Michelle L. Rusk's Blog, page 6

New Vintage Textile Take Everywhere Bags

The Continued Bond, Even Thirty Years Later

In just a few weeks, it will be thirty-one years since my sister Denise ended her life. I don’t mention this because I want anyone to feel sympathetic toward me. Instead, it’s a reflection of how I’ve continued to have a bond with her and my parents (Mom will be gone ten years this month).

After a hiatus of several months, I’ve resumed taking Chelle Summer to markets, all of them now out of state, including two in Palm Springs in the last nine days and in three weeks, to Los Angeles. I’ve been sewing away alone at home. Now that I’m taking all these items I created out in the world, when people compliment my work and admire my creativity, it also reminds me that this is a significant way I keep connected to Denise (and Mom, too, but I have other reflections I’ll share about that soon).

I have often noted how we sewed Barbie clothes and how Mom let us pick remnants on her many trips to the fabric store where we tagged along. We used patterns, but we also designed our own dresses. We were always given Barbie clothes for Christmas and found packages of the plastic hangers in our stockings.

This was just one piece of our colorful and creative childhood (encouraged by Mom) and it’s how Chelle Summer came to be. After speaking and writing about suicide, grief, and sibling loss for some years, I knew it was time for me to do other things. I didn’t know that I would create a lifestyle brand, but as Chelle Summer began to morph into something and people asked about my inspiration, I began to understand it’s a way that I keep connected to Denise and the childhood that we shared.

Each piece I create is rooted into seeds that were planted in that childhood and even over thirty years later, she remains with me helping me to continue to be inspired. When one man walked by and noted how bright my booth, with all the colors and patterns is, he said, “You bring your own sunshine.” And in that sunshine is the hope and inspiration to keep me going.

Vintage cookbook placemats and prepping for two weekends in Palm Springs

Sharing a Meal

For much of my younger years, before my mom went back to work when I was in high school, we gathered at the dinner table as a family nearly every night. But, as I have written before, there also were extended family gatherings on holidays and to celebrate milestones like birthdays and graduations.

Gathering around the table for a meal, breaking bread as it is often said, is so important in many cultures. It’s a way to bring people to not just gather, but to get to know each other, share thoughts and ideas, with food as the centerpiece.

Dinner parties, if only for just a few people, have been part of much of my adult life. My first ones were high school cross country team dinners when I was coaching, learning the art of feeding a crowd of teens vast amounts of spaghetti. After marrying the first time, I was lucky to have multiple couples in my life who were often game for meals whether at our house or theirs.

That continued into my second marriage and last week, as I took the photo that I’ve posted above, with everyone serving themselves and each other, I realized how lucky I am.

I put a lot of thought into the meal– first into what I was going to serve. And then into what I was going to serve it on. The white plates were given to me from my friend Bonnie before she died; the butter dish, the carved wood plate the bread sits on, and the large glass pitcher belonged to my mom; and the rest of the items are mixed between vintage and wedding gifts (both the first and second time).

Life is about these moments that we share and sharing them over a homemade meal makes elevates their honor and meaning in our lives.

Lots of Goose and reflections after a high school presentation on suicide

One More Day

I had a meeting on the University of New Mexico campus last week. It had been a rainy morning and the sun was trying to peek through in the afternoon (although the wind was wreaking havoc with it warming up). Campus doesn’t look its best in the winter but I have several places I make sure to walk by, places that remind me of my graduate school days, particularly the first round when I biked from one end of the campus to the other.

I love this fountain and some years it’s not running, other years it is (or so it seems). And then there’s that view of the mountains, on this day the snow giving them a brighter reflection than usual.

This scene gives me inspiration, motivation. This is the sort of thing I try to remind myself of on a bad day, the days when things that I am working toward feel so far away or each thing I seem to pick up drops back on the floor. Yes, those days.

But this scene takes me back to moving here to New Mexico and starting a new life, one with mountains and desert and all the things that were foreign to a Midwestern girl. It makes me happy to see.

When we’re having a bad day, week, or month, one of the hardest parts of it is to think past those clouds in the sky, to see the sun shining on the snowy mountains. It’s the hope that’s covered up. Somehow we have to remind ourselves that even when we can’t see it, hope and sunshine are there.

We need to hold on for another day. While it feels like bad times last forever, they can’t. We might feel hopeless because we’re tired of being hopeless, too. A little rest in the darkness can also make the morning light brighter.

There is always another day ahead.

Introducing something new for Chelle Summer!

Telling Stories

The funny thing about Chelle Summer is that it didn’t come from just anywhere.

When one looks at so many brands, there doesn’t always seem to be a story behind what’s created and the continued creative process. Mostly, it’s people who wake up one day and want to make things.

There is much more depth to my story because it goes back to my childhood, the one with my sister Denise who died by suicide nearly 31 years ago. We never had a chance to experience an adult sibling relationship because she died just two weeks from her eighteenth birthday, when I was 21.

Instead, I spent many of the past 30 years speaking about suicide, about loss specifically about suicide loss, about how to move forward, about how to prevention suicide, about how to find hope after the trauma and devastation of suicide.

But in that time, I also continued to create as she and I had in our childhood. When we were young, Mom set us loose with sewing scraps and her mother’s Singer sewing machine making Barbie clothes. After Denise died, thanks to a neighbor across the street, I ventured into quilt making and mostly home decor.

Life got busy with other things and the weekends for sewing became fewer and farther between. At one time I came close to giving away Mom’s Bernina sewing machine that she had given me. I really didn’t think I would sew again.

I know, the joke was on me, right?

I had no idea that when I began to make bucket bags and created Chelle Summer, first collecting vintage dresses from estate sales, and then thinking that would never work, that it was going to be too difficult to get enough vintage clothes together to do that (another joke on me!), I would end up where I’m at.

While I use a mix of vintage and new materials, there are stories to tell in each item I make. It might be a bedspread from an estate sale or a piece of wallpaper I found stored in a garage. Or my favorite– the underside of vintage patio umbrella that no longer works. Items have passed through my hands because I wasn’t sure how to use them at the time.

Each item tells a story and it’s about the story I continue to tell, the story that was inspired by the childhood Denise and I shared, the adult life she didn’t experience. That story is what fuels Chelle Summer.

That story gives everything I make more meaning and love. And hope.

Fun with scarves, a vintage sweater, and the TaB bag

Mantras

For me, one of my biggest challenges has always been letting go of my worries.

At some point I realized I had to find a way to let go and I started to use rosary beads with a mantra.

All is well.

All is well.

All is well.

When I was stressed or worried– or felt like things weren’t as hopeful as I wanted them to be– I picked up the rosary and used each bead and said the mantra. It usually took about four beads and somehow the anxiety was eased and I moved on with my day.

Somewhere recently, I saw “opportunities are around the bend” and that has become my new mantra as I continue to work hard in these winter months when things aren’t as busy as other times of the year. I’m pretty good about propelling myself forward, but sometimes we need a little extra help to keep us going when we aren’t sure we can get up again and keep walking.

And sometimes it’s about taking small steps, even throwing a float into the pool while wearing a vintage dress and your grandmother’s fur stole works, too.