When “special interests” knock at 3am
Or, why I’m about to spend upwards of $2k on a sewing machine and accessories
This morning I was awoken at 3:30am by the Passion, and I don’t mean it in the usual way that word is capitalized, yet there is no other way to describe it. The desire runs deep within me. Stronger, more lively, like a river with boils created by underwater boulders and logs, rapid whitewater swirls and undertow. What I speak of is braided rugs.
Um, excuse me, what? Braided… rugs?
Like so many Autistic people, I have what the wonderful, stigma-producing, pathologizing psychologists call “special interests.” Or, for those of us who believe in neurodiversity and don’t give two flips about the DSM, interests. Because gay marriage is, when you get down to it, marriage, and special interests are, quite simply, interests. Yeah, we’re weirdly focused about such things. So sue us. :P
I’ve been creating braided rugs since 2013. I was too poor to give traditional Christmas gifts that year, so I tried making my own. Sheets are a cheap source of fabric at thrift stores, and I carefully asked after everyone’s colors. My first attempts were awkward and awful, as first attempts often are. My next real attempt took place after the busy Christmas season, made from old t-shirts and backed by a thrift-store towel, and it was for me. I still have that rug. It’s just across from where I’m typing, lying in continued supplication before my religious altar. I use it on a daily basis, and my cat Miso ADORES this rug. It’s her rug, in a sense. Did I mention that braided rugs are the perfect kitty traps?
Not everyone appreciates or admires such work. In 2017 I was enrolled in classes at Saint Mary’s College of California, climbing the professional ladder toward my current position. College lectures mean lots of down time to sew, busy fingers at work. So there I was, hand piecing and stitching a huge braided rug, when a fellow grad student blithely asked if I could make one for her as well.
My god that rug was fun. I innovated methods I’d never done before, including doing a wrap for the first time, and even created specialized triangle shapes, but it was a lot of work in white. Tedious, after a while. But I persisted. Then, when I called her a year later to come pick up her rug and reimburse me for, you know, supplies, which was our original deal, she showed up with a boyfriend and an attitude.
“Where will I ever put this?” she said, laughing nervously. “Guess I’ll have to make room somewhere.”
Awkwardly, I brought up the subject of money, but she acted as if the original conversation had never happened. Gah. That memory has a special place in my heart because I hand-sewed my heart out and got zilch in return. It wasn’t really cash that was the issue, it was the lack of gratitude. Some kind of acknowledgement of pride and effort, time and energy, love for the craft. Amazement at the results. It was the first time I’d spent money at Joann’s on fabric, and what did I get in return?
I don’t think she ever said thank you. Those words never left her lips.
I’m reminded of a story my mother — as passionate quilter — once told me. A woman was giving away one of her quilts, and she and her husband were dropping it off at the post office to ship across the US. She was letting her husband do all the talking, since letting go of her quilt was like giving away a child, but what else are you going to do? A house or apartment is only so large. You can fill it to the brim with the fabric arts, the results of your innovation and devotion, but that means swiftly running out of square footage. That is especially true if you need that space for raw materials and equipment, and it’s even more true if you squirrel away fabric with the dedication of a hoarder. You know. As we do.
Anyway, back to the post office. The clerk asked the woman and her husband the usual question, “Do you want insurance?”
The husband said, “Yes?” glancing at his wife, the creator of the colorful, king-sized quilt sequestered inside the large box.
“How much?”
The woman was unable to bear her silence any longer. She leaned around her husband, drew close to the clerk, and in a low voice, making eye contact, she whispered, “It’s priceless.”
It was, too, I’m certain. These creations of our own hands, these designs that wake us up at 3am, they are beyond worth. Valued on the far side of hard, cold Benjamins. I woke up this morning thinking about how to create some kind of jig to sew braids at a 45 degree angle. I want to create a square braided rug in a modern, contemporary style.
It’s not the first time I’ve tried it, but this time, I vow to succeed.
Having been burned by the grad student, I next tried to do a no-sew special. You do this by weaving an extra piece of fabric through the braids to connect them together with a large, ball-tipped needle. Needless to say, it didn’t work. I am a life-long bibliophile, and like Hermione Granger I rush to the library whenever life presents it’s little challenges, but this time books failed me. The technique much touted by authors didn’t work. That rug — which took hours and hours and hours — dissolved into pieces the first time my friend from Kansas, to whom I had shipped this rug in all hopes and dreams, put it in the washing machine. Gah times two. That failure was on me.
“It’s okay,” she told me kindly. “My dogs still love it.”
I haven’t done a braided rug in a couple of years. I’ll admit, I burned out. I’ve been exploring how to do rugs on a loom instead.
After two years of attempts, though, I’ve decided weaving is just not my thing. I’ve been working on a quilt for a friend in Oregon for over a year now on a self-created potholder loom created out of an art frame, but… I’m bored. I don’t like it. The process doesn’t interest me, and I deeply dislike the results. The weaving is square, sure, the way I want, but not… fun.
I’m just not Passionate about it.
So… back to braided rugs, but enough with the tedious hand sewing. The next logical step is to spend MONEY. :D Throwing cash at craft stores doesn’t always work out the way you’d like, but this time I vow to be careful. I plan to go to a nearby town with a family-owned sewing-machine business, and see if I can schedule a time to have them walk me through the possibilities. I will bring braid samples to sew together, and will keep all my idiosyncratic, Autism-related, neurological sensitivities in mind, including noise and vibration. Because guess what sewing machines produce? You got it — noise and vibration. That’s why I haven’t been able to sew on a machine before. But if I buy this one with those issues in mind, and go slow, it should be okay. I hope.
Watch this space. More pretties to come, I swear it. ❤
