My hands are new to knitting, yet it feels like they’re waltzing with large wooden needles and a ball of yarn that changes color from apple green to sky blue. In a circle of women, their friendly banter like a soundtrack, yarn, cloth, needles, crochet hooks, and embroidery floss weave together to create practical art.

I’m in the midst of a group called “Stitch-a Bit,” assorted ODU students, alumni, staff, and crafters who have been meeting every Wednesday from 5 to 7 p.m. for five years. The gathering is open to anyone who loves—or wants to learn—handcrafts. This evening, we’re making belts, scarves, shopping bags, embroidered pillow covers, socks, and more.  There’s a sense of relaxation and equality here, no matter how much experience each person has.

In a high-tech world, where life often runs at warp speed, people are slowing down with a return to fiber arts and crafts. Twenty and thirty-something folks are picking up knitting needles and bringing them to local coffee shops like Fairgrounds in Ghent, making crafts “cool” instead of old fashioned. At the same time, mid-life women are pursuing a variety of fabric arts while discovering new definitions of self.

Across the country, yarn shops and quilting stores are sprouting, and many fiber artists are taking traditional crafts to new heights. Locally, more and more women are cleaning up their sewing machines and organizing their fabric closets. For some, these pursuits are hobbies. For others, it’s a life force that blends personal healing and growth with new careers.

MAGICAL OASIS

You’d never suspect that a magical oasis filled with color and fabric sits right behind the door of a humble set of offices near Laskin Road in Virginia Beach. Welcome to Oceanfront Interiors, an interior decorating and window treatment studio started by one of Virginia Beach’s long time professional decorator-designers, Gini Bonds. Above the giant worktable, a fabric mermaid spreads her tail on a shelf. Nearby, pieces of velveteen, silk, and fur are pinned together, the beginnings of Gini’s unique, hand-sewn cloth purses, available for sale at a new shop—Pungo Past and Present—in Downtown Pungo.

Cloth bags were among the first objects Gini created. “My mother taught me to sew when I was a kid,” Gini said. She loved to play with fabric, needles, and thread and made “hippie” bags for herself and her friends at Kellam High School in the 70s.

“I remember embroidering a monarch butterfly sitting on some Queen Ann’s Lace onto a piece of brown velvet, and then it ended up as a patch on my blue jeans,” she said with a smile.

Over the years, Gini worked for small businesses, sewing custom draperies, cushions, and pieces for home décor. She was the original owner and founder of Coverworks, Inc. and earned a fine reputation before selling the business in 2007 to pursue other interests. Now, Gini has reinvented her life in this new space with exciting ideas for the future.

We walk through the clean, well-lit studio, its walls dotted with cheerful scraps of fabric and paint samples. Gini talks enthusiastically about her plans to utilize her studio as a haven to teach classes for folks who want to use fabric, needles, beads, and thread to create works of art that promote healing, something she herself has experienced.

The story of her Mermaid doll rises from what Gini called “a really dark time” in her life, when she endured frequent challenges. Gini would retreat into her little sewing room in the evenings, working on her doll, adding sea shells, beads, embroidery, and various fabrics. She didn’t want to stop the project and worked on it for over a year. Making the doll became a balm for her battered heart.

“When I sew, I’m absolutely lost in just being. It’s very joyful,” Gini explained. “There are only two other things in my life—gardening and surfing—that make me feel like I can take the top of my head off and leave it for the moment. And with this,” she gestures toward her bags and fabrics, “something exists at the end of the day that didn’t exist in the morning.”

It’s important to Gini that she pass on these creative gifts to others, that the sewing arts don’t get lost.  One of her new assistants, 19-year-old Emmah Berry, who impressed her boss when she created a pillow out of a metallic, Harley Davidson-themed t-shirt, sent Gini a text during my visit: “This opportunity to work with you has not only taught me how to sew, but how to have patience in everything else also. I can use these skills for the rest of my life.”

Gini plans to begin offering workshops this fall. “I hope people will want to play with all these things—fibers and buttons and textures—and put them together in ways that mean something,” she said.

The skills that Gini learned as a child in her mother’s home have led to her life’s work, where she is discovering a deep well of creativity that refreshes her spirit. Now, Gini is ready to embrace her role as a fiber artist who inspires others.

MENDING BODY & SOUL

Art quilter Karen Lee Carter, a native Chicagoan now in Virginia Beach, made her very first quilt during a dramatic health crisis and a career change. She had just turned 40 years old, and her work in advertising was not suiting her anymore. All her joyful, creative experiences of cutting and pasting ads had transitioned as computer software developed to do the same task, and the only skill she felt she was using was typing. Karen said, “Enough.”

