Because of Betsy

When I was a little girl in the late 60s, it seemed everyone’s mother subscribed to Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal, and most importantly, McCall’s. Most importantly, because McCall’s was the home of Betsy McCall, undisputed princess of the paper doll world and obsession of schoolgirls everywhere. Betsy, with her beautiful outfits and her interesting friends and her wonderful adventures, was the girl we all dreamed about being.

Every month when the new issue arrived in the mailbox, I would wait eagerly for Mom to finish with it so I could have the Betsy pages. First, I’d read the short story about whatever new, fun, exciting thing Betsy was doing now. Then I’d carefully, carefully cut out the 2 or 3 new outfits for Betsy, lower lip caught between my teeth, brow furrowed in concentration. A mistake was a disaster! How could Betsy ride her new pony without her riding outfit? Or find seashells on the beach without her new swimsuit and pail? Every tab had to be in place, every blank space painstakingly removed so Betsy could smile out of her new snowsuit’s hood. Sometimes there were new dolls to go along with the outfits, and Dad would use rubber cement to glue those onto old manila folders to make them sturdier. Each new addition to my prized collection went into a shoebox already overflowing with fabulous dresses, pinafores, playsuits, raincoats, sweaters, pajamas…Betsy was probably even better dressed than Barbie, and that’s saying a lot.

One summer as I was paging through the latest issue to find Betsy (she was usually in the back) I happened on a photograph of a piece of gorgeous needlework. It was a whole garden of flowers, with butterflies and bees cavorting among the blossoms, and a cobbled path running through the middle. It was so detailed, so perfect, I couldn’t believe it had been made with nothing but thread. Betsy all but forgotten, I turned to the next page and found diagrams of how to make the various embroidery stitches. There was the lazy daisy, the French knot, the stem stitch, the satin stitch, the feather stitch… I was fascinated. I had to learn this!

My mother was an accomplished seamstress who could sew anything from a basic apron (no pattern needed!) to my next Easter dress, but she didn’t do needlework. My Aunt Mildred was a quilter who’d won prizes, but she didn’t embroider. Aunt Agnes loved knitting, but I’d never seen her with an embroidery hoop. And as for Aunt Dorothy, I’m not sure she could so much as sew on a button—she sent all her mending to Mom in exchange for eggs and milk from the farm she ran with my Uncle Harold. If I wanted to learn to embroider, I was going to have to teach myself. I cut out the pages of the article along with that month’s outfits for Betsy and the next day, I asked my mom if we had any thread I could use to practice with.

To my dismay, Mom told me that embroidery uses special thread called “floss” and that we had none. We also didn’t have a wooden hoop to keep the fabric from bunching up. But, she said, we could get those things at Woolworth’s next time we went shopping downtown. In the meanwhile, she suggested I try yarn, burlap, and her biggest darning needle to start practicing some of the stitches. I’m sure she figured I’d have forgotten all about it in a few days.

But she was wrong. Poor Betsy was relegated to the shoebox permanently as I spent most of my ninth summer making mishappen knots and lopsided daisies, first in yarn and then in proper floss. Woolworth’s did indeed have everything I needed and when I first saw the display of brightly colored floss I just stood and stared. Mom had said I could have 5 skeins—how would I ever choose among all those beautiful shades? Even the big box of crayons that had the sharpener built in didn’t have an ocean of blues, whole forests of greens, an entire sunset of reds. I wanted them all! But I chose 5, and they went into the little paper bag along with a small wooden hoop and a shiny silver needle with an oversized eye made special for embroidery. I clutched that bag as tightly as if it had contained diamonds and pearls all the way home.

In time, through trial and error, my stitches improved. I saved up my allowance and money from extra chores to buy floss and soon had a whole rainbow of shades. And then, on my tenth birthday, I got the most wonderful gift.

Art and June Clark were my mom and dad’s best friends. Although they weren’t actual relatives, I had always called them Uncle Art and Aunt June instead of Mr. and Mrs. Clark. They were also my godparents, and having no children of their own, enjoyed any opportunity to spoil me a bit. Mom had told June about my interest in embroidery, knowing that June was a passionate needlewoman. Aunt June was thrilled to have someone to pass her skills on to and for my birthday she gave me my very own sewing basket, filled with floss and needles, hoops in three sizes, and a pair of dainty golden embroidery scissors shaped like a stork that she said came all the way from Germany. And at the bottom of the basket was a crisp cotton pillowcase with a design of ivy and morning glories stamped along the hem, ready to stitch. I was so proud when I finished it!

In the years that followed, Aunt June taught me hardanger, blackwork, crewel, and petit point. I worked with threads of gold and stitched tiny seed pearls into the hearts of flowers. I found stitching to be almost a form of meditation; there was a stillness and peacefulness to sitting with hoop in hand, needle flashing as a beautiful design slowly took shape. I took refuge in that peacefulness when my parents divorced, when the “mean girls” at school were a trial, when my heart was broken for the first time. The thread didn’t mind if I was considered odd; the fabric didn’t object to the occasional tearstain. And a high school home ec unit on needlework became a chance to shine—suddenly, the mean girls wanted my help. That unit was also my introduction to samplers, and I fell in love with the format. I began designing my own, plotting the bands on graph paper with colored pencils. That experience led me to try drawing and painting. Soon I was also creating with ink and pastels, pencils and watercolors. An entire world had opened to me.

When Aunt June passed away during my college years, I asked her sister, who was handling the arrangements (Uncle Art had passed some time before) if I could give the funeral home that first pillowcase to use with the casket pillow in honor of the many happy hours we had spent stitching together. She agreed, and Aunt June went to her rest with her head on a bed of morning glories and ivy, stitched by an inexperienced but eager hand with love and gratitude. I know she’d have approved, and it brought me great comfort to know a part of me was going with her on her journey.

As an adult, I’ve continued to stitch. Births and weddings are marked with personalized samplers. Plain table linens get upgraded to “company best” with hemstitching. My daughter’s first Easter dress was hand smocked. Creating, and sharing my creations as gifts, brings me great joy.

And then there is the never-ending project: a massive fairy tale sampler on 36 count Irish linen that may have been just a bit more ambitious than I realized when I started it as a young adult. That piece is an old friend by now. It’s seen me marry, become a mother, divorce, remarry, send my now grown child out into the world. In many ways, that piece has become my journal. I pull it out and work on it when I’m feeling lost, or nostalgic, or frustrated with some other project that’s just not going the way I want it to. It reminds me that slow progress is not the same as no progress, that patience and perseverance eventually pay off, and that even a single stitch adds to the complexity and beauty of the work.

Much like life itself, I’m in no great hurry to finish it.

The metaphor of fabric is often used—if not overused—to describe our mortal existence. Experience and memory become warp and weft. Fate and chance are threads in the loom. And indeed, it was the chance reading of that long-ago magazine article and the experience of a cherished family friend that first put a needle in my little girl’s hand and led me to so much happiness.

So, thank you, Betsy McCall and Aunt June, for making sure my fabric has been so richly embroidered.