How Crafting Saved My Life
Most people know me as an actress, either as Liza, the 40-year-old divorcée passing as a millennial to get a publishing job on Younger, or perhaps as Reno, the tap-dancing evangelist-turned-nightclub-chanteuse in Anything Goes. Some know me as a singer and may have even come to my cabaret show at the Café Carlyle. But anyone who knows me well knows that I am as passionate about crafting as I am about singing, dancing, and acting.
Ultimately, I see myself as a maker, and crafting is the art of making things—it can be a crochet, cross-stitch, drawing, cooking, collaging, or even gardening. It can also be creating a musical, or an evening of song, or a book. What matters most is that there is something tangible at the end of the process. The very act of making these things is what keeps me centered.
Anxiety runs in my family—in me.
I am the daughter of an agoraphobic mother. I make a living as a performer. It’s complicated. And yet if I am feeling anxious or overwhelmed, I crochet, or collage, or cross-stitch. These hobbies have literally preserved my sanity through some of the darkest periods of my life. Each beautiful thing I have made over the years tells the story of who I was when I made it. (Mostly blankets! Dozens of blankets!) My crafts have helped hold me together and given me a place to pour all of my love or sadness into. And while I love a wide range of crafts, I do have a favorite: crochet.
I first got hooked (get it?) when I was on a national tour with Grease, playing Sandy Dumbrowski. I was 19 years old and had lost my voice, so I was on a forced two-week vocal rest. I wanted a project to help me pass the time. I went to a craft store, likely Michaels or Jo-Ann Fabrics—which are now two of my favorite places on the planet—and bought a book called How to Crochet. It was New Year’s Eve 1994, and I wrote the following entry in my journal: “On this 1st day of 1995, I taught myself how to crochet. I think it’s neat. I want to make people things.”
Since then, some of my proudest achievements are things I’ve created with my hands—whether it be the penguin baby blanket I made when my daughter Emily was born or the toilet-paper-roll cover I crocheted for Hilary Duff’s wedding present—because what else do you get Hilary Duff but a handmade albino octopus toilet-paper-roll cover (with rainbow button suckers on its cream tentacles)?
Most recently, I decided to cross-stitch a Christmas stocking for Emily, similar to one my mother stitched for me when I was a child. My mom and I had a complicated relationship. And while I cannot find that stocking, I still have the strawberry Shortcake bookmark she made me when I was 8 years old. I don’t recall my mother saying “I love you” often. But I do know that she poured her love for me into that bookmark. I tell my daughter I love her every day. And following my mom’s example, I also make things for her as tangible proof of that love.
Similar to the list of roles I’ve played on TV or Broadway, I have a hobby resume. For every production I was in or concert I have sung, there is a collage or stuffed animal that tells the behind-the-scenes backstory of my life. On set I was making out with Peter Hermann, one of my love interests in Younger. In my dressing room, I was crocheting a pink dinosaur for Emily. Every piece I’ve made means so much more than the yarn or marker with which it was made. Each is a time capsule and heirloom, spanning my past, present, and future, and together they tell a fuller, more complex and colorful story of who I am and how I want to be remembered.
My stories are rooted in the things I have made over the years, and the result is an overlapping not unlike my most recent crafting feat: mosaic crochet. For this, you use two different colors of yarn at a time, switching back and forth often, working into previous rows. It is never straight across—you have to double back to make intricate patterns. The result is layered, colorful, and complex. A lot like life itself.
Excerpted with permission from the book HOOKED: HOW CRAFTING SAVED MY LIFE by Sutton Foster. Copyright © 2021 by Sutton Foster. Reprinted with permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.