Around that time, she went for a regular physical checkup and discovered she had a very aggressive form of breast cancer. Yet the diagnosis did not stop Karen, who was married and the mother of three children still in school.

“Very quickly, it validated the progress and decisions I had already made about doing something different with my life,” she explained. “I was passionately pursuing calligraphy, and I started quilting while I was going through chemotherapy.”

In her first quilting class, which began the day before her first day of chemo, Karen kept her health problems to herself. “I was just Karen, not Karen with cancer,” she said. She produced a small sampler quilt with four blocks in pastel fabrics. She worked on her project, stitching while her physical body mended, and discovered a new passion.

“I just lost myself in the process; it was so therapeutic,” she recalled. “And on the days when I didn’t feel well and I had to stay home, I was happy that I had that to do.”

“I was so focused,” she continued. “The whole afternoon would go by, and I wouldn’t have thought about anything.”

Within six months, Karen had made quilts for each of her children. She reflects now that she probably was motivated to leave something behind. She had no way of knowing the outcome of her cancer. After a bilateral mastectomy, six months of chemo, and five years of drug therapy, Karen is convinced that quilting pulled her through.

She began to pursue a freelance design business, working with calligraphy, and eventually, she was commissioned to create quilts for a unique, high-end arts and crafts shop in Chicago. Every commission was intended to celebrate a particular event in somebody’s life or to honor a person who had passed.

“All of a sudden I was not only doing work that I loved, but it was really meaningful,” Karen said. She made quilts for that shop for ten years, but on the side, she was designing and creating her art quilts.

Now settled in a part of the country that feels like “being on vacation,” Karen Lee Carter’s work is displayed in quilt shows, art galleries, magazines, and also in a traveling exhibit called “Out on a Limb,” featured in the August/September issue of Quilter’s Newsletter. Her quilt called “Arbol de la Vida,” featuring a design rising from Karen’s love of Mexican folk art, debuted at last year’s International Quilt Festival in Houston.

Karen shares the beauty of her art quilts as they grace the walls of her open, airy home in Broad Bay Point Greens. In the living room, a quilt celebrates the rich textures of her 25-year marriage to her husband, Tad, complete with a silhouette of the couple stitched over a giant heart, resplendent with color and textures. Upstairs, Karen has family quilts and personal quilts in hallways and on every bed and is delighted with two sewing rooms: one that includes her closet full of material, organized efficiently in clear plastic boxes by color and pattern; and another room with her computer, a giant table, and more space to create.

This fall, Karen is busy teaching classes—for confident beginners—at A Different Touch in Chesapeake and Sew-EZ in Portsmouth, using top-of-the-line quilting machines. She rewards her students when they finish projects with a special bead or embellishment for their next quilt.

“We take great satisfaction in making things, sewing things,” Karen said, “and I do see a resurgence in these crafts, and I’m excited about it.”

JOURNEY WITH YARN

While Gini and Karen have become professionals in their fabric design and work, many people are just beginning to consider making a small wall quilt, embroidering a pillow cover, or in my case, making a scarf to begin my mid-life journey with yarn. Gretchen Edwards-Bodmer, who describes herself as a “Jane of all trades” at ODU’s Women’s Center and founder of ODU’s “ Stitch-a Bit,” says the beginners and the seasoned crafters help each other.

Gretchen said the numbers and gender of the group changes over time, depending on what’s going on with university life. Sometimes the group has a handful, and other evenings thirty or so men and women gather in ODU’s Webb Center, creating a large circle where everyone fits. This winter, Gretchen says, there’s a community project for all those who want to help out.

“We’re making comfort blankets for the children who are involved in the YWCA’s Women-in Crisis Shelter, something the kids can snuggle with during a nap,” said Gretchen, mother of a two-year-old son named Jackson. She’s has already started one.

Now as I pull the multi-colored yarn over my needles, count the stitches, and watch my creation grow, I consider how many women, all over the world, have done this work for generations, creating cozy clothes, quilts, and blankets with yarn and fabric. This fall and winter, perhaps some of us will return to these pleasant activities for healing, for creativity, and maybe because it’s just plain fun. 

For more info:

• Gini Bonds: Call 773-3779 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

• Karen Lee Carter: web.mac.com/klcquilts

• Stitch-a-Bit: Search for Stitch a Bit ODU on Facebook

Kathleen Fogarty writes regularly for Tidewater Women.