Acknowledgments

A special note of gratitude to Lura Schwarz Smith, who graciously allowed me to use her incredible quilt on the cover of the book. As soon as I saw it, I knew it belonged with my words. Another special thanks to Gail McMeekin, a dear friend and a constant support and cheerleader. Gail, you have touched me deeply with your warmth and encouragement. Thank you to all of my crafting friends and acquaintances who shared their stories, enthusiasm, and work, and to the wonderful artists, crafters, and experts who talked with me about this topic so close to my heart and soul. Finally, a thank you to Linda Konner for her efforts.

 

Part I:

Crafts and Healing

 

Chapter 1: The Surprising Connection between Crafts, Creativity, and Healing

Time heals all wounds. But until time kicks in, what do you do while you’re waiting? How do you relieve stress and decompress from everyday pressures? How do you ease the pain, distract your mind, soothe your soul? If you’re like me—and I suspect you are—you craft.

I’ve been a crafter for as long as I can remember. I quilt. I sew. I collage. I paint. I make wreaths. I design note cards. I love to create something out of nothing and put my personal stamp on it. I love the process, and I love the product. The creative arts, my crafts, keep my hands, heart, and mind busy, and sometimes I think they’re the only things that keep me sane. And I’m not alone. Far from it. In fact, from the time that man began recording time, the creative arts have been used as unique forms of expression, communication, and release. Just think of the stick figures found on the cave walls of our earliest ancestors, the decorative vases molded by ancient Chinese cultures, or the ornate tombs of the early Egyptians. Now, in the twenty-first century, these arts have been elevated from mere crafts to important components of healing therapies for people with illnesses, both physical and psychological. Patients with cancer, for instance, are encouraged to paint, to visualize their bodies fighting off malignant cells, and to pour their thoughts and emotions into journals. Likewise, abused children are asked to draw pictures to help therapists gain access to their feelings and fears. Arts and crafts are even used as part of the therapeutic rehabilitation of prisoners, the disabled, the mentally disadvantaged, and those with substance abuse problems, and to engage the elderly and people with dementia.

---

“Some of us feel bad about [taking] time for creative expression. One would think that we’d view creativity as ‘more productive’ and hence less guilt-producing than leisure, yet we seem to believe that self-expression is less of a priority than satisfying the needs of others.”

--Alice Domar, PhD, Self-Nurture

---

But the best news is that you don’t have to be ill to benefit. “We’re now finding that crafts are beneficial for healthy people, too,” says Gail McMeekin, MSW, a career and creativity coach in Massachusetts, and the author of the inspiring books The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women and The 12 Secrets of Highly Successful Women. “Thanks to their ability to tune you into yourself and your feelings, crafts clearly have physical, psychological, and spiritual powers.” Adds Diane Ericson, a California fabric artist, teacher, and pattern designer, “Crafts are a way of valuing yourself and giving to yourself. They allow you to express what’s inside.”

That’s right: Crafts are no longer perceived as kitschy activities for clueless country bumpkins. They’re now considered cool, part of the do-it-yourself movement, shared by celebrities and funky young chicks from Brooklyn, New York, middle-aged women, and yes, even men.

 

---

“All serious daring starts from within.”

—Eudora Welty

---

America’s Most Popular Pastimes

---

1. Drawing

2. Scrapbooking and memory crafts

3. Crocheting

4. Woodworking/wood crafts

5. Jewelry-making

6. Card-making

7. Floral decorating

8. Cross-stitch

9. Knitting

10. Wreath-making

---

Source: Craft and Hobby Association

 

The Study of Crafting

In case you need more proof of crafting’s popularity, just visit your local Jo-Ann’s, Michael’s, or AC Moore’s, and you’ll find the stores are packed. Crafting is a $29-billion industry in America, and over half of Americans have tried it, according to the Craft and Hobby Association. What’s more, crafting has held strong through the recent recession—in fact, as many Americans have turned to crafts and hobbies to save money on gifts as they have because they find crafts to be a potent form of stress relief. 

Despite crafting’s popularity, researchers haven’t spent much time exploring its benefits. Luckily, there is one landmark study—one that was deemed important enough to be mentioned in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association. In the study, which was sponsored by the Home Sewing Association, researchers took thirty women (fifteen experienced sewers and fifteen novice sewers) and measured their blood pressures, heart rates, perspiration rates, and skin temperatures—all gauges of stress—via biofeedback before and after they performed five leisure activities that required similar eye-hand movements. The pastimes included sewing a simple project, playing a card game, painting at an easel, playing a handheld video game, and reading a newspaper. The results showed that sewing was the most relaxing activity of the five studied; it produced drops in heart rate, blood pressure, and perspiration. In contrast, stress measures increased after the women performed the other tasks, especially after playing a card or video game.

