The Multiple-crafter’s Dilemma

I’m the daughter and granddaughter of women who were perpetually busy.

My paternal grand mother was a seamstress by trade and altered garments as she cut them out! She loved Vogue designer patterns because they taught her new things. She would not sew on Sundays, it being the day of rest, so she knitted or crocheted. She was never idle. Her answer was to divide when she did crafts by days or by time of day (she would knit in the evenings).

My mom, an artist, never met a craft or art form she didn’t try at least once. But mainly she was a serial crafter. She would do something new for awhile and them turn to something else. There was the fall of the tissue paper flowers, when she was chair of the Gift Tree raffle for her arts guild and we made hundreds of these as ornaments. Then there was the summer of the portraits when I was 13. She had taken a class and decided to paint my portrait, forcing me to sit or taking endless pictures of me. The result was not good.

Even so for most of my life she concentrated on on technique as her main project. It was painting in my elementary years, hand-built ceramics in high school and college, and watercolors once I had grown up. That was her solution to being a multi-crafter.

For me, although I sometimes stray from needlepoint, I am not a multi-crasfter. But I have many friends and students who are. For us all, Sue Dulle has some ideas and solutions in a recent blog post.