This episode features Christiana Sunshine and Talia Martineau, former and current managers of Scarsdale's Viking Sewing Gallery, as well as Metropolis Sunrise volunteer and clay artist, Myrna Goodman. The interview was recorded at the Viking Sewing Gallery in JOANN Fabrics Scarsdale store on February 1, 2020.
Sewing Community is part of ArtsWestchester's Folk Arts Program, made possible in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
This episode features Christiana Sunshine and Talia Martineau, former and current managers of Scarsdale's Viking Sewing Gallery, as well as Metropolis Sunrise volunteer and clay artist, Myrna Goodman. The interview was recorded at the Viking Sewing Gallery in JOANN Fabrics Scarsdale store on February 1, 2020.
Sewing Community is part of ArtsWestchester's Folk Arts Program, made possible in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
In school, when you would fill out with your parents, did for a living, I would write trimmings, not knowing what the heck it was when they opened up the window and the sweatshop. I used to go play on that a great place where he could buy. I said, God, that led the morning quick. So I can go to my sewing room. I think I'm not. Hello and welcome to sewing community podcast where local Westchester area residents share their life and fabric and thread. I'm your host Aaron Page, director of folk arts at arts Westchester, the officially designated arts council for Westchester County, New York in December, 2019, arts Westchester began working with Amanda Brown, a Brooklyn based fabric artist to transform a nine story building and white Plains into a cascading colorful large-scale fabric installation. All the stories heard in this podcast were collected from individual volunteers. Who've been involved in the building of this monumental work of public art while this project is currently on hold because of COVID-19. Our hope is that the story shared here will in some small way, sustain and deepen the social fabric of our selling community. This week's episode was recorded at Scarsdale Joann's fabrics on February 1st, 2020, and features Christiana, sunshine, and Talia Martineau, the former and current manager of the biking. Husqavarna sewing gallery, as well as metropolis, sunrise volunteer and clay artists, Myrna Goodman enjoy Christine
Speaker 2:
Sunshine. I live in Ardsley New York. I got into sewing cause my mom always said, when I was a kid, then I got into historical stuff and found I needed costumes. And my mom wasn't willing to do my sewing anymore. So I had to learn how to, so I got into a historical nonprofit. We work with schools and things called the society for creative anachronism. And we actually reproduce all of the clothing of the middle of pre 16th century life. So it's not uncommon to take a painting and from the painting deconstruct the garment. And from there, create the pattern in the mock-up or take remnants from bogs and funerals that have been dug that the archeologists have found and recreate the clothing from that to do that, I had to learn how to do a basic pattern, making drafting, garment, construction, everything that a fashion designer does. One of the things that our organization does is we also recreate the fighting. It's a tradition that fighters carry someone's favor into battle. And at the time my fighter was a Highland Scots, and we discovered that nobody had actually recreated the Highland Scott's armor completely. Everyone had gotten partially there and then got discouraged. So he and I spent a T to a two year project in which we recreated from Scottish refugees, uh, gravestones. Yeah, we've spent two years studying Scottish FTGS and texts and recreating from scratch the armor. And one of the things we discovered that I thought was insanely cool was every FEG no matter the artist all had. And he was 19 rows across the chest for the padding. When we broke down the math on him and he was of first-generation Scottish origin, the actual breakdown on the math for the required density of the padding broke down to 19 rows was the required number that you had to be ridiculously large or ridiculously tiny. Everybody else was 19 rows. So it was almost a universal fit. It was a lot of fun to recreate the whole thing. Um, we unfortunately didn't quite get it finished. We ran out of funds and killed five sewing machines in the process of selling this, but, uh, had a lot of fun doing it and his work. And he ended up sending his work to a museum in Scotland that built on it from there. The last I heard had not finished it yet, but it was deemed a completed project because King Louis, the 11th or 12th had armor of the exact same style. So there was able to be a actual physical, existing piece of the armor. My sewing is so far below the level of taking on an apprentice and the SCA. I looked like a pupper compared to everybody else. Um, in the SCA we have what we call laurels and laurels have demonstrated an extreme level of skill in their craft as well as a readiness to teach it. So somebody has a Laurel lit and say, clothing has basically a doctorate level of education in historical clothing and can produce garments fit for a museum. One of our laurels was on display at the met this year. I don't fit that category laurels take on apprentices and train them. I'm working on becoming an apprentice in pewter craft. I do metalworking. I carved the mold into stone. And then for the, well, this particular project sound clean, cool to begin with. I like doing unusual things with fabric. And one of the perks of baking is they let us run with our passions. So when I called the company and said, Hey, we got an offer to do this really cool project. They went, Oh, that's awesome. Go for it. Always tried as long as I've run the store to do community projects, whether we did so with, on sewing for the homeless or inviting in an old folks home to have a crafting day, we liked, I liked the store to be community,