According to Robert Reiner, PhD, a New York University psychologist and the study’s author, the findings prove what crafters already know: crafts de-stress. “The act of performing a craft is incompatible with worry, anger, obsession, and anxiety,” he says. “Crafts make you concentrate and focus on the here and now and distract you from everyday pressures and problems. They’re stressbusters in the same way that meditation, deep breathing, visual imagery, and watching fish are.”

Harvard University’s world-renowned mind/body expert, Herbert Benson, MD, says that repetitive and rhythmic crafts such as knitting may even evoke what he calls the relaxation response—a feeling of bodily and mental calm that’s been scientifically proven to enhance health and reduce the risk of heart disease, anxiety, and depression. “You can induce the relaxation response through any type of repetition, whether it’s repeating a word, prayer, or action, such as knitting or sewing,” he notes. “The act of doing a task over and over again breaks the train of everyday thought, and that’s what releases stress.”

Unfortunately, many of us push crafting and creativity to the bottom of our “to do” list. Maybe we feel guilty for doing something for ourselves—women, of course, are taught that everyone else’s needs should come first—or maybe we feel that even when we’re relaxing, we should be doing something productive (that old multitasking thing). But now that research is showing the creative arts are good for our health and relationships, we no longer need to view leisure pursuits as self-indulgences. We can recast them in a New light: crafts aren’t just enjoyable, they’re downright therapeutic.

 

---

“Hide not your talents.

They for use were made.

What’s a sundial in the shade?”

—Benjamin Franklin

---

Letting In the Power of Crafts

In interviewing creative women for her first book, Gail McMeekin learned that there are no mistakes in creating, only lessons. “Many inventions are the result of so-called errors,” she says. “When you suspend judgment about what is and what isn’t a mistake, you open your mind to creating extraordinary things and to receiving extraordinary things too. You let in the healing power of crafts.”

I’ve experienced this power firsthand on many occasions, but especially when I began making a quilt that I ended up calling “My Divorce Quilt” in the summer of 2000. I was taking a workshop that explored the use of decorative threads on quilt tops. I don’t know why—perhaps because the technique of embellishing was so new to me —but I decided to give myself permission to make up the quilt as I went along. I had no real plan, which is not the way I usually work at all. Most of my quilts follow a pattern and are somewhat uniform and regimented, and I’m hounded by a desire for perfection. But this time I didn’t try to make all of the elements work together. I just did what I wanted, spontaneously sewing this way and that according to whim, ignoring the usual conventions and restraints, and letting errors become planned eccentricities instead.

 

---

“Each of us has our own way of expressing ourselves. Each of us has something special to give. And it is important to value our own way of expressing ourselves—whatever it is.”

—Sue Bender, Stretching Lessons

---

First, I pieced together two hundred small batik squares into a larger square shape. Then I played with the thread for hours—days, really—creating geometric shapes across the quilt top. Next, I highlighted the shapes with variegated yarns. Finally, I began to machine quilt in a most verboten way: putting flowers and curlycues next to squares, triangles, and other angular shapes. I even used whatever color thread I picked up first, without caring if it matched the fabric or not.

 

---

“Every child is an artist. The

problem is how to remain an artist

once he grows up.”

—Pablo Picasso

---

I was bold and in the process. I was unconcerned about the end result and often put aside the quilt to look at it and search for inspiration while I worked on other pieces. This, too, was unusual for me, since I typically rush to finish one project and start another on my ever-expanding list of quilts I want to make. I was moving beyond the constraints of doing things “the right way” (which I had applied to my life and my quilting) to just seeing where the project would take me. Suddenly, screwing up was just a way of discovering something new.

As I worked on the quilt over several weeks, I began to see that the evolving design was expressing some of the chaos and confusion I was feeling as I went through my divorce. And as I neared the end of the project, I was overwhelmed (or perhaps underwhelmed) by the finished product. The quilt was a busy and disheartening mishmash. I entertained the idea of slicing it up and repiecing it. Unable to bring myself to actually cut into a piece I’d spent so many hours sewing, I was inspired instead to fold it several times on the diagonal and tack it down. And I loved the way it looked—it now has a kind of mangled, arrow shape to it, which is entirely appropriate to its purpose. It looks like it has been through an antique washing machine—just as I felt I, as a human being, had been—so I renamed it “My Divorce Quilt: Through the Wringer” (see photo).

