The first day I ever wore the Lichen Duster, we took a stroll to the beach. After a week of hot October weather, it had finally cooled down again. Add some wind and June Gloom like fog at the beach and it was the perfect day to break in my new garment. We spotted a dolphin. And a white-tailed kite as it was hovering above the dunes. Hermine found a perch on a driftwood log for her hummingbird self and built a seaweed nest. Kelp adorned her little special spot. Frederick frolicked in running barefoot in the sand and the many shore birds he tried to imitate. I asked Hermine if she could take some pictures of me, which she did and which you get to see in this post. 

Whenever I am working on a sewing project, the chores in our house get neglected. The floor is covered in small pieces of thread and tiny snipped off fabric pieces. The kitchen sees minimal cleaning. Usually I pack away my sewing material, but when I try to get in some sewing while the kids are awake and off their zooms, the table becomes a shared space for snacks, toys and my sewing machine. For we have one table in the living area and I don’t have a seperate space for my projects. I have to move to the floor to cut fabric, do the ironing (on a cotton blanket) and pin certain seams into place. But squatting is a welcome change of position after working on the machine. 

There lies a unique motivation in finishing a garment. My whole energy is poured into each step of the process, even long after the kids are in bed. Usually a time when my mind and body just long to rest. With sewing, however, comes a unique challenge for my dexterity as well as my ability to imagine things in three dimensions. Sewing is problem solving on a very practical level. Once you know what to do next and how your garment is supposed to be coming together, stitching certain pieces together becomes very straight forward. 

Sewing also makes me more aware of a certain trait of my personality: I am engaged with the majority of a project, but when it comes to fully finishing it, I tend to pull away and distract myself with other projects. The last steps to completion get stretched, which leads to unfinished projects being piled up. This is probably not good for my mental health, as it builds up this inner list of things to do rather than successfully letting go of a project before moving on to the next. The last steps before completion also tend to be the most extensive ones and it is way easier to get carried away by simple steps of other projects. 

The Lichen Duster is the perfect project for fall as it will serve as a medium weight layer for crisp mornings and starry evenings. Or even a cozy robe around the house, as we are spending so much time at home these days. Fall tells the story of harvest, bounty and gratitude. Fall is the time when we fill our pockets with foraged goodies (good thing the Lichen Duster has spacious ones) and fill food stashes for the winter months when resources become scarce. At least that’s what past generations did for centuries. 

Back in Germany, fall meant foraging for king boletes with my dad, kicking up piles of leaves from beeches, maples, oaks and horse chestnut trees. And quite a bit of rain on endless grey days until we weren’t sure if we would ever feel sunshine on our skin again. I remember a year when my dad and I visited my grandma in Southern Germany and I tried to capture the smell of the woods. I was fishing for words that described best the feeling that the autumnal forest evoked in me. It was a sunny day, and the trees were in the middle of shedding their leaves. The woods smelled of mud, mushrooms and wet leaves. My grandma would haul home baskets full of bay boletes. Fall symbolized a time when change was most visible. Visceral even. Fall in Southern California is quite different. When we first got here, in the month of October, it didn’t feel like fall. Why was it still so hot and sunny? Every. Day. It was also the fall before the Thomas Fire in December 2017.

A few fall seasons in Santa Barbara and the seasonal change is very subtle. With temperatures still very much like the rest of the year, it is the light that gets a tad bit colder. The shadows become longer and the time when it is too hot to be on our patio disappears. Nature here is in a state of waiting. Waiting for the brown grass and bushes to be replenished by the rain that is to come. Fall here means that change is about to happen. Almost like a hope for greener and wetter times. And I am keeping an eye out for that promise. Fall back home always was a promise from the deciduous trees: we’ll be back next year. We have been working so hard, growing leaves and flowers and seeds or nuts, providing shade, making oxygen. We need a break. Let us rest. And so they do. And the way they say farewell is the prettiest they could have come up with. The beeches and oaks and birches and horse chestnuts don’t really go anywhere. And yet, recognizing them for who they are only by their bark is a skill that I can still improve upon. They are standing their ground they have been on for the last decades and during winter they will speak of retreat and teach us to hold on to our resources throughout the cold months to come. To turn within. To self-reflect. 

In Southern California we don’t get that break so obviously. Even in ‘winter’ it’s gorgeous outside, which is exhausting to me as sunny days were always meant to be used, to be spent outside, to make memories. Being idle on sunny and warm days was something I had to learn here. But I am getting ahead of myself. I will speak of winter more when the rain finally hits Southern California and when we can pose in front of an artificial Christmas tree in sandals and shorts and t-shirts. For now I am watching the London planes in our backyard shed their leaves, blanketing our patio with brown. The same brown of the hills and fields outside of town. The plant life here in October seems to be saying: hold on just a little longer. We are anticipating the greening rain to come in a few weeks just as much.

I am homesick for the falls of my childhood. And with that longing a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke finds its way back into my heart. Herbsttag/Autumn Day is just as beautiful when I read it today. 

The verse 

Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben, 

which loosely translates to 

Those who wander alone, shall remain alone for a long time, 

struck me in my late teenage years. My interpretation was that those who haven’t fallen in love yet, over the course of spring and summer, will remain lonely for the winter. For the transformational character of fall reminds us to leave behind what no longer serves us and to assess what is worth taking into winter with us to make it bloom the next spring. With most of the plant world dormant for the winter, you knew that the world wouldn’t be like before for a while and that you had to choose whom to take into that changed world with you. Who would you choose to get through the dark months of the year? 

As I am hand stitching the hem, sleeves and front facings of the Lichen Duster in place, I am reminded of something Hermine said a while back about some of her creations. We were looking at the stones that she had painted when she said: “Mom, do you know why those stones are special to me? They hold the memories of the days when I painted them!” Her wisdom knocks me off my feet sometimes. I also remember where and when we collected some of the stones. And I know that I am stitching these last September days into the Lichen Duster too. I will remember how the only machine needle I had at the time broke and how I decided to hand finish the hem and sleeves. And the nights in which Jupp read that fantasy book by Wolfgang Hohlbein to me. And how I simply enjoyed his reading while he genuinely was excited about the book he read to me. As time goes by, we will add more memories that will stay ingrained in the Duster, as it will be with every special self made garment. 

Garment stories is a collection of garments that I have made myself. Here I am sharing memories and meaning attributed to those garments rather than tutorials of how to make them. I will add a few details, however, like pattern, fabric, yarn and other resources for you to have a starting point if you are inspired to dive into handmade clothes yourself. 

Pattern: Lichen Duster by Sew Liberated

https://sewliberated.com/products/lichen-duster-pdf-sewing-pattern

Fabric: 7 oz linen from Conscious Clothing in color Rust. 

Thread: Colonial Organic Cotton (300 yrd spool) in color Terra Cotta

Tutorials: https://sewliberated.com/tutorials-sewalongs