Between me and the deep blue sea

I am afraid of my sewing machine. There, I’ve said it. It wouldn’t matter much, except my fear is what stopped me dead on the tracks as I zipped along toward my reinvention. In my dream new identity, I am a derelict clothing designer, upending mediocrity in women’s apparel and thumbing my nose at cubicle convention. I offer slices of delicious escape to women weary of conforming. I aim to dress fellow misfits who want to make peace with their weirdness.

It’s farfetched when you consider that I have zero background in fashion design and business management. In the last decade I had settled into making a living writing about abstract concepts—leadership, mentorship, gender equity, the value of higher education. Every job I’ve had was a step off a cliff. I had no practice as a reporter, speechwriter, desktop publisher or instructor before becoming one. Whatever skills I didn’t already bring to the table I learned on the job. Fear never derailed me.

Most people fear spiders. I squish them without squirming. Many quake at the thought of public speaking. Pffft. My first job out of college was teaching public speaking to sophomores at my alma mater. My last day job was coaching a CEO on delivering the speeches I wrote for him.

Some people freeze on the edge of the dance floor. As an instructor in ballroom and Latin dance, I demonstrate the promenade, the Cuban chase, the infinity spin and such in front of crowds of strangers and perform several times a year.

But the domestic arts have always been my Kryptonite. That sewing machine haunts me. For years, I kept it boxed in a dark closet in a room I never enter unless I have to store more stuff. It’s not even mine; I bought it for Mom when she visited more often. Now she pleads old age. She says she’s too frail to get on a jetliner and cross the Pacific Ocean.

Summers when I was a tomboy, Mom tried to get me to sit still and learn how to sew. She was an effortless seamstress. I wore a lot of her creations. I should’ve been more appreciative. I should’ve paid attention. I should’ve made my own Home Ec projects instead of letting Mom earn the grade.

Somehow I managed to live nearly five decades without ever feeling the need to know how to sew. Call it a midlife crisis, but a year ago I burned out rehashing the same tired concepts on the job and set off to release my inner Ungaro, upcycled version.

I lurked on etsy.com forums, absorbing, keeping notes, hearting examples. I studied business start-up advice, amassed a roomful of vintage and thrifted material, took out a seller’s permit and designed a digital banner. I handsewed stitch by painstaking stitch, turning out flowy dance pants, frilly tunics, quirky skirts.

I fed my ferocious need to remake something in the image of my vision. It must be a control issue. There are few enough things over which we have control, so let’s let loose with what we wear when we’re doing something for ourselves. Let’s dress for life—not for approval.

I may have the beginnings of my business manifesto! It’s coming together and falling into place. Except for the pesky part about not knowing how to sew by machine.

Here’s the thing: most of those times when I learned how to do something new, I was doing it for the boss.  Learning how to sew will be for me—for the new me I am trying to fashion out of disheartened and disgraced remnants. Do you know what it feels like to attempt this reinvention?

My nephew, Vince, that eagle-eyed spotter of oddities that make great fodder for wry comments, noted Google map’s directions for getting to China from Taiwan. Head west, take this ramp, take this exit, turn left, turn right. They seem regular enough, until you come to:

Step#24: Swim across the Pacific Ocean.

Right. There. It feels like I am about to swim across the Pacific Ocean, and I don’t know how to doggy paddle.

How to stop hoarding and start green stockpiling

One recovering shopaholic makes peace with the new minimalism

One of my favorite tasks when I wrote for a newspaper was to profile collectors in California’s Central Valley and Sierra Nevada foothills. We featured folks who collected nativity sets, plaid lunchboxes, antique kitchenware, and so on.

Collectors have a peculiar mindset. They lock onto a category, then hunt and gather with ferocity. They know the stories behind each of their finds.

The question that nipped at my ankles was, “When is it collecting and when is it hoarding? Where is the line?”

I asked one collector, “When do you know you’ve collected enough?”
“When the space you’ve dedicated to it is full,” he said simply.

For some, that space is expandable. That’s probably why storage rental is ubiquitous in the United States. For others, the space never reaches capacity, because it’s an emotional void.

U.K. blogger creativevoyage noted,

"…once people are doing what they love they need less money because they need fewer ‘treats’ to get through their horrible jobs.”

 Is this hitting close to home? Oh, all right. I’ll be the bad example here. Geez, chicken.

Here’s my story, sad but true.

In the early ‘90s, having acquired a house to fill, I amassed clothes, shoes, purses, tchotchkes and kitsch to hang on walls or arrange on surfaces. I call it overcompensation for a childhood clad entirely in hand-me-downs. Raise your hand if you were the youngest of six. Sympathy clucks all around. Mini me owned exactly one doll (beheaded by brutes my parents swore were my brothers) and two stuffed toys—Dopey and Mugsy—memorable in their scarcity.

