Rachel's House: A stitch in time

Last spring, my neighbors Holly and Steve announced that they were signing up for the John C Campbell Folk School's session at the end of August and invited me to come along. I'd been wanting to take a class there; had been collecting catalogs over the years since other friends had gone, impressed with their offerings.

I waited a few days before I logged on (we could call it slogging), and sure enough the classes I thought I'd like had no more space. The Campbell School, in Brasstown, NC (not much farther west or south than that and you are in Tennessee or Georgia) fills its workshops and sessions fast, so I apologized to my kind neighbors and laid the summer back.

But then, two weeks before their classes began, Holly and Steve mentioned it again at lunch, excited to be gathering their things together for the session. "You should come," they said again. Oh, why not? I thought. I could use a break about now. They offered me a ride (it's a 6-hour drive from here to the school) and a place to stay with them...there is nothing better than an adventure with good neighbors.

Before I called the school, I armed myself with classes I thought I could still try...the mixed media class that originally was closed but might have (unlikely as it seemed) a drop-out by now, photography, clay. Alas, they were all filled. "I could put you on a waiting list," the registering staff member told me on the phone. But there was another that still had one opening: Wool embellishment and embroidery. I'm sure she could hear my sigh...alas, my hands, for all the basic sewing they do, aren't really attuned to such close, particular needlework.

I come from a family of superb needleworkers, who sewed, knitted, embroidered, beeded, and embellished their own (and often my) clothing over four generations. I seem to be the one who didn't inherit the necessary genes for precise work, though when I was younger I managed a few sundresses, a plain but silk shift, and a tennis dress.

On the other hand, signing up for something so challenging would have two advantages: one, it would get me out into the school; and two, I'd learn something difficult, however handy I'd turn out at it. I'll take it, I told her.

As it turned out, spending five and a half days, all day, learning the intricacies of the stem stitch, the chain stitch, the blanket stitch (I already knew that one, though I kept forgetting how it begins), the daisy, the fern and feather stitches, the French knot and too many more, filled me with new life. I found the class and my classmates, not to mention Kit, the instructor's assistant who was my savior, delightful.

Penny, our instructor, with a lot of years' teaching there, handed to us daily, lump by lump, a huge set of embroidery skills. In a class where skills ranged from mine (almost nil) to expert, I learned to pace myself and do what I could.

Yes, it was hard. No, I didn't become proficient, and I take the prize for the slowest student there...I didn't even begin two of the scheduled projects, because I was working so hard on my individual design (see below), planning and re-doing and re-doing again, taking out at least a third of the stitches I'd put in. But I finished it.

Despite hours of practice, motor memory, which our instructor assured us would come, failed me time and again. Still, I was comforted that I had the running and backstitch in hand already (sewing tasks at home provide practice all the time) and though the stem stitch's first angle eluded me with every start, I loved doing the French knot, the daisy, the loop, and the fern. I couldn't imagine a future sitting quietly to do needlework cushions, but absolutely everything I learned could easily become part of my own art.

Even more wonderful was the Campbell School itself. It's been an important folk school in the region since 1925, when Olive Dame Campbell and Marguerite Butler, with education, deliberation, and careful planning, established it. At first with an agricultural focus, only a few years later it incorporated traditional craft skills, which were much needed and much practiced in the mountain areas, as the self-sufficiency was and is essential in remote areas.

I won't go into its whole history here**, but Campbell and Butler chose its location well, after much study and with the full, even hearty encouragement of the rural population. Landscape is an important backdrop to their philosophy that making by hand begins with ground rules...that is, begins from the ground up. (Steve's woodturning class, for example, began by making the tools they would use.)

Here the natural setting, water nearby, hills and gardens and rough trails inspire. Plain as they first appear on the outside, the school's rustic buildings open to large well-lit spaces and good equipment for working at each of the crafts it teaches: woodworking, iron and metal work, stone and pottery, cooking and baking (I'm tempted to sign up for the next class the sweet cooking instructor is going to hold: cooking in the wild...we forage for our food), chair caning, furniture building, photography, weaving, basketweaving, quilting, sewing, painting and printing, bookmaking, dance and music (we were serenaded at lunch every day outside), the making of musical instruments, and more unrecalled.

And its people: goodness, what nice people, talented people, helpful people, genial people, from everywhere. Besides a few North and South Carolina residents, my classmates came from Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio, Washington DC, Vermont, Massachusetts and the Finger Lakes of NY State. Ages ranged from early twenties to eighties. There were couples and singles and siblings and friends. Many were on fifth or fifteenth visits working there.

Because let me tell you, you really work. All day, breaking for lunch, and, if you are lucky enough to have stayed on or near campus, often returning after dinner to finish the day's assignment. And after that, there are talks and concerts and dances and demonstrations to attend. There is a sense of community that is deliberate...essential to the way one sees and learns and accomplishes and communicates.

Holly and Steve had arranged to stay in a house well outside of campus, up a mountain on smaller and smaller unlit roads until gravel brought us to our lair, so night visits weren't practical. Still, our shoulders ached from hunching over stitches, paint and collage (H) and wood (S). We had our balm, though.

The porch overlooking a steep garden and beyond a setting of trees and blue hills became my focal point there. I could step out of my bedroom with a cup of coffee and inhale the forever view. Or rock with Steve and Holly at the end of the day talking about what we'd made and mastered (or not...quite).

Steve's woodturning

Holly's mixed media woman

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On the fourth day, I received a message from my cousin Lorraine in Lancaster, who serendipitously forwarded me a "Slow Stitching" link she thought I would enjoy. She hadn't known where I was or what I was struggling over, but I was quick to tell her and excited to find the ways that version of the craft offered for my art. I showed the link to the others in the class, though Penny, the instructor, didn't seem impressed...she's a needleworker of some skill, of course.

What did I do on my summer vacation, one might ask? It seems to have been a time of needle and thread, of making...my own as well as others'. A broadening time, from June with the Florida quilters through August at the Campbell, one stitch at a time.

I can't wait for next year.