In junior high, I took a home economics class at my mom’s insistence. I was terrible at it. The cooking part was tolerable, but the sewing classes were torture. Our assignment: Make a simple drawstring bag. Despite the repeated instructions from my teacher Mrs. Lavalle and the pitying glances of the girl sitting at the sewing machine next to me, I just didn’t get it. I was a writer, not a seamstress. How was I supposed to pull a drawstring through a bag I’d already sewn shut? The deadline was looming. Finally, I made a hole with a seam ripper, threaded the cord through and called it done. My grade came a couple days later: a “B-, unexplained broken stitches.”
Sewing, clearly, was not for me. Or so I thought. Twenty years later in an attempt to right some junior high wrongs, I bought a book titled “Sewing 101” and a cheap sewing machine. There were more than a few broken stitches, but I kept at it. Today, I have four sewing machines and serger in heavy rotation.
Wool mittens are my specialty. All year, I scour the thrift stores looking for wool sweaters—the uglier, the better. I take them home and wash them until the fibers fuse together, which is a process called felting. Then I cut, sew and line with fleece. The sweaters remind me so much of people. Some wash up better than others. Others simply fall apart. Certain pairs are especially warm. Some need an extra row of stitches for strength. Some are thick, some are thin. Felted wool is forgiving. The thread disappears into the fibers, so there’s room for error in the seams.
Some pairs I sell. Many I give away. To me, they represent warmth—literal warmth but also the heartwarming idea of rescuing something discarded and making it useful. At Christmas, my cousin Julie presented me with a garbage bag full of sweaters from her local Goodwill store. It was my favorite gift. We spent Christmas morning rummaging through them, exclaiming, “Ooh, look how ugly this one is!” When you focus on the right areas, ugly sweaters transform into the most beautiful mittens.
I’ve often tried to find the correlation between editing (what I do professionally) and sewing (what I do for fun). My theory: both pursuits allow me to be “The Fixer,” adding a comma to a sentence, attaching a button to a cuff. The end result is made stronger. When my son goes to college next year, I have no idea what career path he’ll choose. I do know that the second he steps out the door, his bedroom will turn into my sewing room. No doubt, Mrs. Lavalle would approve.