“Shopping is right next to happiness on the spectrum of emotions, I guess…”

— Seth Godin

Many items ended up cohabiting in our garage for decades. I eventually exhumed these finds as ambiance setters and statement pieces in my office, where most people didn’t know what to make of them. Taken together, the knickknacks proclaimed, “Here works a woman who, unlike you, never asks, ‘What is it for?’ She is fascinated by non-functional objects. She has no intention of ever finding a practical application for any of them. They are all loved for themselves.” The merchandising stopped just short of commanding the viewer to embrace the eccentric and kiss her ring.

Part of me still likes to think that had I worked within a markedly different company culture, the statement might have been interpreted as, “You have entered a safe zone for creative thinkers.” I call it overcompensation for a career spent trying to fit square pegs in round holes.

When the new minimalism took hold, I declared myself a conscientious objector. I understood how the purging of possessions might seem a logical response to the crappy state of the economy. But all it does is feed the delusion that conscience-stricken, privileged people, by choosing to have less, somehow level the playing field between them and those summarily stricken from the payroll.

I can attest to this, because one morning I was the first kind of stricken, and by that afternoon, I was the second kind. And we had fun, fun, fun till her daddy took the T-bird away.

Purgers have a choice. They are not choosing to be poor, merely divested of their clutter. The masses of nouveau poor do not, generally speaking, receive gainful employment from one’s tidied up closet, with the exception of the relative few who work for the charities that resell these purged items. To my knowledge, a purging by one household has yet to avert a foreclosure next door.

However, something good has come out of the nation’s urge to purge. Most unexpectedly, I have found my great love of acquisition for its own sake replaced by a more consuming passion: upcycling. Global handmade marketplace etsy.com’s credo, “reuse, repurpose, recycle” has inspired many avid collectors, including me, to redirect their energies.

Upcyling is the new collecting

I still shop, but now each trip is a thoughtful acquisition-for-mergers endeavor. Of late, I have been merging the collar of a serviceable shirt with the plain neckline of another; the crinoline of a child’s outgrown outfit with the scalloped hemline of a shrug. A lace scarf has fused with the sleeve of a handsewn ballgown. The embroidery on a pair of jeans is affianced to the bodice of a fall frock.

Resulting from these mergers are morphed apparel with renewed purpose. The target market is the mindful consumer unmoved by mall mentality. Where purgers and mergers intersect, crisis gives way to opportunity.

Upcyclers aren’t hoarding, we’re building inventory for our small businesses. Mission-driven collecting seems to have dissolved the retail therapist bent in me. In the transition, I may have upcycled myself.

We do it not just because it’s healthy for the environment and our pocketbooks, but because it’s challenging. It’s creative. It’s collaborative, in that inspiration on what to do with tarnished silver spoons (make garden markers!) in turn inspires ideas on rescuing shrunken wool sweaters (make felted flower brooches!) Who else is going to find uses for the piles and piles of stuff that the new minimalists evict? Might as well be us, and we might as well generate some income out of upcycling as much of it as we can.

Our reputation is as shiny as a ketchup-burnished penny. Upcycling is the new collecting. The new minimalism isn’t so objectionable to me now—as long as it’s practiced by someone else.

Purge away, America. We await your discards with relish.

What sort of things have you rid yourself of lately?
What have you happened upon and triumphantly taken home to transform?

Lemon Lime slipdress — 3rd in a series of, gasp, 24

I'm working on a green and yellow upcycled slipdress now.  I seem to be obsessed with slipdress alterations, even though I know summer is quickly petering out and I should be devoting time to fall and winter accessories. 

I think part of the story of my etsy shop will be "One torn chemise; 24 spruced up slipdresses." For context, I'll direct viewers to the story in my profile about how much has changed in 24 years, from a rude comment about my torn chemise to my quest to bring out the beauty in something discarded.

Here's the story:

Twenty-four years ago as a fresh immigrant and impoverished newlywed, I relied on thrift stores to clothe myself, my two preschool stepdaughters and infant daughter. My husband had asked me to give up my job and stay home while the children were young, and, wanting only the best for them, I did.

One day, my husband remarked unkindly on the large rip in my chemise. 

It wasn't until a decade later that I developed enough assertiveness to remind him of that remark and retort, "It never occurred to you to buy your wife a new chemise." Another decade would pass before I realized, "Hey, why didn't I just darn the darned thing?"

Fast forward to today. The last child has left the nest, and her bedroom is now my haven for creating and crafting. I've filled a closet with vintage gowns, lingerie, scarves, aprons and gloves, all queued for metamorphosis into daywear extraordinaire. I study junkmail catalogs for trends and "aha!"s the way I used to digest academic journals in grad school. In the process, I've honed my eye for handwrought embellishments and quirky touches. I love these timeless beauties almost as much as my rescued Maine Coon — but never the twain shall meet.

And the husband? After an extensive five-year renovation (separation, counseling, everything short of a lobotomy), he earned the privilege of remaining my mate. We grew to appreciate and respect each other, and have entered a blissful state with a giggling grandson to enjoy!