With my full-time job working on a military grief research study ending last Friday, I’ve been thinking a lot about the evolution of Chelle Summer. And since I’ve been doing more events, I also have come to realize how much that journey isn’t just me waking up one day saying, “Hey! I’m going to make some stuff!” as much as it’s been a life journey to get here. And no matter how I slice it, there are other people, while deceased, who are traveling this road with me.
My mom wasn’t afraid to use color nor was she afraid to let me constantly rearrange my room (not as easily said than done since I shared it with my younger sister for ten years). And when I hung pages from magazines on all my walls– didn’t we all do that?– I don’t recall her saying a word. Creativity was encouraged and we always had access to markers, crayons, and paper. I also don’t recall her being with Denise and I went we sewed. I think she was happy we had something to entertain ourselves with and she would take us to the fabric store and let us pick out a remnant of fabric– which are always sold at a discount– to make something new for the Barbie clan.
I believe that because creativity was encouraged, I felt more secure developing my own style into high school although I didn’t sew anymore. I loved the geometric designs of the late 1980s and wearing pencil skirts. I didn’t realize at the time how much more I could have done had I made my own clothes. Going to the mall was a social thing anyway.
I put the sewing away for college until Mom gave me her Bernina when I moved to Albuquerque and I had a housemate who sewed. That led me across the street to our neighbor Bonnie who had an entire room filled with sewing and craft supplies (her husband Greg thought the best way to dispose of it after she died was throw a stick of dynamite to it- of course he didn’t, but hearing him yell that from the next room where he was reading, still makes me laugh.
Bonnie used to joke that my job as a teacher was getting in the way of us making quilts, clothes, shell wreaths, potpourri, and everything else we used to do. She taught me so many skills that I use today and there was never a no. It always, “Hmmm, how can we do this?”
After she died and I was working on my doctorate, I once again put the sewing away. While I made a few quilts and such here and there, wasn’t until after Greg and I married in 2015 that we were walking around an Old Navy outlet store and I was griping about how they didn’t make colored denim skirts (but they made color denim shorts).
“Then why don’t you make them?” he asked.
That day the Chelle Summer seed was planted. The bucket bag came first and slowly but surely everything else has followed as I continue to experiment and make items that resonate with me. And that’s just the beginning.