Mending Broken Seams

This article was featured in The WALK’s Fall 2024 print magazine — The Regenerative Issue.

The lifetime of a pointe shoe is simply decided by the weathering of its satin, the tearing of its threads, and the fraying of its ribbons. The beautiful slippers have complete autonomy over their usage, and I, their dedicated partner, was always complacent. Eventually, the weathering of my pointe shoes began to spread, and my favorite tutus began to wear. I could not stop this indefinite unraveling of my dance career.

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Once I had outgrown each tutu and pointe shoe, I decided to lay the disheveled seams to rest alongside my dreams of becoming a professional dancer. Not long after, a creative void began to brew inside me. I missed the feeling of freely existing in my studio while music flooded my limbs with movement and purpose. Eventually, I turned to the confines of my home in hopes of finding a new outlet. I waltzed into my mother’s closet and took a shirt she hadn’t worn in a while. It smelled like her car on Saturday mornings before dance practice.

I began cutting the shirt’s seams and pinning them back together in different formations. Then, I dusted off my family’s old sewing machine and soon willed the needle and thread to dance. Each stitch was a new movement synced to the rhythm of the gentle hum of my machine. Once the music settled down and the dance was over, I knew the creative confinement that hemmed me in was broken. I had transformed my mother’s old shirt from a fading memory into something ready to be injected with new life and new experiences.

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Once I mastered the steps of sewing, nothing could keep me away from my machine, my dependable partner. After exhausting my mother’s old clothes, I began thrifting, hoping to discover old memories to repurpose. Each garment had a life they lived with their prior owners, all of which remained a mystery to me. I loved that the sense of the unknown was enveloped in the threads of thrifted garments. The weight of such mystery propelled my imagination and creativity; it felt as though I was back in the mirrored walls of my dance studio. The steps came naturally to me, and I began routinely spinning new stories into old threads.

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It is not easy to evolve and grow out of a habituated passion, but in the unraveling, there is opportunity to mend new life out of broken seams. Sometimes, the needle and thread are not synced to the soft humming of the machine, leaving a pulling stitch that does not align perfectly. But there is beauty in the uneven stitching; it shows that life has been lived before you, and there will be life lived after you. The fabric of my past carries on to my future and, with it, a dying passion ready to be ignited once again.

Featured Image Courtesy of Vogue