My grandmother taught me how to sew, sort of. I can't remember if my sewing with her was at my own request or her insistence, but either way I made several pillow cases and, particularly of note, one fuzzy cheetah print drawstring backpack for my best friend in middle school. My grandmother has since passed on, and in truth we spent my adult years estranged. There's so much I can't remember about my time spent with her, including our times spent sewing. But, even so, some spark of interest or enjoyment remained.
I tried sewing again in my early 20s. At the time, my ADHD was undiagnosed, and my hobbies came and went in quick succession. I bought a cheap sewing machine at Wal-Mart, became very quickly disillusioned by the complexities of the bobbin, and promptly abandoned the endeavor altogether when I realized I wasn't immediately brilliant at it.
It was almost a decade before I tried sewing again, and in the time between my attempts I moved from Louisiana to Colorado, graduated with both my Bachelors and Masters Degree in Writing, established one of those 9-5 type office jobs, had my daughter, reconciled and then again broke contact with my family multiple times, and finally learned that I was not an alien - I just had ADHD.
Fueled by years of personal growth and a prescribed dose of Adderall, and after receiving a secondhand Bernina that had belonged to my friend's grandmother, I turned my sights back to sewing. But memories of the complex sewing machine and its mysterious internal mechanisms haunted me. I balanced my pursuit of this interest with my many reservations about it by checking out several sewing books from the library and steeling myself to learn everything about the sewing machine, inside and out, before moving forward. And then, of course, I had to come to terms with the fact that I was using this pursuit of knowledge as procrastination, bite the bullet (bite the bobbin?), and actually interact with the machine.
Turns out, it wasn't so scary. The old Bernina was heavy, and loud, but we got on well as I navigated secondhand fabrics under her presser foot to practice sewing straight lines and spirals. Within months, I had sewn a tote bag, tank top, dress, skirt, matching clothes sets for my daughter, and more. I was enraptured with sewing and the thoroughly enjoyable tactile experience of it all. I began to hyperfocus until time away from my machine became agonizing. Surely there had to be something tangentially related to sewing that was more portable, right?
Enter embroidery. It was the perfect portable extension of the craft, and it allowed me to make patches for my bags and other pieces of art. And then, one day, I realized I had a large area of a piece to fill, and the idea of doing so with long and short stitch seemed incredibly dull. I browsed online for other options to fill this large space.
Enter beadwork. Soon I was engrossed. The smoothness of the beads, the schwip of the thread being pulled tight through the fabric, the mosaic-like patterns coming together - it all scratched my brain in the most satisfying way.
Today, MavenMotherCrone is the culmination of this crafting pathway. Sewing and embroidery and beadwork, all coming together to create the art I was always meant to make.
