Natalie Chanin - Embroidery: Threads and Stories from Alabama Chanin and The School of Making

EMBROIDERY

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NOUN: EMBROIDERY

a: the art or pastime of embroidering cloth

b: cloth decorated with embroidery

The teams of craftspeople were skilled in embroidery.

Synonyms:

needlework, needlepoint, needlecraft, sewing,
tatting, crewelwork, tapestry

PLURAL NOUN: EMBROIDERIES

elaboration of a story or event

The story was an embroidery of the era.

Synonyms:

elaboration, embellishment, adornment,

ornamentation, coloring, enhancement

Rosanne Cash

A FEATHER
FINDS A BIRD

Natalie and I have a mutual friend, Ann Tenenbaum, and about fifteen years ago, Ann said to me, You have to meet Natalie Chanin. You two are like the same person. I was already an admirer of Natalies. I could spend an hour or more at that one little rack devoted to Project Alabama at Barneys New York, in awe and wonder at who made such incredible articles of clothing. They belonged in a museum, I thought. (As I was writing this, I had a sudden longing to see some of the old Project Alabama pieces, went online and saw a T-shirt a woman had found in the back of her mothers closet and bought it.)

Ann had some Project Alabama pieces, and she let me borrow a long peach-colored skirt for an event. Again, she said, You have to meet Natalie. You two are like sisters.

We finally met for the first time in New York, when she was in the city for a trunk sale. She came to my house, and we sat on my little kitchen sofa and talked as if we had known each other for a lifetime.

We talked as if we had been waiting for the other to show up. There was no subject off limits, and it seemed that there was no secret we wouldnt share. Our adventure began.

In 2012, my husband, John, and I took a long trip through the Delta. We started in Greenwood, Mississippi, and visited some of the great geographical touchstones of the South: the grave of Robert Johnson (the Father of the Blues), Dockery Farms and the Tallahatchie Bridge in Mississippi, my fathers boyhood home in Arkansas, FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, and other places that were part of musical lore, part of my own southern history, or places in the South that John and I had dreamed of seeing and soaking up. I had a complicated relationship with the South: There was so much I loved, and so much I felt oppressed by, so much I wanted to embrace, and so much I needed to free myself from. John and I were headed further south on our road trip, to Baton Rouge and New Orleans, but first we went to Florence to see Natalie. We had dinner with her, and the next day we went to the Factory so that Natalie could give me a quick sewing lesson. I wanted to start working on a sewing kit from The School of Making, even though I hadnt embroidered or sewn in decades.

We sat at one of the long tables, and John took out his phone to make a little video of our sewing lesson. Natalie took the needle, threaded it, and then stroked the threads to smooth them out. You have to love the thread, she said casually. I felt my eyes well with tears. All the questions about my southern heritage, the threads I had to break, the threads I loved or would learn to loveall the questions that had been weighing on my heart, and rumbling in my subconscious, started to surface. Natalie took me to Tom Hendrixs magic wall (the Wichahpi Commerative Stone Wall, or Te-lah-nays Wall), in Florence, and as I sat on the stone bench in the middle of the circle of stones, totems, and sacred objects, I closed my eyes and felt something was meditating me, instead of the other way around.

My trip with John continued, and the songs started coming. We wrote a song called A Feathers Not a Bird, about an urgent journey through the South. I wrote about finding the light inside my own head, about pretty clothes and magic walls, and about learning to love the thread. The song led to more songs, and became an album, called The River & the Thread. It won three GRAMMY S in 2015. The acclaim was wonderful, but more than that, it was a catharsis and a settling of internal rivalries through the power of art, music, and friendship, a deep dive into history, both personal and cultural, and my own way of reckoning with all the threads that have broken, and the strong ones that remain and grow stronger in my own life. It all began with an urgent journey to touch the past, a sewing lesson from a master sister-in-spirit, and an open heart.

ROSANNE CASH

A Feathers Not a Bird

BY ROSANNE CASH AND JOHN LEVENTHAL

Im going down to Florence, gonna wear a pretty dress

Sit atop the magic wall with the voices in my head

Then Ill drive on through to Memphis, past the strongest shoals

And on to Arkansas just to touch the gumbo soul

A feathers not a bird

The rain is not the sea

A stone is not a mountain

But a river runs through me

Theres never any highway when youre looking for the past

The land becomes a memory and it happens way too fast

The moneys all in Nashville but the lights inside my head

So Im going down to Florence just to learn to love the thread

A feathers not a bird

The rain is not the sea

A stone is not a mountain but a river runs through me

I burned up seven lives and I used up all my charms

I took the long way home just to end up in your arms

So Im going down to Florence, now Ive got my pretty dress

Im gonna let the magic wall put the voices in my head

A feathers not a bird

The rain is not the sea

A stone is not a mountain

But a river runs through me

The Rosanne Coat, New Leaves in Forest Green, couched appliqu and beading, Alabama Chanin

Fabric swatch, A Feathers Not a Bird, reverse appliqu and Stem Stitch embroidery, Rosanne Cash The School of Making collaboration (see more about embroidery stitches on )