About Clara's Calling

I want to take a moment to share a conversation I had with a remarkable woman I met today. Her name is Clara Vargas. She is a Master Sergeant with the United States Army stationed at Shindand Airbase, Afghanistan.

She came into my shop late Sunday afternoon on Thanksgiving weekend. She is home on two weeks leave and is due to return to Afghanistan within the week. She shared a photo of her beautiful daughter who attends high school in Virginia Beach. It was at this point that I realized she does not have the luxury of cuddling up at bedtime with her daughter like I do with my girls. (one 16 and one 6 years old) She will be heading out to a war zone, leaving the security of her home and the loving touches of her family to carry out an incredible mission of compassion, education and good will.

MSG Vargas and her team of American and International solders are tasked with the mission of educating over 4,000 widowed Afghan women in their community how to sew. Their hope is to help them to learn how to provide the basic necessities for themselves and their children.

MSG Vargas continued to tell me about her mission and my first question was, “How can I go to Afghanistan to help?” Her answer was very simple, “You Can’t” she said, “You can’t go where we go, because we never know if we are going to be blown up or not.” Again I started to think about the sacrifices of our military man and women which lead to my second question, “How can I help?”

She began to explain the reason for her mission and the difficulty of the task. OK, I know some of you are thinking how hard can this “mission” really be? Well, as MSG Vargas explained, they have no electricity, fabric, basic supplies like thread needles, scissors, patterns, buttons, elastic, and on and on…. Are you starting to see the difficulty of the task? Remember, we are talking of upwards of 4,000 widowed women with nothing.

Jennifer Harvey, one of my wonderful educators, asked about what types of fabrics the women could sew with. Were there cultural taboos or socially unacceptable patterns or types of fabrics? Clara informed us that the boys were only permitted to wear white, gray or black.   The women are to have their head, and most times face, covered at all times and usually use dark colors. She wanted to introduce them to some floral fabrics and lighter colors for their clothing. She also wanted to teach them to make tote style bags. This is to carry their food – mostly breads. All they have is their hands to carry their food. So, now you can see that we are talking about as basic as you can get.

For any of you that have been to my shop, you know that I have a cute little antique case up front with the basic antique sewing items. A featherweight, old Singer owner’s manuals, old patterns and copies of vintage Women’s Home Journal. Well one of the other items in the case was an old coal iron. Well needless to say, that got backed up with several dozen old magazines that Susan Gatewood had donated to the shop for free give-a-ways, a few dozen machine needle sample packs, and about 80 yards of fabric.

After talking for about an hour of so about the Afghan woman’s needs and her progress so far, I thought of my next set of questions, “ Will this make a difference?”, and “Have you seen a difference?” Her answer was “Yes, everything makes a difference.” Clara went on to explain that the purpose of educating the Afghan people is two fold. One, is so they can do for themselves and not just depend on charity from governments from around the world or worse, rely on terrorists for survival at the cost of human rights and any sort of freedom. And two, to show them that American troops are there to help keep them safe and to help them rebuild their country for themselves and their children.    The good will of this program and others like it, they feel in time, will win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.   I truly believe that this war of terror will never be won unless people are empowered with education and at the very least some sort of safe and healthy living conditions. Without that, nothing else will matter. If faced with similar circumstances I know I would do whatever it takes to survive and to keep my children safe.

This mission is not just teaching some women to sew; any person who sews or quilts and teaches others knows that it is so much more than just learning how to sew. It’s the learning of a basic life skill, the building of self esteem, community spirit, charity, and comfort. The list goes on and on.

For those of you who know me and who know Bella Fabrics, you know that we are very involved in our community. We do a great deal of charity work and donate to many worthy causes. I am involved in our local guilds either by membership or by donating for one or more of their events. I never ask for recognition nor do I insist or expect any loyalty to my shop. However, I am going to ask each of you for something now. I know for a fact that most of you have more fabric, notions, tote bags, and basic sewing supplies than you will ever use in your life time. I want all of the extra stuff that you will never use. Fabric that you think is ugly, old style scissors, pins that you don’t like. A ruler that has a small chip or faded lines is a precious gifts to a woman who has nothing. They also need sewing machines. But remember, they have no electricity! They need your treadle machines.    I know you love them and they make a great decoration in you sewing room or front foyer, but I want you to think of this……..

During our conversation Clara said that their goal is to care for the elderly and educate the young. This is how they plan to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. Their goal is to help them up, not to oppress them; to teach them to dig their own wells for clean drinking water. Basically, it’s the teach a man to fish philosophy.

What I came away with from our conversation was this, If a woman or child from the Afghan region benefits from our generosity and willingness to help, possibly that may be one woman, or child that is less likely to participate in causing harm to any of our American service members. In other words, our husbands, sons, daughters, or grandchildren may be just a bit safer while trying to complete their missions. If that garment or quilt that an Afghan woman made, from your donated items warmed a child who then thought of Americans as friends, you just made a much bigger contribution that you thought. You may have just saved more than one life. Lets “pay it forward” and see where it takes us.

When People come into my shop and ask “How do you make such a beautiful quilt?” We tell them¸ ”It’s easy, you do it one stitch at a time”. When I asked MSG Clara Vargas how you change the minds of a whole nation against us she said, “With education, and by showing respect and kindness to one person at a time”.

MSG Clara Vargas has a Christmas wish list and I know we can help her succeed with her mission by donating. She said to think of anything you may need for any kind of sewing.   They have nothing.

Treadle style machines
Fabric
Thread – any kind
Needles and pins – all types
Scissors – all kinds
Elastic
Buttons
Tote bags
Tote bag patterns and samples so they can see how to make them for themselves.

Plus they can use basic survival items such as hats, mittens, shoes (basic) tooth brush, tooth paste, baby wipes.

She wanted we to emphasize that things that we may think are useless or junk, they would be happy to take and use.

I also would like you to forward this to any one you may know who would want to help. They can also donate funds for postage.

One final thought; I don’t believe in coincidence, I believe that on this Thanksgiving weekend I was blessed with this visit from Clara. Now it’s our turn to bless others. Let’s see what we can do when we all put our hearts together. I know that many of you support the Quilts of Valor program but wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if we could prevent another soldier from becoming wounded in the first place? Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if our soldiers were revered and appreciated for all of their efforts? You can help make that happen.

Thank you for reading this.

Lisa Steele

Bella Fabrics