Christmas gifts that come from the heart and hand
BETH DAVISSON HAS spent a lifetime loving to sew. The retired language arts teacher grew up watching her mother sew. An expert seamstress, her mother made everyday clothes, as well as Christmas and birthday gifts for her six little girls.
Davisson picked up her mother’s skills and passion for design. When the Depression and World War II changed Americans’ lives, her mother even added class to the clothes she made of sackcloth.
Davisson sewed for herself through college and throughout her career. After she married, she made linens and other things for her home, and clothes for her children.
Now that the Bakersfield woman is retired, the whir of her sewing machine is directed to making gifts for family, friends and deserving causes.
For her, like for many people interviewed for this story, turning a passion into a gift is what gift-making is all about.
Embroidered towels are the traditional gifts she gives to her four sons, their wives and five grandchildren. Recently, she turned boxes of her scrap material into sock puppets.
The puppets grew out of a request from a young boy she was tutoring. He was so happy to have a puppet that she decided to make them for her sister, a preschool teacher in Tennessee, and for a Bakersfield friend, who teaches kindergarten. She said the children’s joyful response brought her joy, as well.
As the pandemic kept families apart last Christmas, Sandra Larson scrambled to keep connected to her children and grandchildren.
“We couldn’t visit grandchildren, so I made a ton of candy for them and put it in the mail,” she recalled.
A knitter, Larson also found a use for all those empty Kraft marshmallow crème jars left over from candy making.
“I knitted stocking caps, put a battery candle inside (the jars), drew a face on the jars and used them for gifts for friends,” she explained. “I put cash inside for those who help me during the year and that I usually give a small cash gift to at Christmas.
“I had a lot of yarn left over from the year and I knitted 12 adult-size Christmas hats and three hats for dogs. I had to really think about the anatomy of a dog’s ear to come up with the doggy design,” she recalled, admitting that her dog, Diego, was not at all impressed by her effort.
Audrey Baker crochets and has long treated her family and friends to Christmas gifts.
“I’ve made hats, slippers, hand warmers, scarves and afghans. One year, I made every woman in the office — about nine to 12 women — slippers,” she said. “They were thrilled, formed a circle and had a picture taken with them all holding one foot out.”
Bakersfield graphic artist Dinah Campbell recalled her family’s tradition of making presents for each other. Some were serious, some goofy, all creative.
“I liked it, our daughters liked it, my husband liked it, but some of the other family members didn’t,” she recalled. “I think it was a burden for them to think of things to make, so we quit.
“But during that time, we got or gave sci-fi stories written by a son-in-law, home-made slippers (plain slippers) with personally appropriate purchased embroidered patches glued on, recipe book holders, home-dried persimmons, pottery, knitted and crocheted items, coasters made of slices of pretty wood, buttons made of slices of manzanita wood and a ‘family portrait’ of one family branch using old dollhouse figure with family photos affixed and stationed retablo-like in a wooden gift box.”
Not every handmade gift comes in a box with a bow. Some of us — yes, that’s me — sew only to patch holes and don’t know how to knit. But I do know how to publish. I team up every year with Shutterfly to make commemorative books. This Christmas, I also made 520-piece Shutterfly puzzles to celebrate family members’ trips to Louisiana and scuba diving.
But the real gift-maker in the Hardisty family is husband Jack, a wood-turner. He has the talent. I supervise, buy project supplies and act as “quality control.” (Yes, that basically defines a “bossy pest.”)
Since he traded his large table saws for smaller wood lathes three years ago, Jack has been producing jewelry, bottle stoppers, pepper mills, bowls, chopping blocks, French-style rolling pins and all kinds of kitchen, barbecue and gardening tools that he gifts to friends and family.
As the pandemic has ground away at us for the past two years, the gift-giving has become year-round. Gifts are mailed out randomly just to brighten the lives of those we love.
“Who doesn’t like to get a gift?” Jack notes. “Especially when it comes from the heart and hands.”