Wore Stories

"Casualties of Wore"
Acrylic on 300# Arches
30" x 22"

My mother loved to sew. She made most of her own clothes and some of mine (when I was too young to protest that I wanted 'real' clothes). There were always tins of buttons, baskets of thread and folds of fabric around, along with just about anything necessary to make or mend something on the spot. Even when a garment was truly worn out, she could resurrect it into some other useful thing. 

I inherited Mom's sewing 'works': the old turquoise Singer, the buttons, the threads, the tins of parts collected to make repairs and a few things she had never gotten around to fixing or finishing. So began the task of deciding what to keep and with what to part, combining her treasures with mine, layering the generations in my sewing basket. 


I found similarities in our collections, mine no doubt a mirror of her practices. Lots of buttons. Multiples of our favorite colors of thread. Handy little tools, some I no longer remember how to use. I found we both had saved some things long past their usefulness.  It was those cast-offs I spread out on the table. I wondered why the zipper with the missing teeth, the broken buttons, the faded and threadbare fabric scraps had been kept; what stories were preventing me from sweeping them off the table into the waste basket. 


I inherited my mother's sewing works, but I became aware while sifting and sorting through threads and feelings and those casualties of wore that I had not inherited the same passion she had for the craft. What I had, that kept me collecting buttons, was more an admiration for her talents and a desired commonality. The realization made me feel separated and a little sad, but it was also a bit freeing. It reinforced for me that I have my own passions and my own stories to tell, and gave me permission to get out the paints and tell them.