Sutton is an actress in Broadway and on television. She means this title literally, as she tells the story of her life and how crafts helped her deal with it. Her mother had a lot of mental health issues that were difficult to deal with--she was agoraphobic, she got into feuds with family members, etc.--and Sutton found that crafting was a great distraction and help in coping with the stress of her family life, and/or just dealing with difficult castmates who were shutting her out as a teenager.
At age 19 while on the national tour of Grease and dealing with castmates who shunned her, she took up cross stitching ("my mom's hobby") as a way to remind herself of happier times in her childhood. "It was a form of self-protection: I don't need to socialize! I have a project to work on!" It gave her a purpose beyond performing, not to mention something to do while the rest of the cast went out without her. "I didn't know then what a profound impact this would have on me throughout my career." It gave her something to focus on besides worrying about how other people didn't like her, and the less she cared about them not liking her. Later on, after her first marriage breaks up, she copes with it by making a bunch of crocheted squares. "That became a visual reminder that I was making progress. Each time I placed a finished square on one of the piles, it reminded me that I was healing."
Sutton draws portraits of her characters and representations of deities when she wants help in having a baby. And after she finally adopts one, she decides to make ten original baby blankets she designed herself.
Sutton loves the word badass--she has it on display in her house and included the pattern for a baby blanket with that word on it in the book later on. I also love how she and Patti LuPone have a mutual admiration society and Patti even agrees to be interviewed for the book. "She made you feel the meaning behind the music." Patti says that she's not a badass in her life, "but I won't let anyone (bleep) around with me onstage."
I did like the moment where she wants to be an understudy in Thoroughly Modern Millie, then gets offered Eponine in Les Miserables on Broadway--a part she's played before, a sure thing, as opposed to "an understudy in an unknown play in La Jolla." One of the show writers tells her, "I have no idea what we'll have you do in the show, but all I can say is, trust your gut." Sure enough, the star leaves, and Sutton gets the part for real, and that show made it to Broadway.
Sutton also talks about the process of working with an editor to put the book together, and clearly they did an excellent job of that. I also like how she talked about craftiing with her castmates on "Younger," getting several of them to crochet with her, and her guy costar even learned how to crochet behind her back so he could make her a gift of a giant Thank You banner. That's adorable.
"I think a lot about what it means to "sew in the ends" and how this book helped me do that. There is meaning in everything if you look for it."
I have been blabbing on about this book to crafters, and this week I wanted to blab on about it to you. Four stars. Highly recommended for crafters, theater nerds, and for those of us who are both and craft to save our sanity (especially while backstage).
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