I Made a Stuffed Seahorse

Woah….I just made a stuffed animal seahorse. Creativity is so cool!

Upon research, I learned straight from Wikipedia that seahorses are the world’s slowest fish, and less than 0.5% live past infancy. The seahorse is also one of the most adorable stuffed animals posted on Pinterest.

I wanted to do something creative so I could feel more alive... and my friend is having a baby, so I will make her a gift.

Unfortunately, the link for the seahorse sewing pattern was broken.

So I bought the supplies and printed the seahorse hoping to trace it bigger on fabric. I’m not a great artist and I still wanted a real pattern. I let my perfectionism replace my motivation, and a few weeks passed.

Recently, I spent time with a friend who has a sewing machine. She made the pattern while I sipped tea. Then we laughed about our perfectionist tendencies… I sewed the eye button while she spent 10 minutes sketching the flawless tip of the seahorse’s tail.

At one point, I took a bathroom break and realized my sweatpants were on backwards. A fellow perfectionist couldn’t help a sista out? I mean come on! There’s even a decal on the front!

We both laughed at that, and the three hours it took to make the stuffed toy, following the various “cut” and “sew” lines on the hand-drawn pattern. Though perfectionists, we still made some improvisations, which we explained in professional, educated detail during a pretend sewing infomercial.

In the morning, I woke to find – next to the practically perfect stuffed seahorse – a new hand-drawn color coordinated pattern on the kitchen table. My thoughtful friend is a genius, and I was delighted.

I relearned recently that creativity is part of what it means to be human – and I need it to feel fully alive.

Creativity was reawakened in me last year when I sewed curtains for a priest’s cabin, and a catering cart cover for an industrial kitchen. Designing, planning, and using my weaker left brain was an enlivening challenge. I also discovered that “compliments”/reconciliation I received as a child touched an important part of me.

“You're good with your hands,” my brothers often told me as reparation for insults. The repetition hurt my younger heart, but now I know it's a good gift to have. I also learned that God put creativity in all of us because we’re made in His image.

Last year I began to realize that God, in His creativity, can remake me. I am still me, but He can soften, reshape and open the places that became rigid, shut and sealed with resentment, anger and fear.

One image that came to mind was my body as pliable like bread dough. And God’s chisel was the Eucharist. He gently scraped my malleable body with Himself, carving out lies and helping me to rise – a current work in progress.

God created seahorses, the slowest and least likely to survive in the sea. He also created me. Right now He’s working slowly to transform my woundedness into love. How will I survive? With a little creativity.