“My Divorce Quilt: Through the Wringer.”

No plan, I just winged it—and my first art quilt was the result!

Of all of my quilts—and I’ve made over one hundred—this one has elicited the biggest and most dramatic response from people who view it. When I hung it in my guild’s quilt show, it created a buzz among the attendees. One woman told me that she thought the folds were my way of trying to tuck away memories of my marriage. She even suggested that I might feel compelled to fold it further as time passed, signifying my healing from the divorce and my moving on to a new life. I was fascinated by this insight and suddenly realized that I had created my first art quilt! Whatever I had made—and it certainly wasn’t a typical quilt—expressed something deep inside of me. And this quilt definitely says something, not only to me, but to others. Making it and showing it has helped me to heal the chasm in my life and to feel whole again, this time as a single person. And it turned out to be a message to myself that it was time for me to pursue life without a strict adherence to a plan. Since then, I’ve opened up creatively and emotionally to exploring life in general as more of a process, and enjoying the twists and turns, rather than just rushing to the goal.

That is the gift of crafts. They can transport us to another place and help us in our journey through life. They can heal our souls, if we allow them to. All we need is permission from ourselves to spend time creating and the courage to push beyond our comfort zone so that our projects truly express what’s inside and help us to unblock, purge, and transform our feelings. And if I can do it, you can too.

  

Healing Lesson

Scientific research is beginning to reveal

what crafters have intuitively known all

along—that crafts have mental, physical,

and spiritual benefits.

 

Chapter 2: The Stress Connection—It’s All about Attitude

If life constructs stress, then crafts help to deconstruct it. For Nancy Green-Keyes, who makes ornately detailed decoupage mirrors, book boxes, and furniture, her craft is the perfect stress antidote to a hectic job as a Hollywood casting director for movies such as The Notebook, Family Man, and Rush Hour. “Decoupage is like a minivacation from my life,” she says. “It empties my head, and I don’t think about personal or work problems. I don’t answer the phone. I just focus on what I’m creating and the precision of my craft.”

The Dripping Tap

Ironically, psychologists say that it’s the daily small stresses that are most deleterious to our health, not the large stresses, such as catastrophic accidents or illnesses. “We think of stress in relation to dramatic events, such as death, disaster, and divorce,” says University of Montreal psychologist Ethel Roskies, PhD, author of Stress Management for the Healthy Type A. “People think they should be able to handle great amounts of stress and be able to shrug it off,” she explains, “but it’s the dripping tap that drives you crazy, not the flood.”

What’s more, doctors say it’s not the actual events themselves that make us uptight—it’s the way we react to them. In reality, how stress affects you depends largely on how much control you feel you have over your life, how stressful you perceive situations to be, and how you respond to them.

 

---

“I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with the arrest of attention in the

midst of distraction.”

—Saul Bellow

---

 

The Effects of Stress

When stress mounts, a chain of involuntary physiological responses begins. This is called the fight-or-flight response, and it’s an emergency reaction dating back to caveman times, when humans had to either fight or run away when faced with a stressor (usually a large, life-threatening animal). To give the body the wherewithal to fight or run, blood pressure, breathing, and heart rate increase, and stress hormones (such as cortisol and adrenaline) are released. Today, we’re rarely faced with situations where we have to fight or flee. But we do encounter constant, small stresses and larger, more taxing stresses that trigger this involuntary bodily reaction without our even knowing it. Since we neither fight nor flee, we carry the stress around with us. Over time, the reaction has dire consequences, depleting the body’s immune system, raising cholesterol levels, damaging brain cells, and setting the stage for heart attacks, strokes, diseases, and other ailments.

Despite all this, stress isn’t always a bad thing. When present in manageable doses, it can be a great motivator. After all, deadline pressure for a craft show is what forces you to finish a project. Too little stress and life is uneventful; too much and it’s exasperating and dangerous. The path to stress resiliency is striking a balance—learning how to push yourself enough so that you’re the best you can be, but not so much that you go through life harried and unhappy.

 When you’re sad, try: Quilting or sewing, because the bright colors of the fabrics can improve your mood, or drawing in a journal with colored pencils, because expressive art can help you release negative emotions.

 When you’re anxious, try: Knitting, crocheting, and cross-stitch, because the repetition of movement can relax you. Beading is another good choice: the meticulous nature of this craft won’t allow you to think of anything else.

Purchase this book or download sample versions for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-11 show above.)