Sewing is an ancestral practice for me. My abuela made her living this way, and now that her eyesight has faded I’ve picked it up myself. Unlike her, I have the luxury of being very free with what I create, often making garments or accessories for myself or my loved ones. I have a really hard time following a pattern; I find it difficult to decipher and avoid deviating from exactly what someone else had in mind and instead choose to self-draft nearly everything, hoping I will arrive with something usable at the end.
My writing gets stuck when I’m being too obstinate about what I’m trying to do. I’ll have a grand point or a great purpose but can’t seem to make it true, to fully arrive at the idea I have in mind. Sewing reminds me that I can start with a scrap of fabric or an odd button and just follow myself through leaps of inspiration until I’m left with something that seems like it was always there, that feels honest. The seams can be ripped out if something goes wrong, the lumpy areas taken in. Anything can be undone or redone, and if it’s altogether unusable I can start again tomorrow.
—Jordan Pérez, author of Santa Tarantula
(University of Notre Dame Press, 2024)