Speaker 1:
But hi, I'm Talia Martino. I live in Dobbs ferry in Westchester, and I work at the Viking sewing gallery. I started selling when I was about 10 or 11 years old. I no one in my family really sewed at all, but I had come home from sleepaway camp one summer and just so happy to have a sewing teacher there that I really liked. And I came home and asked my mom for a sewing machine. And she said, yes. And that just kind of is how it went from there. I've always been kind of a more creative person. And I loved, you know, looking for different ways to express myself and sewing, you know, because there's so many different ways you could do it. Um, so many different techniques. It was something that I felt really drawn to a because you know, it was very relaxing. It was very, um, therapeutic in a way, but also something I felt like I could really grow with and, you know, learn, honestly learn more about myself, sort of in the process. And I still am. Um, you know, even if it's not necessarily your main career path, it's something that can really, you know, feed your life a lot and feed whatever your journey of self discovery is. It can be with you along the way. My coworker, Nick and I have been working on making different kinds of designs together because the both of us want to have a brand that's, you know, an end goal for both of us. And, you know, it's not fully flushed out yet, but we have, you know, you know, drafts for sweatshirts, dress for bags, dress for stuff like that. We want to end up on, um, an Etsy store, hopefully, you know, become a vendor at different kinds of events and stuff like that. Um, so right now my sewing studio is half of our pantry, like I said. Um, so I have like my sewing table in the corner. Um, I have a couple of rags for like my supplies and fabric and it works, you know, for what I need, you know, I have my Cottey mat on the floor and doing everything as I was making that space and making it work for what I was doing. I was thinking about, you know, once I get a room that's twice this size, what do I want to do three times the size? What do I want to do? Um, and it's sort of like a cliche, you know, you start from the bottom and you just think about how you can keep building up. I have the machines that I want to buy that, you know, I have to wait until I get to the bigger space, but I know what machines I want to buy. I know what I want to use them for. So it's like I have all of that drafted out, which is like an, um, something that's really exciting and really motivating. Um, cause also for awhile, I did step away from sewing. Like when I first went to college, cause you know, this isn't necessarily my main career career path, but then, you know, moving back home, finding like looking for a job, finding out that the Viking song gallery was hiring, it was kind of like everything was full circle and it, you know, inspired me to really get back into it. Something that I really love about just the act of selling, creating a community is actually stuff like this. And you know, people just coming together to create something incredible and create something beautiful. So it doesn't always have to be about everything being technically perfect and everything, you know, every stitch being straight, every, you know, stuff like that. Cause I think that's part of that's part of what discouraged me from it at first was, you know, things that I wasn't doing right. And feeling like I just couldn't do it. You know? So even if your work is not, you know, fashion, runway, whatever the case, you know, you can still make art for the sake of art and it's still equally as powerful and equally as beautiful. So I think that's something, you know, that's something that's been very important for me just in my own journey with this, but something I see going on with this project, which I think is really great. So, uh, I'm Mirna Goodman. I live in Baia cliff Manor, New York. And uh, my grandmother taught me to, so when I was about nine or 10 and she was what we call the Botcher, I mean she sewed, she sewed everything, but it wasn't always straight, but she did a great thing for me because I had to make my own graduation dress and elementary school. And I wasn't very good at hand sewing and I had to walk down the aisle and I was sure that my dress was going to totally fall apart. So the night before the, after I had already gotten my grade, which was not that great the night before graduation, I've brought the dress over to her and she sewed it up for the end machine so that I wasn't embarrassed. So I was forever in her debt. Um, but I also saw when I was pregnant, I made some of my maternity clothes and I, then I made clothes for the children to match them as, as I had more another child. So when I started to work in ceramics, um, I was doing pass on the wheel and that didn't interest me that much. So I started to make stories of clay and uh, I started to make clay quilts and I would put holes in the tiles and sew them onto, um, a stretched frame. That's when I heard about this project that Amanda was doing, I want to become involved in it. First of all, I think it's great to have community projects. And second of all, we need art in the world at this time, especially we need to have something else to think about something else to do and some beauty in the world, because right now we're not in a great place.