Arts, Crafts & Sale Racks

Artistic is not a word I would use to describe myself. In grade school I made a mess of a simple Easter egg project using liquid starch, an inflated balloon, and strings of yarn. It should have been a masterpiece but when I popped the balloon, all I had was a damp, misshapen pastel blob of yarn. I’m sure I heard my mother stifle a laugh when she picked me up from school. In sixth grade I used a clothes hanger to make a mobile for a book report. I don’t remember the book and I’m sure I only skimmed it, basing my concise yet thorough report on the summary from the jacket. My mobile consisted of four or five shapes hung on various lengths of string. It was lopsided and lacked color and artistic flair. I got a bad grade but that nun was a hag and failed to recognize I deserved her pity.

High school was no better. I failed to develop as an artist, mainly because I didn’t try. Art class was a virtual free for all and I spent my time screwing around, talking, and singing loudly and off-key to whatever was on the radio. It was much like a party, without the underage drinking. Rather than refining a color palette for my uncreative ceramic pieces, I wandered, wasted time, and justified it by telling myself and the teacher that my lack of ability was the hand that God dealt me. It was a Catholic high school, so progressive hippie or not, she had to withhold comment and pretend to take me seriously. After all, I told her, we can’t all be Picasso.

So I’m not artistic, but I’m certainly a bit crafty. Crafty as in loving fabric, scissors, hot glue, beads, power tools and needle nose pliers: I love them all. I love to make earrings—I’ve got quite a collection but even so I am always looking for a new pair. I’ll just never have enough. I have containers of glass, crystal, shell and lampwork beads. What doesn’t fit into the containers has spilled over into an oversized basket, packed with tools, bead magazines, instructions, and spools of wire and string. About a year ago, I started to feel like a bead hoarder, so I made a conscious decision to stop buying beads. I imagined that if I kept going at that pace, I would walk into my house one day to find my family with tear-stained faces, clutching balled up Kleenex, and sitting in a circle with an interventionist planning my recovery in Malibu or Sedona. So for now, I avoid the craft store and the bead shows, sticking with what I have, but the itch is always there.

Sewing is fun. Really, it is. I love the feel and the smell of new fabric, and the sound the big bolts make when they're being unrolled on the store counter. But I have to rely on patterns to guide me and am reluctant to try anything requiring much more than a straight stitch. It’s definitely something that I am not great at, but I like it. My oldest sister taught me how when I was about eleven years old; she was very talented and helped me cut patterns and sew two sundresses for my younger sister. I wish I could find pictures of those. I’m pretty sure she did most of the work, but I liked it enough to keep at it, even if I lack the skill that she has. I don’t try anything too complicated, although when Flashdance was first out, I bought a pattern and some lovely grey and pink fabric and created one of those very popular off the shoulder shirts. My oldest brother was visiting the first time I wore it, and he laughed and sang “She’s a maniac, maniac, on the floor…and she’s dancing like she’s never danced before.” After his taunting I found it too difficult to wear again and I stuck to making pillow covers, tab top curtains and simple skirts.

The most crafty-goodness-fun I had was creating Halloween costumes for my children. When my daughter was two I found an old patterned skirt in a box in the garage. It was out of date and I was never going to wear it. I changed the waist into an opening for her head, cut arm holes and a fringe along the hem, and added ribbon, feathers and beads. My little Irish Italian Native American was absolutely adorable in that. The year that my mother was so sick and in and out of the hospital I paid little attention to much else, so Halloween caught me off guard. I tore my sewing supplies and linen closets apart in a panic, trying to come up with something for my three kids to wear for Halloween. Using a long-forgotten cloth laundry bag and two mismatched pillowcases, I cut holes for their heads and arms and added some felt lettering, piecing together my three little Crayon outfits. I was preoccupied and not focused, so the lettering was off and there were blotches of fabric glue everywhere, but there were never three better Crayon shades.

Recently a friend at work told me he was learning to sew. He dove right in and made a cover for his surfboard, and not long ago brought in a backpack he made for a niece, I think. He is pretty darn good. His interest and excitement in learning to sew reminded me of how much I enjoyed it, so I decided that I would start with something simple and get back into it myself. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much of an interest in Doing It Yourself in Santa Barbara: Make something? Why make something when you can walk into an overpriced boutique and just buy it? There is not a single store devoted to fabric and patterns and sewing notions in the area. It’s bullshit. In order to get anything decent, you have to go out of town---but be sure to get everything you need because driving 40 miles at night when you realize you forgot something is just not an option. 

Off to Ventura I went. My plan was to go to the fabric store, pick out a simple dress pattern, fabric, thread, buttons, etc., and at some point in the following week or two, I would have a fantastic new dress, courtesy of me. From the fabric store, my plan was to proceed to the mall in search of a bounty of new clothes—clothes too complicated for my level of skill—followed by a stop at Target before heading home. But as I got closer to my destination, I kept thinking of how much I enjoyed shopping for dresses and outfits that were pretty and inexpensive. And as I reached Ventura, the thought of the fabric store and making a new dress had entirely been forgotten. All I wanted was racks and racks of ready to wear dresses at discount prices. I never made it to the fabric store. It’s still on my list of things to do. When that day comes, I will proudly shop for fabric and notions in one of the seven new dresses I bought on that last trip to Ventura.



And for Liam...