Growing up, one of my favorite things to do was sit with my mom and watch her crochet in the living room. I would find the rhythm of her needle so soothing and become mesmerized as she retold stories of her childhood and our home in El Refugio, Mexico. I savored these moments because they rarely happened or were short in duration. You see, while I was growing up, my mother was always working and when she came home, she would immediately change gears into a homemaker where she would clean and cook for my 5 siblings and I. So whenever I had a chance to see her relax I would be thrilled and would sit with her and listen.

She taught me how to crochet when I was in middle school where she would show me a doily or tablecloth my tia Lore or my abuelita Reza made for us. She would walk me through the basics and showed me how to add rows and make my own adjustments to create something unique. Similarly with clothing, she taught me how to mend and adjust my clothes by looking at how the shirt or pants were sewn in the first place.

Learning how to create by deconstructing an item has guided me throughout most of my life. I have even used this way of thinking to help me program in R and build new tools for my workplace and myself. So as I began thinking about where I was and where I wanted to be in my life a couple things became clear to me:

  1. I needed to start making time for myself
  2. There is so much going on in this world that I don’t know anything about
  3. I wanted to make sure that my actions aligned with my values

With these things in mind, the idea for this blog began after I completed the Confronting Anti-Blackness training and continued to grow when I decided to join the Gather Quilt Sew Along. During each week of the sew along, I encouraged myself to write from my heart and be honest. The joy and lessons I received from these reflections are something I didn’t want to end once the sew-along concluded.

It was my husband who first mentioned that I should start a blog and it was something I had always joked about, but the more I thought about it, the more right it felt. The blog’s name is a reminder of the beauty and comfort I feel when I speak Spanglish with my friends and family. It is a space where I want to share the true process of quilting, sewing, and even share programming updates I make to the blog using R. So if there is something that you’ve been pushing off or uncertain about, I hope you join me in this journey.