeks visiting us in January, and we spent some time getting our craft on. She gave me the biggest compliment by saying how much she appreciated how I just jump in and unleash my creativity on a project and let it all flow together. (This works great when I'm making purses out of felted wool sweaters, which come in myriad colors, textures, patterns, weights, and shapes. You kind of have to let the sweater tell you what it will become!) So if I can only learn to combine that intuitive, free-form approach of mine with her precision skills, I'll be in good shape.

My stepmom is a long-time knitter who taught herself to knit when her kids were babies. She's a math teacher and has those miraculous (to me) mathematical and spatial skills that must make knitting and reading patterns come easily for her. I'm amazed at the fact that the first thing she ever knitted was a baby sweater for her daughter with all sorts of complicated patterns (it may have involved cables), something an experienced knitter would probably have trouble tackling.

My stepmom taught my daughter to knit a few years ago, and I was intrigued but too intimidated to try it myself. But last fall I started felting wool sweaters to sew into bags and wanted to learn to knit purses to felt. So, over Christmas she taught me how to cast on and do the knit and purl stitches. In the last few months that I've been trying, with intermittent success, to learn to knit, I've learned a lot. Patience and perseverence play a huge part in knitting, at least for me. (Is knitting character building, or what?) As a novice, I've made some bone-headed errors that I didn't initially know how to correct. I'm also really slow, and my current project is taking a long time to complete. Precision and attention to each stitch are also absolutely crucial when you're knitting. (Is there any research that knitting is good for brain development--it must be!) That said, there's also this amazing feeling of "flow" when you get comfortable with the mechanics of holding the needles and yarn and get the tension just right and the stitches just seem to slip effortlessly off the needles. (I see a PhD thesis in there somewhere about the psychology of knitting.)

I'm currently knitting a scarf with wool yarn in a seed stitch, and it probably deserves a blog entry all its own to illustrate the creative challenges involved in even a simple project. The pattern is from The Purl Bee.

So I really have to thank my stepmom for opening up this whole new avenue of creativity for me. Just like with sewing, knitting can be taken in so many different directions and to an almost infinite level of complexity. I'm so excited to work more with combining colors and patterns and to felt what I've created (for example, these felted nesting bowls ). And my hairdresser just told me about a cool method for creating a double-sided scarf with different colors on both sides. (Here's a tutorial for how to do double knitting.) Now, after I figure out how to clone myself, I'll create "Knitting Me," who will spend all her time exploring the endless possibilities of knitting.

My mother-in-law is also an expert seamstress, knitter, and needlepointer (is that a word?), whose own mother and mother-in-law were also experts in the needle arts. It would probably make this already overly long blog too long to list all of the projects that my mother-in-law has made that have heavily influenced me, but I'll try to touch on the major ones. When her own kids were young, she began a tradition of making knit Christmas stockings for them. With her grandkids and her son- and daughter-in-law, she has continued this tradition. Her creations inspire me every day because we have quite a few around the house--clothes, play blankets, and pajamas that she has made for her grandkids that are so creative and whimsical. We also have a needlepoint wall hanging in our dining room that she made when her kids were younger. And a chair cover she made for her babyhood rocking chair in her house also blows me away with its beauty and craftsmanship. The handmade quilts made by her mother in her house and on our bed also inspire me.

My mother-in-law has also recently entered a very creative sewing phase, so it's lots of fun to talk about fabrics, methods, and machines with her. She just gave me gorgeous fat quarters of batik fabrics she found in Hawaii, and that's a whole new direction to go in. (One of our local quilting stores has some great patterns to quilt with this type of fabric.) She's very encouraging and has given me great tools (my first sewing machine, for example, and my first sewing box, which I love) and advice. After our conversation tonight, I've got to begin my search for a new sewing machine, in part to benefit from the free sewing classes that go along with them, which she has done.

There are several other women who have sustained me creatively over the years--my aunt, my sister, my grandmother, my sister-in-law, and several friends--but I'll have to save them for a later post. (Do I hear a big sigh of relief from those readers who have made it this far?)

Keep creating!