I was a math whiz who stunk at English, so of course I wanted to be a writer more than anything in the world. I performed impromptu plays for my grandmother's sewing circle but forced my little sister to ask for ketchup at McDonald's.
While designing, sewing and cutting patterns for clients, my mother was always telling me to make sure the upper part of the body was balanced with the lower part, an A-line skirt to minimize hips or shoulder pads if a client was smaller on top. I was training my eye to create balance.
It used to be twelve people crowded around a sewing table; now it's ten.
When I moved out of my mom's house at 18 I was almost as sad to leave her sewing machine behind as anything else.
You know how people love to glamorize poverty? There's nothing glamorous about it. But it did make me really creative. Those days, I was literally taking t-shirts in the day and sewing them back together to make dresses for the night.
A good use for me is to let me go away with my sewing machine and come back with some really new stuff.
Growing up around Amish farmland, I enjoyed the opportunity to witness firsthand their love of family, of the domestic arts - sewing, quilting, cooking, baking - as well as seeing them live out their tradition of faith in such a unique way.
My husband went through a phase of giving me vacuum cleaners, sewing machines and Mixmasters. It's ironic. He is encouraging me to develop a hobby, I think.
The scar on my eye is a result of the doctor's sewing up my face. It was 450 stitches and plastic surgery.
When I was little, and whenever I had to wear a dress while my mother took up the hem or made any alterations, she told me to keep a thread from the dress in my mouth while she was sewing, and that would keep me from getting stuck by the needle.
