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Objects from Pieces

How embroidery helped me find (and re-find) myself

By Julie AnnPublished 3 years ago 5 min read
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Photo by Julie Ann

I come from a linage of makers; generations of hands that create objects from pieces. My great grandfather’s hands whittled birds from tree trunks and polished pebbles into gleaming orbs which he mounted in gold plated nickel. I like to rub my fingers over the stones when I wear his rings, knowing his fingers smoothed and shaped the surface until his touch became imperceptible.

My great-great grandmother hand stitched a full complement of Ruby Short McKim squares and complied them into a queen-sized masterpiece with machine like precision. My grandmother later (unknowingly) located the original patterns at a garage sale; something about the pile of newspaper clippings called to her, and she bought them as a gift for my aunt. It was not until after my grandmother’s passing that we discovered the completed quilt matched the patterns, and that my grandmother had unwittingly connected her grandmother and daughter through their shared act of making.

My great grandmother taught my mother and aunts to sew their own clothes and cane chairs. She did this with one hand, having fallen victim to an accident that resulted in the full loss of fingers on the other. When my mother taught me to cane, I pulled on wet rattan with both hands and wondered what it would be like to do so with only one.

My grandfather’s hands still piece colored glass into all manner of household goods. Every day, I watch the sun spread shards of color across my living room floor and see his mammoth, fire-fighter hands delicately placing the pieces together before dripping solder in the seams.

My mother and her sisters, descended from makers, are Jill’s of all trades. They each brought up their children to sew and doodle and appreciate the smell of fresh crayons. We like the way ink feels as it smooths across paper; the weight of watercolors dripping from a brush; the tight thistp of scissors slicing through cotton; the pwofp of a needle piecing fabric. We are ‘those people’ who do a family craft together after Thanksgiving dinner because we would rather crochet than watch football. We are’ those people’ who browse boutiques thinking, “we could make that,” and leave with a supply list rather than a finished purchase.

As a child, I spent several weeks each summer at my grandparent’s house. During the day, I learned to can summer vegetables with my grandmother and assemble stained glass with my grandfather. In the evening, when she got off work, I sewed with aunt. My aunt is a fabric magician. She lived in the house her mother grew up in; the basement, once my great-grandfathers workshop, was her sewing room. To my pre-teen eyes, it was a veritable cave of wonders and she the genie contained within its walls. In her sewing room, my aunt could do anything. She concocted my cousin’s prom dresses, custom made costumes for my school plays, conjured quilts from the ether, and allowed me to choose a project, any project, any project I wanted, to sew with her. While most kids dreamed of going to camp, I dreamed of summers in my aunt’s basement listening to the purrhh of the sewing machine as she fed square after square into its greedy jaws.

When I grew up, I became a high school teacher. And, as teachers will tell you, teaching often becomes who you are. I stopped creating things, stopped the making, and just became teaching. There is always something else to do when teaching – grade papers, write lessons, show up to a student’s dance recital, tutor on the side for extra cash, spend said cash on classroom supplies, fundraise for more classroom supplies, lather, rinse, repeat. Three years ago, when my grandmother passed away, I was working on the south side of Chicago, putting in 14 hour days, and loosing sight of how to separate what was left of me from what I do for a living. Feeling the loss of my grandmother, my aunt and I decided to revive ‘camp.’ The week of my spring break, I committed to leaving my work at work and she committed to planning a project my out-of-practice hands could accomplish. My mom ‘enrolled’ herself and came along.

My aunt chose the art of wool applique embroidery and armed us with patterns for floral handbags. The three of us huddled in her sewing room learning bullion knots and crested chain stitches. We giggled until we snorted. We ran scissors through fabric and snipped colored strands of perle cotton and poured ourselves into the intricate designs. We felt my grandmother with each similarity in our grins, and in the way our fingers shape themselves as we pulled on the needles, and in the way the things we were ‘supposed to be doing’ from our everyday lives paused and gave way to the thistps and pwofps and the twisting and knotting of thread and time and generations. When we finished, my aunt sewed in the zippers so that neither of us destroyed our work with out-of-practice seam work. When I carry that bag, I feel her hands.

We all still stich. My aunt and my mother, of course, do so with perfection. I still struggle to make the time but have worked it onto the list in between lesson plans, grading papers, and all the other teacher-y tasks. Sometimes it gets pushed to the bottom. Sometimes I go for weeks without touching a single strand of thread. Just when I think I’ve forgotten myself again, I pick up a needle and spend 10 minutes re-finding myself in the pulling strands through cloth, pulling in and out and in and out and in and out again.

Last year, I started an embroidery club at my school. For an hour every Wednesday, I sit with teenagers and give them a task that requires putting down their phones and focusing on the thistp and pwofp of cutting and stitching. We sit together and their stories appear in the patterns they push and pull into fabric; they listen to each other talk without hashtags or reels; they watch my hands knot and wind, and they mimic the twists and pulls with their own. When they finish their pieces, they ask me to help secure the seams, so they don’t destroy their work. I promise them that someday we will have a school sewing machine so they can learn how to do it themselves, but, for now, they trust their work to my hands.

extended family
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About the Creator

Julie Ann

Julie Ann is a high school English and Special Education Teacher.

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