finding my way to here.

When I began sewing again (after my twenty-year break), I was very enamored with all the new, retro-inspired fabrics out there (of course I still am). My first trip to Fabric Depot with Kelly found me knee-deep in Amy Butler fabrics and Anna Maria Horner fabrics and I was officially swooning over the moon in love with sewing. I began to create bags and aprons and other fun things.

Around this same time, I was also beginning to collect stuff that was filling all the nooks in my little room. My first ArtFest experience in 2006 had inspired me to begin to seek the stories found in old things, so trips to antique stores and thrift shops became part of my routine. I remember the day I discovered pink vintage buttons that looked like flowers. I stood there in that thrift shop with my eyes wide. I think I was basically overcome by the cuteness of this simple color and all those happy flower shapes.

Somewhere along the way, I began to realize that this collecting and story seeking was actually a piece of my grieving process and part of what I was doing was filling in my heart’s cracks. (I wrote about this idea again recently.) As I wrote stories for the bags, prayer flags, and other things I was creating, I was beginning to tell the stories of the women who came before me while also bringing in my own story and perhaps your story too. My idea journals became filled with different ways to tell these stories.

In 2008, I took part in my first big show. I immediately had plans to debut several new lines of creations. I was overflowing with ideas and the excitement of all the people I would meet who would "get" my obsession with vintage sewing stuff. However, as the show got closer and closer, many of the ideas I had jotted down gave way to creating bags and pillows that I “thought would sell,” and I became pretty consumed with sewing in an assembly line.

While talking to a friend during this time, I shared one of these ideas that was still on paper: prayer flags made from vintage sewing bits and vintage handkerchiefs. She so sweetly commissioned four sets from me pronto! to give as gifts during her upcoming travels at the time. I stopped my assembly line work for a few days in order to create those flags. My heart was so happy brainstorming and creating those sets with the little bits of hand sewing and vintage paper and stories. I thought I would immediately create more for the Farm Chicks Show. But the assembly line sewing (and gathering and packaging other cute vintage sewing items to sell) began again. The ideas that deeply inspired me settled back into the idea journal. Because I do have a day job too, I was in this place of learning how a person can truly only do so much.

One of the lines I did create was skirts in the Ada Mae line (you can see a few here). I used vintage quilt pieces and vintage fabric yo yos and other things to create these fun flowers that I appliquéd onto thrifted skirts. And even though I loved this look so much and thought it was so very Farm Chicks (and had so many other ideas sketched out for bags and aprons and oh how the list goes on, some of which are actually partly made but still in pieces somewhere in the piles in the little room), the show was a different kind of learning experience than I expected. Lots of people came into my booth and loved it (photos of the booth here), but the phrase we heard over and over that weekend was, “Oh I LOVE this idea! I am going to go home and make something just like this.” One woman came back to the booth three times to try to figure out one of my patterns. People were stopping by the booth and jotting down ideas right in front of me.

Even though I had a lovely time (it is an incredible show and the ladies and vendors there are beyond amazing [no joke people] and I really wish I would have been able to go back to the show to at least shop since then), I came home a bit disheartened and pretty burned out from all the assembly line sewing. And after listening to so many people talk about how they were going to create things just like I created, I started guarding my sewing ideas so close to my chest that many of them never made there way out of the idea journals. And then I would see other etsy sellers and bloggers who were also inspired in similar ways (not by me...as my ideas were still tucked inside moleskines but rather we were clearly all finding inspiration in creating with vintage fabric and doilies and quilt pieces and other things) and I didn't want to seem like I was "jumping on a bandwagon" of sorts. Oh how the swirling of the mind can push us away from what we want to do.

Still, my collection of vintage sewing bits and handkerchiefs and thread and lace and buttons and how the list goes on continued to grow. And, the idea of the Ada Mae line plus creating more prayer flags has been on my mind for months now. Some days when I walk into the little room, it is as though this vintage ephemera is whispering stories that must be told…

But life has been so full; 2009, the year of manifesting, was full. I had a book to write and retreats to plan and suddenly found myself sick each day for the last several weeks of the year. And finding time to sew just wasn’t on the to do list for a bit.

When the first draft of my book was in and I began to feel better, I took out my idea journal and started flipping through some pages and I let go of the need to listen to the naysaying inner voice. I found myself gathering lace and doilies and ribbon and linen and buttons and paper. I brought baskets and boxes to the kitchen table along with my sewing machine and turned on the music and I began to sew the stories together again in the form of prayer flags…

And I am having so much fun.

Thanks for reading all of this. I just wanted to share part of the process of it all...how my journey brings me here...how listening to what inspires you is sometimes hard but yet something we should give ourselves permission to do more often...how it is okay to be inspired by the same things others are inspired by as you stay true to your own "take" on that inspiration...how sometimes it is okay to admit things didn't go as planned...how it all part of the path...

The photos in this post are a sneak peek. I will share more photos and the stories behind the Ada Mae line and the prayer flags I create tomorrow.

the florals and the solids

purses in progress, june 18, 2007

In my mind, I see them walking together, arms linked as they laugh. So much of their lives still ahead of them just waiting for their footprints. On the right is a woman with red, curly hair pulled back in a bright, floral-print scarf. Her laugh is loud and full and causes heads to turn and faces to smile along with her. On the left is a younger version of my grandmother; her face so relaxed and full of joy that her own children might not have recognized her.

She had begun the day less than relaxed. After sending the children off to various friends’ homes, she had begun to worry that her friendship with Maude might have changed too much with two decades and several states now between them. As she reached up to clip on her white five-and-dime round earring, she caught her own reflection. Smoothing her long light blue skirt, she wondered if her best friend from high school would even know this woman staring back at her. This woman who had five kids, a house, and dreams long forgotten in a box in the attic.

Hours later, time seeped away when she spotted her at the bus station. Maude took one look at my grandmother and squealed with delight as she stepped off the bus and ran toward her. Later, they walked arm and arm downtown, and they tried to soak up every minute of this time together. Two days was not long for a visit. But, just enough time for Maude to remind her that time could not change the girl inside. Just enough time for her to remember.

***

These little snippets for a story came to me last week as I was looking at different fabrics in my little room. Because I was looking at my small collection of vintage fabrics, I was thinking about the 1950s and 1960s and what the people I know would have been like back then. I started thinking about my grandmother. She was a woman who did not have many friends, at least not friends that those of us left behind are aware of. But, we do know that she had two close friends, one from high school and one in South Carolina where she moved with my grandfather in the late 1960s. I started wondering about these women, especially Maude, her best friend in high school.

I know nothing about Maude. Not one thing. All I know is that she moved to Texas at some point. But, I don’t know when; I don’t even know if she is still alive. It seems she and my grandmother did keep in touch through letters that my aunt may have. Anyway, as I started wondering about her, about who would have been friends with my private, sometimes short-tempered grandmother, I suddenly thought, “I bet she was a lot like me.” I started to imagine the two of them visiting one another, and the possibility that maybe Maude had taken the bus across several states to see her family and had been able to spend time with my grandmother during her visit. I imagined that Maude had tried to remind my grandmother that even though dreams might have shifted, she still could remember who she was and who she wanted to become. I imagined Maude as the bright floral print to my grandmother’s light blue solid. I imagined her reminding my grandmother of the laughter and the brightness and how she too had a bit of polka dots and paisley and bright flowers inside her.

I imagined that I was able to do that for her too…