Janice Easterling chose sewing over doing jail time on Feb. 11, 2008, a date she cites from memory. Easterling began sewing as a child in Illinois. Slender, with nervous energy and a quick wit, she keeps conversations lively with her five co-workers. — Claire Martin, The Denver Post
Q: How did you hear about Mission Wear?
A: I was in jail for 10 days on failure to appear and a bunch of parking tickets that went back to the 1980s, and some ladies came from an empowerment, job-skills program, and told me I could get out of there that day if I took this life-skills workshop.
Q: What was the time lapse between your interview at Mission Wear and when you started working?
A: I came down here for a 9:30 a.m. interview, and at 10 o’clock, Beth (McWhirter, Mission Wear director) had me sewing.
Q: What changes have you seen since you started working here?
A: When we started, I was sewing bags for Spinelli’s Market. Then we picked up Whole Foods. And then last summer, we made some bags from banners. Someone from the historical society must’ve seen those, because then they called us about doing the (Democratic National Convention) bags.
Q: The convention banners look like they might be tough to sew. Is that material unwieldy?
A: Really, the material isn’t that bad. It’s just that it doesn’t bend. I had to switch it around a lot to sew the bag handles on the way we want to.
Q: What else do you sew besides the banner and coffee sack bags?
A: I’m sewin’ these little cup coats for coffee cups. They’re made out of recycled sweaters. People can put ’em on their Starbucks cups to keep their coffee warm.
Q: Sweaters? For coffee cups?
A: Yeah. I’m, like, “Who’s gonna pay $5 for this?” But people are funny. Back when I was living in Illinois, I went to a girl’s desk and there was a rock on it. Says on the rock, “Please Turn Me Over.” So I turn it over, and it says on that side, “Thank you.” I asked that girl what’s with that rock. She says it’s a pet rock. She paid $10 for it. I said, “I could have gone into my backyard and made you one of those for nothing.”
Q: What do you think about when you’re sewing?
A: I like to look at the design on the burlap bags that they used for coffee. Those coffee bags come from all over. Some of ’em have really nice designs. One had an elephant. Another one had mountains. And the bags are printed where they’re from — Africa, South America. And sometimes we tell stories to each other in the sewing room.
Q: Like what?
A: Dumb things men do. Like the time this man tried to fix a broken TV button by putting Superglue on his fingertip, thinking he could just stick his finger in real quick to get the button back on, and got his finger stuck inside the TV.
Q: What happened?
A: Someone got him unstuck with some nail-polish remover.
