Scraps of Hope

I knew exactly how I wanted to announce my second pregnancy, but there was one problem: Everything I needed to make it happen was in the trash.

Less than a year prior, I was a newlywed and a new mother sitting on the floor of our first home surrounded by WWII-era parachute silk. My client had entrusted me to transform her great-grandmother’s wedding dress into her dream gown.

It would be my last project in that home.

Over the next few months my husband and I discovered the health problems we had been facing were caused by that house. The postpartum depression, lung infections, and psychosis were from toxic mold in the walls, a hidden poison that nearly killed me and my firstborn before we found it.

We fled, abandoning almost everything. All our belongings were contaminated with the deadly spores. Every piece of fabric, each of my tools. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

I lost more than my present possessions. I lost much of my past.

My daughter would never try on my wedding gown. I would never taste recipes friends and family had recorded by hand in my special collection. With memory loss a lingering side effect, I feared that without her first blanket to bury my face in I would forget my daughter’s newborn smell.

Every moment became a fight to move forward. Recovery was slow and it took us nine months to find a place to live that wouldn’t make me sicker. Before we did, I became pregnant with our second child.

When I had announced my first pregnancy my stomach was churning, but only from morning sickness. It didn’t matter how we shared the news, every person who heard celebrated with us. Love had turned to marriage quickly followed by a baby carriage and all was right with the world.

This time was different.

My creativity was sapped and hope was hanging by a thread. I wanted the people around me to look forward to this baby’s birth as much as I did, yet I had a sinking feeling judgment would overshadow joy.

I needed the perfect birth announcement to break the tension.

One idea wouldn’t leave me alone. I thought if I could create a beautiful doll for my daughter it might help people to remember this was a precious baby we were expecting, not a burden.

But that was impossible. We didn’t have a home yet, much less a sewing studio.

I had a few spinning supplies to keep my hands busy on days when I didn’t want to move, but no sewing machine, no fabric, no needles… Only a good pair of scissors, a spindle, and some fiber. For the first time in my life I didn’t have the raw materials available to bring my ideas to life, and with all that we had recently lost, no budget either.

The holidays were coming, and with them family pictures. I longed to make a doll for my daughter to hold in those photos to represent her baby brother on the way.

But I couldn’t.

Something snapped when I saw Grandpa throwing out his old, time-softened flannel. A primal energy broke through my fatigue. I couldn’t stand to see that shirt in the trash after losing a whole houseful of clothes and all my fabric to mold.

I rescued the flannel from its fate, then raided my mother-in-law’s basement to find a needle and thread.

Simple snips birthed a plaid body, a bit of well-worn undershirt became fabric for a face, and my spinning fiber filled out the form of the baby doll I had longed for.

It wasn’t the soft-sculpture masterpiece I imagined initially, but with a little ingenuity I created something beautiful. A treasure.

Tensions were high as I made the final stitches in the waiting room of the photography studio. They always are when young children are told to hold still and look at the camera.

I finally handed the doll to my daughter and explained its meaning to the extended family. They smiled, offering congratulations and compliments. Everyone loved the doll. It helped them remember to love the coming baby too. Concerned comments came later, but in that moment positivity prevailed.

After that rush of creativity I tried to recapture the inspiration. I wasn’t about to waste the rest of that cozy flannel, and I wanted to hold on to the scraps of hope I had found while snipping and stitching. I needed the creative energy to keep me moving forward into a better future.

As I cut around the shirt pocket to make a pinafore bib and used the curve of the shoulder to craft a pixie bonnet, I realized that all of this had started with the vintage wedding dress I had remade in my old home.

Determined to use every scrap of priceless silk, I had pieced together a baby bonnet as an extra gift for the bride. It was a way to extend the memories to future generations. A way to make her look past the present fuss to the hope of tomorrow.

That bonnet, the doll, the pinafore set… these were only the beginning of transforming grief into joy.

My son was born at home through a rush of exhausted tears into the eager arms of his father. We wrapped him in what was at hand—his daddy’s bright red shirt. It suited him. This strong redhead was no ordinary infant and a pastel layette simply wouldn’t have felt right.

He came to be in the midst of his family rebuilding their lives. When the reasonable voices said, “Now’s not a good time,” he refused to be ignored. When I was paralyzed by grief, he gave me a reason to move. He is the embodiment of the hope sparked by a little doll made of scraps.

We gave him a name to fit: It means powerful heir, the hope of a rich future.

It was “not a good time” to have a baby, and it was “not a good time” to be playing with fabric, but without these joys I would have been frozen in place, broken by tremendous loss. Instead, happy tears mixed with sad ones brought me back to life.

As the bishop in the book Les Miserábles said while looking over his flower garden, “The beautiful is as useful as the useful… More so, perhaps.”

My beautiful children and the playthings I made for them remind me of this every day.

Within a year of my son being born, his grandma passed away. To help her grandchildren remember her, I saved a few favorites from her wardrobe and turned them into toys, doll clothes, and accessories. The memory of her laughter echoes as the children play with these new heirlooms.

My list of projects grows longer each year as I continue to rebuild my studio and home, but none can compare to the doll I stitched by hand from that discarded shirt. There are so many memories wrapped up in it, so much hope.

In its face I see my daughter and son, life that found a way through the very shadow of death. In the flannel, I have a reminder of the beauty and happiness that I can make from life’s garbage with only a few simple tools.

This plain, unpretentious doll means so much more than the grandest gown I ever created.