Stitched with Love
Every small community seems to have a few reliable characters people depend on for certain needs. You have the spiritual leader, always doling out sage advice, the healer, who always seems to have the perfect remedy for what ails you, and the tailor, who can deftly alter those too-long pants with a flick of her needle. Heather is the tailor of your dreams. She always has time to fix that hem for you, she uses her skills to bless those less fortunate, donating quilts to shelters, and she spreads her knowledge and skills by teaching sewing basics to beginners. She isn’t only sewing for altruistic reasons. After her bout with breast cancer and the pain and side effects connected with it, Heather has found peace and renewal in sewing.
Sewing hasn’t always been a Zen experience for Heather. She first learned the basics from her mother when she was about eight years old. She recalls that the way her mother instructed “was very overwhelming because she taught, ‘just sew this seam and this seam and this seam,’ and it was auditory, and it stressed me out. And so, it wasn’t always a positive thing. I’d get it accomplished but it felt daunting” (Personal interview with Heather Johnson, October 18, 2023). She continued to take sewing classes in junior high and high school, but she never really enjoyed it. As is says in an article for the Atlantic, “Even a beginner-level sewing project makes clear that it is impossible to reduce your complex contours and spans to a single number or letter on a tag” (Friedman, 2023). Sewing for a grade was overwhelming and unenjoyable. According to an article for Bazaar, “It can take years to develop a command of the complex jargon required to reach an advanced level — bias binding, mitered corners — and even after a lifetime of practice, true mastery is rarely achieved” (Slone, 2022). For someone like Heather, who likes to excel, this can be overwhelming.
It wasn’t until years later that Heather started to enjoy sewing, and how it connected her to family past and present. She remembers a conversation she had with a woman who sewed her a dress when she was in her early 20s. The woman assumed Heather would want to sew for her future children one day and Heather didn’t think that likely. But when she gave birth to her daughter, Laurel, she thought to herself, “There’s going to be a time when I’m gonna need to sew a prom dress. So, because I’m going to need to sew a prom dress, I probably should develop some more of these skills.” She continues, “That’s when I started sewing more. I started sewing little dresses for her because, little dresses become bigger dresses.” Laurel is now 16, and Heather has spent those years honing her skills. She says, “I’m getting a little more confident. And I’m getting to that point where I am actually making a prom dress. I’m at the prom dress stage, and I’m like, ‘I’m actually doing my goal!’” Another special dress Heather has made for her daughter was the pioneer-style dress she made for the Mormon Pioneer Trek reenactment Laurel was in last summer. Heather has ancestors who took part in the original pioneer trek in the 1840s, so it was extra special for them. As Heather was sewing the dress for Laurel, she had a spiritual experience:
I had this pattern — it was a pioneer dress — and I just knew, I think the Spirit told me, ‘You’re gonna need to adjust those sleeves for Laurel.’ So, I was like, ‘Okay, how am I gonna do this?’ And I just felt . . . that I had my grandma, kind of guiding me in a special way, to help me know how to adjust the sleeves, and they worked out perfectly. But it was . . . a spiritual experience, like a guide. I just made the curve right and it was because it wasn’t me, making it alone. So, when you have the opportunity to seek the Spirit in sewing, I think there’s amazing things that can happen, like help from the other side, or guidance from God. He can help us put the seams right and make the pieces fit together properly, beyond our own ability to do it. She was a great seamstress and I just felt like she was there saying, ‘Okay, just curve it just like this, follow this ruler that you have. And it was beautiful. I didn’t have to resew it, and it fit her well, and that’s when I felt really good. ‘I can do this.’ And God helped me, and my grandma was there, from the other side, kind of telling me, and patiently helping me, guiding me. And I was thankful. I can connect beyond myself and have something more beautiful come from it.
So, even though the experience learning to sew with her mother wasn’t perfect, through sewing Heather has been able to connect generations of women in her family.
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Not only has sewing been a great tool for Heather to connect with her family, but sewing has also been a blessing in connecting with herself. A few years ago, Heather was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was a shock that her body had betrayed her in this way and the pain and surgeries that followed made it difficult to find joy and fulfillment. Even after the cancer was removed, there were health problems that followed, and Heather, usually the first to volunteer to offer service when someone was in need, was stuck at home in bed. She says, “I like to serve, and it brings me a lot of peace and joy, and happiness. But there’s days when I don’t feel well and I don’t know if I can get out of the house, to go somewhere and actually be of service, but if I can stay in my home, and . . . take a little rest in between, and I can get back to it, it’s something that I can still do for others.” Right now, she and her two oldest children are sewing quilts for the Florida Department of Children & Families. As with all the things she sews, these quilts are a “labor of love.”
Heather feels peace when she sews because of all the love sewn into every stitch. She says, “When you sew something for somebody, you put a lot of love in it. And you think about them when you sew, so it sends positive energy, or whatever — positive thoughts towards that person. The hours that you take [sewing], you think good things about that person, and put that love in there. And I think that’s healing, to not focus on myself . . it just brings me happiness.”
Heather continues to spread that love and happiness when she teaches others to sew, which she is always willing to do. She is feeling better and better and has found healing through sewing.
References:
Friedman, A. (2023, September 11). Never Acquire Clothes the Same Way Again. The Atlantic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/09/basic-sewing-skills-fast-fashion/675278/
Slone, I. (2022, April 5). Learning to Sew at the End of the World. Harper’s BAZAAR.
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a39637350/learning-to-sew-at-the-end-of-the-world/
