Last summer I got in a crafting mood and decided to reupholster a chair. I went to a JOANN Fabric store by myself for the second time ever, and for the first time to actually buy fabric—the one task that requires you to talk to someone who works there. After gathering strength in my car, I walked into the quiet, dim interior of JOANN’s.
As a kid I’d go to craft stores with my mom often enough, sometimes for supplies for a school project or for a Halloween costume. She’d steer me away from the rows of nylon and tule, trying to explain what materials would be easiest to work with and which to avoid. She devoted hours to helping me realize my grand visions and comforting me when we weren’t quite able to perfectly capture the floppiness of a Robin Hood hat or the drape of a hobbit cloak.
She has taught me to use a sewing machine about six different times. It never sticks. Every time that I ask to be taught again, and she patiently shows me again, and I try to follow her example again, I’m reminded that what she makes look easy takes quite a bit of patience and muscle memory. When I get frustrated with wobbly seams or knotted thread or struggle to follow her explanation of the inside-out, three-dimensional structure of the pattern, she’ll tell me about how frustrated she would get as a kid when she was learning.
“Oh, I would get so mad. Susie always made it look so easy.”
Her older sister had a talent for this stuff—sewing, painting, making baskets (which years later would be home to our Easter candy). Susie would remind her to be patient when things weren’t going well and to keep practicing. My aunt is ever-patient, ever-gentle, and ever-competent in my imagination.
Whenever I ask my mom for memories of her sister they center on her generosity, care, and love. That’s what came out of her as she taught my mom how to sew and that has remained in our home in her paintings, baskets, and quilts.
Susie died years before I was born. I’ve always known how much my mom misses her big sister: in the tears that come to her eyes no matter how much time has passed, in the middle name she gave me, in the way her voice goes soft and quiet whenever we ask one more time where the Easter baskets came from.
“Susie made those.”
When I do sewing projects with my mom, I learn how to spool a bobbin and how many backstitches to do, but I also learn all over again the humanness of my mom. The way she’s also just figuring stuff out as she goes. When she shrugs and says “good enough,” when she triple checks her math, when she talks about learning things the hard way, she makes these kinds of projects seem a bit more within my grasp. She shares not just the archive of knowledge from her and our family’s past, but also who she is now. How her brain works. What frustrates and excites her.
She teaches not just by telling me what she’s learned but by letting me into her thoughts and questions and dilemmas. I imagine that’s how she was taught by her sister. I imagine that’s how her sister would have taught me.
I’m so thankful for all that I learn about my mom when I make things with her. I wish that I could have had something similar with my aunt—and it’s too simple to say that I know her through my mom’s skill and memory of her love for crafts, because of course that’s only a small part of who she was. It’s too simple and it’s not enough, but I am thankful I grew up in a house decorated with things that Susie made.
I ended up calling my mom from the corner of the fabric section of JOANN’s. I had a game plan before I went in, but after I walked up and down the upholstery section four times, not finding quite what I had envisioned, I caved and called her… but she didn’t pick up. I almost texted her pictures of all my options but I didn’t want to have to feign interest in the fake flowers across the aisle until she got back to me. So, I swallowed my pride and my ideal vision, picked the next best option, and said “good enough.”
The employee at the fabric-cutting booth looked like she was about my age and had about as much confidence as I did in any of this (i.e. very little). But we muddled through and she cut me some length of fabric. I emerged from the styrofoam-and-potpourri-scented craft cave with less confidence than I went in with, but when I got back to my apartment, I measured and cut and stapled and did the darn thing. One of the corners of the seat isn’t folded quite as neatly as the others and with all the choices in the world, it’s probably not the color I would’ve picked, but I did the darn thing. And as I sit on that chair and write this, I can’t help but be thankful and proud—of the women who taught themselves and each other how to figure out and make and make do, with patience, and creativity, and great love—and for all that they’ve left behind.
Christina Ribbens (’19) studied history, studio art, and data science at Calvin and public humanities at Georgetown. She now lives in the part of Virginia that’s almost Washington, DC where she helps award grants to arts nonprofits. She takes a lot of walks to admire the landscaping in peoples’ front yards, mostly listens to British comedians’ podcasts, and likes to make friends via sports.
