A Grandmother's Gift

When I was a little girl, maybe 6 years old, I had a terrible habit. I would doodle in my Dr. Seuss books, on scrap paper, on my jeans, and anywhere there was a surface that ink or crayon would stick to. Since my mom was always working, my poor grandparents would have to handle the ensuing mess. I love them all dearly, but my grandma was the one who finally managed to slow down and focus my frantic artsy energy.

I remember that it was raining that day, so to avoid extra muddy clothes and tracks on cream-colored carpet, we were forced to stay indoors. It was dull and grey, with nothing to do to relieve the excess energy in a small child. It was the perfect storm, and my grandma was tasked with containing the leering disaster. After all, I was hyped up on sugary cereal and eyeing the acrylic paints in the cabinet.

I don't know why my grandma decided to teach me about embroidery, as we had never talked about sewing before this point. It seemed extraordinarily random back then, but maybe she was reminiscing about the family. Her mother, my great-grandmother, had apparently been fairly skilled with a needle and thread.

My interest in clothes ended at the sketching of dresses for my paper dolls. But then my grandma was handing me some scrap cotton, black polyester thread, a needle, and the most important thing: her own mother's scissors.

Anyone who grew up with a parent or grandparent that could sew knows the exact scissors I'm talking about. They're steel and heavy by today's standards, and the hinge always squeaks oh-so-slightly whenever you open them. Those scissors went through torture on that rainy day, as a tiny girl kept having to snip apart the cat that she was attempting to stitch onto the cotton. My grandmother had somehow tamed a tiny hurricane by showing me how a needle and thread could create wonderful shapes on fabric. Then, she made the mistake of giving me different colors and weights of thread.

Let it never be said that my grandparents have little patience. The number of times that I came running into the room begging for more colors and needle types and "just a little more fabric" must have driven them both nearly to madness. But there was my saint of a grandma, old tee shirt in hand, ready and laughing. We would pull out the silver snippers and cut that old shirt into ribbons, just so that little hurricane would be able to stitch terrible farm animals in wacky colors.

Eventually the time came when my mom and I left; she was getting married to her sweetheart, and I was getting a new, amazing dad! Sadly, this meant that I could no longer spend every spare moment terrorizing my grandma. She gifted me the scissors, alongside the needles, pins, and thread that I had amassed over the years.

All of this was packed into my great-grandmother's sewing kit, a wonderful wicker basket with a flowery bouquet of cross-stitch embroidery sewn on top, the rose at the center glowing red like a perfect jewel on the aida. I am not ashamed to admit that when she gifted it to me I cried like a baby. That simple, beautiful box carried the love of all of the women in my family.

As I grew up, the scissors remained in my sewing kit, even when I bought better and newer pairs. Even now, when I have two pairs of dressmaking scissors, two pairs of tailor's scissors, a rotary cutter, a few all-purpose pairs of scissors, five pairs of thread snips, and a pair of (admittedly lifesaving) pinking shears, I still find my hands drawn to that pair of old steel blades. They remind me of how I started, and of the most beautiful rainy day spent with someone dearly precious to me. Even if they aren't used much anymore, just holding them makes me feel like I'm home.

It's strange looking back on how I got started, stitching a messy black cat onto cotton. Nowadays, I find myself with at least a dozen projects at any given moment. Since that day I have picked up everything from clothing design to historical costuming to knitting. But whenever I need to clear my head and remember a simpler time, I reach for that colorful thread and a piece of cotton. Even my more complex sewing projects have been touched with the embroidery from my childhood, such as the 18th Century pockets I hand embroidered this year. Being able to draw with thread is my greatest joy, and I owe it all to my grandma and a pair of squeaky scissors.

There is one more thing that I feel the need to share with you, dear reader. This is an important piece of wisdom that was passed down to me in the same way as those silver scissors. Ironically, it is this: The tools don't matter! What you buy or inherit doesn't really matter. What matters most is the skills, knowledge, and the crafts that are taught to us by those we respect and love the most. That is how we keep a legacy going. That is how we show both growth and respect for the past.

The skills that I have now all spawned from a rainy day with my grandma as she desperately tried to keep a small child from running wild with acrylic paint on the expensive rug and ink on the walls. She turned a hurricane into a focused burst of creativity, and I will always look at the rain as more than just bad weather, and at black thread as more than just scrap string pulled from a jacket.