Happiness is Making

Happiness is Making

Posted by Tammi Williams on Jan 3rd 2025

In the middle of the night just before Christmas, I was awake, disastrophising about — who even knows now, which is always the case. Instead of lying there churning around in my bad attitude, I got out of bed and opened up a book. Michelle Obama's "Overcoming: A Workbook" had landed in my mailbox so I decided to start reading it and came across this passage.

"We need to tend carefully and sometimes vigilantly to our mental health. Your mind is constantly and imperfectly working the levers, trying to keep you steady as you figure out what to do with your passion, ambition, and big dreams, as well as your hurts, limitations, and fears. It may tap the brakes and try to slow you down a little sometimes. It may throw up distress signals when it senses a problem — if you're trying to move too fast or working in a way that's unsustainable, or if you're getting caught up in disordered thinking or harmful patterns of behavior. Pay attention to how you're feeling." 

All right, Mrs. Obama. You're not wrong and I needed that message. Tell me more.

"Don't forget to prioritize the things you can do, even just to sustain your energy and broaden your possibilities. When you focus on the things you can control — often seemingly insignificant daily practices and activities, or your private thoughts — you regain what I like to call a 'small power.' For me, the clearest form of a small power I have is knitting. On days when my brain apprehends nothing but monolithic catastrophe and doom, when I feel paralyzed by not-enoughness and my agitation begins to stir, I pick up the knitting needles and give my hands a chance to take over, to quietly click us out of that hard place."

I hear you, Michelle. And that's why I'd been knitting like mad all week. Holiday sales were slow and I think I now recall the nature of my disastrophising — pretty sure I was beating myself up for not vending at a holiday market. Pretty sure I was calling myself the L word for that — the word Lazy is a curse to me. But knitting wasn't helping. So at 4am, I opened up the Becoming Workbook, read those wise words and remembered another "small power" in my arsenal. Sewing. Sure, I sew as a business, but I can also sew simply for fun, and some friends of ours had a new baby I was going to meet in the coming days. Why not make something for their little baby girl. Immediately, I wanted to make a little elephant.

So I logged on to Etsy and found a vintage sewing pattern for stuffed animals, dove into my fabric scraps and got to work. I wanted to make it a patchwork elephant because last year when I was London during a break in the semester at Heriot Watt, the AirBnB I stayed in had a cute little floral patterned elephant that I adored. It reminded me of a drawing my mother made on our living room wall when I was a kid. I've found elephants a bit endearing since then. My elephant would have the trunk up for good luck, as my mama told me.

I picked out a bunch of orange, navy, and turquoise fabrics and realized I hadn't patchworked in awhile. While the fabric scraps were in the washing machine, I watched a video or two about patchworking irregularly shaped fabric scraps and decided to just wing it. The important thing was that it didn't fall apart so after everything was washed and dried, I put the fabric together piece by piece on the sewing machine, ironing the sewn pieces as I went along. I ended up making two pieces of patchwork fabric the size of an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. Once I cut out the pattern pieces, I realized sewing something so small on the sewing machine was going to be too fiddly, so to my absolute pleasure, I would have to hand stitch the elephant together. It took a long time — much longer than I thought it would — but I loved every minute of it. It was just the project I needed. Different than what I was used to doing, a tiny bit challenging because it was new to me, quiet and creative. Bonus, I got to choose the fabrics I'd work with which is always fun for me. Bigger bonus, it didn't need to be perfect and I didn't need to follow any rules.

To fill the elephant, I used the leftover polyfill I'd been hoarding from the boxes I ship the silk scarves in. Since they're jewelry boxes and I don't use the filling, I've been holding on to it just in case. When I ran out of polyfill, I used leftover bits of silk to finish it off. This little cutie is standing on feet stuffed with silk. I love that the elephant is completely zero-waste and I was able to use things I'd been holding on to for awhile. Is it perfect? Nope. And I'm going to stop myself from pointing out the flaws, but the thing sure did turn out pretty sweet. I love the floppy ears.

I met the new baby, Issa, last week and her parents have named the elephant Ella. I hope Issa and Ella have lots of fun adventures in the years to come, because they deserve it all.

Who knew a little project like this could bring me out of my meh's and into the yay's. In the Overcoming Workbook, there is a place for readers to list their "small powers" and I'm definitely adding "making small stuffed animals" to my list.