(My mom, Betty. With her mom, Millie)

I didn't always know I was proverbially "my mother's daughter". Maybe you can relate. I learned I was "my mother's daughter" as an adult. She was sensitive and creative. She was an artist at her core... though I'm not sure she would have described herself as such as she got older, which makes me a bit sad. There's no doubt she was. We clashed like mothers and daughters do when I was a teen... but in retrospect? I am my mother's daughter through and through.

We lost her in November of 2024. I knew I'd be devastated, but I maybe didn't know the kind of deep wound the loss would leave. I felt like an untethered balloon just floating around with nothing (and no one) to hold me to the ground. The person who connected me to this earth was gone.

I did what I do when I feel lost. I started creating. Specifically, painting. A lot of water color just sitting at the kitchen table... the best place to create. I don't know if my mom created in times of loss. Naturally, I wish I could ask her. But I do know that this was a lady who was ill from the time she was eight years old. In the times she was in the hospital or at home sick, she told us she learned to paint and draw. Then she went to the Art Institute of Chicago as a teen on scholarship.

As a child, my mom was always creating. She made incredible oil paintings, she sewed, she crafted, she did needlepoint. She made our halloween costumes, she baked elaborate birthday cakes, made candy and beautiful cookies... I'm pretty sure my siblings and I all believed and believe still to this day that our mom could have done anything. 

Afterall, she had four children when everyone told her she may never have children. She raised us all to be successful adults even when times were really hard. And, she got a bachelor's degree and a masters in social work and WORKED all at the same time. I'm still dumbfounded how that's even possible.

It's only as an adult that I can see what I learned from watching her. Even as she said sometimes the opposite (she seemed to worry a lot that we'd find disappointment with lofty goals), what she actually DID taught me that I can do absolutely anything I set my mind to. And one day in my early 30s, I said to myself, "if someone else can do this, so can I". And that's how I ended up opening the doors, one by one, year by year, that led me to fabric design and art.

After she passed, at the kitchen table, I opened my paint palette, and what poured out was art that was deeply connected to home and gardens, to family traditions and to the love given to me by my mother. Not as much inspired by her, but because of her.

And so, I present, the "My Mother's Daughter" fabric range. Available wholesale now from Art Gallery Fabrics. 

Shops who carry Bari J. fabrics listed here.