Both sets of my grandparents grew up during the Great Depression, and if you sat at their kitchen tables long enough, you’d hear some version of the same story: nothing was wasted. Not food. Not fabric. If something broke, you fixed it. If it wore out, you found a new use for it. If there was just a little left, you stretched it as far as you could.
Clothing, especially, lived more than one life. A man’s worn-out wool coat might become warm pants for a little boy. A flour sack might become an apron, or—if you were lucky—a little dress trimmed with rickrack. Scraps were never just scraps. They were pieces of possibility, stitched into patchwork quilts that warmed families for generations.
There was even a saying from that era:
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”
Today, we call that “upcycling” or “repurposing.” It has a Pinterest-worthy ring to it now. But for them, it wasn’t aesthetic. It wasn’t trendy. It was just how you lived. It was equal parts practicality and imagination. It was surviving with dignity. Making do often meant taking things apart first—carefully, patiently—with a seam ripper nearby. The kind of tool you forget exists… until it’s the only one that can help you start again.
That mindset—of honoring what was while making room for what could be—is something I keep coming back to especially when I think about sweaters.
They were the quietest form of transformation—undone not in frustration, but with care. When a sweater was no longer wearable—stretched out, fraying at the cuffs, maybe stained beyond saving—it still wasn’t thrown away. That wasn’t even an option. Instead, it was unraveled, one stitch at a time.
I can still picture it. My grandmother sitting in her chair, a half-worn sweater in her lap, gently pulling at a seam. Not tugging—pulling. Steady, rhythmic, patient. As the yarn came loose, she’d wind it around her fingers, then into a tidy little ball. The loops unknit themselves, row by row, until what had once wrapped around someone’s shoulders was now a pile of soft, wrinkled yarn, ready for a new purpose.
There was a kind of reverence in it. You didn’t rush the unraveling. If you went too fast or pulled too hard, the yarn could break. It needed to be undone as carefully as it had once been made. They unraveled them out of belief—belief that the material still had value. That even if the shape was wrong, the yarn was still good. That warmth was still possible, just in a different form.
Sometimes the yarn would become mittens. Maybe a scarf for the harsh Indiana winters. Sometimes it would become part of a baby blanket, or the ribbed collar of a new sweater altogether. And sometimes, it would be stored away until its purpose revealed itself later.
That process—watching something come apart on purpose—was tender, even sacred. I didn’t have the words for it back then. I just knew it felt meaningful. Like there was a kind of wisdom in choosing to take something apart, not because it failed, but because it had already served and was ready to become something else.
What I didn’t realize at the time was how often I’d return to that image later in life—how often I’d sit with some version of my own unraveling and remember: this isn’t the end. It’s just the beginning of something new.
Surely every grandmother had a Royal Dansk tin of Danish butter cookies that later held sewing supplies—buttons, bobbins, spools of mystery thread in colors no one could match. The tin was never not in use. The minute the last butter cookie was eaten (probably by a sneaky grandchild), it was instantly promoted to container status.
Pickle jars didn’t go in the trash. They became flower vases. Vessels for sourdough starters. Containers for dry beans or molasses. Sometimes they held red grape juice made from the sourest of grapes on the fledgling vine in the yard in hopes that it would turn into wine someday.
Leftovers? They were always stored in old margarine or cottage cheese containers—just to confuse and delight generations of children reaching for something to spread on their bread, only to find goulash or apple butter instead. Coffee cans turned into catch-alls for loose screws, nails, and coins. There were a dozen uses for every item, and no guilt for the mess of it.
They lived like everything could be used again—not just physically, but with a certain gentleness, too. A kind of trust that just because something looked like it had served its purpose didn’t mean it was done.
I’ve started to believe the same thing is true of our lives. Of all the kinds of unraveling we go through, I think the spiritual kind is the hardest—and the most invisible.
It doesn’t usually look like a crisis from the outside. It might not come with tears or dramatic change. No lightning bolt. No burning bush. Just a quiet tug at the soul. A shift you can’t quite name. A long-held belief that no longer holds the same weight. A version of faith that once wrapped around you like comfort now feels tight in the shoulders, like it shrank in the wash when you weren’t looking.
For me, the spiritual unraveling didn’t come all at once. It came slowly. Questions where there used to be certainty. Restlessness in places that once felt settled. The unraveling of old spiritual language that no longer felt honest—and the uncomfortable silence that followed when I didn’t yet have new words.
But what I’ve come to believe is this: the unraveling itself can be sacred. It’s not always a sign that something’s wrong. Sometimes it’s a sign that something is about to be made new. I don’t think God is standing off in the distance waiting for you to hold it together. I think God is right there on the floor with you, hands gently gathering the yarn. Not rushing. Not fixing. Just present.
Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is sit with the yarn. Not force a new sweater. Not panic when you can’t see the pattern. Just breathe. Rest your hands in your lap. Trust that what’s unraveling now still carries value.
Eventually, the yarn is gathered, wound, and smoothed between your fingers. You sit with it long enough, and something surprising begins to happen: you start to see possibility again. Not the same pattern, not the same shape—but potential.
That scarf for the harsh Indiana winters? It doesn’t come out of nowhere. It comes from yarn that used to be something else. Something beloved. Something that served its purpose.
And maybe that’s true for us, too.
Maybe after the spiritual unraveling comes the quiet courage to reimagine who we are and how we show up in the world. Maybe we begin to see that the things we thought defined us—job titles, church traditions, carefully constructed plans—weren’t the point. Maybe they were just the sweater.
But you? You are the yarn. The real material.
Still soft. Still strong. Still worth holding onto.
What’s beautiful about repurposing is that it honors what was while creating something new. It doesn’t say, “This was a waste.” It says, “This was good. And now, it’s becoming something else.”
I keep thinking about how my grandparents would never throw away a good ball of yarn. They didn’t need to know exactly what it would become. They just knew it was still good. Still useful. Still full of potential. So they’d tuck it into a drawer or store it in an old sewing tin—the kind with a faded label and a rattle inside. Saved for “someday.” Not because they were indecisive, but because they had trust. Trust that it would be used. That the material was still needed.
I want to live like that.
To hold the former versions of myself with gratitude, not regret.
To trust that nothing is wasted—not even the unraveling.
To let the yarn be yarn, even before I know what it’s becoming.
I may not be a sweater anymore.
But I’m still made of warmth.
Still stitched with memory and meaning.
Still here.
Maybe I’m a patch in someone else’s quilt.
Maybe I’m the scarf wrapped around someone’s shoulders on a bitter day.
Maybe I’m something quieter now—less visible, like the lining stitched inside, but no less essential.
Whatever I’m becoming, I want to be made with care. I may not know the shape yet, but I want to trust—deeply—that there will be purpose in it. My grandparents didn’t always know what their leftover yarn, thread, or fabric would become. But they trusted it was still useful. Still good. Still worth saving for something yet to be imagined. I want that kind of faith—the quiet kind that believes I’m still being made, not rushed, not discarded—but shaped with love, on purpose, by a good and steady Maker.
Rachel L. Richard is a small-town farm girl turned suburbanite, a delightfully irreverent optimist, Mrs & Mama, floppy dog ear scratcher, lifelong learner, channel surfer, wanderer, believer, occasional creative, out-of-practice musician, cupcake addict, book devourer, and lover of all people.
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