“It's a joyous, joyous thing to be a crafter. It's so rewarding,” beams Sandra Rideout. She was born and raised in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador, Newfoundland. For the first five years of her career she worked in a care home for seniors but once she started having children, she couldn’t do shift work anymore and needed a change. Her husband worked at a job in camp so she did a two-year secretarial program at college and landed a job with the federal government and spent thirty years working in the public service. She retired three years ago from the Department of National Defense working with military housing. Now that she’s retired, she spends her time sewing, which has always been her hobby but is now her work, which she finds rewarding and joyful.

In her creative work, Rideout makes hats, mitts, slippers, mukluks, kamiks, coats, headbands, neck warmers, ear muffs, and whatever else she can imagine. She makes practical clothing to wear on skidoos for hunting and fishing in -50 degree weather, windproof and water repellant. Her customers say it’s the warmest clothing they have owned. She uses fox, lynx, rabbit, martin, and beaver furs, muskox, cow, bison, moose and lamb leather, moose hide, deer skin, and sinew.

When she first started sewing, there was no market and seamstresses would trade with people who would come into town. Rideout wuld give away what she made. Eventually a group formed that would buy local artisan’s work, and seamstresses got busy sewing to make extra money. Now she can’t keep up with the demand for her work, she is involved in the craft industry and craft councils and sells online.

She goes to workshops, conferences and symposiums, too, spending time with fellow artisans. While she’s an introvert, talking to fellow crafters gets her chatting.

Watching how seamstresses sew late and early mornings while trying to raise a family, living a hard life, Rideout never intended to get into it herself. Too busy to teach, she watched them to learn. While she was determined not to continue the practice, she ended up sewing more than her relatives.

Shy, Rideout struggled with putting herself out there at first. Being invited to symposiums feels like a reward and she’s made fast friends with fellow attendees. With so many seamstresses in the community and each with so much unsold inventory, there was a lot of competition. Getting quality supplies can be a challenge and the postal strike made things even harder, 

‍“No matter what part of the world you're in, an artist is an artist.”

What she’s found is the more craft shows she can get to, the better. Word of mouth advertisement has been the best way for her to grow her business.  After going to her first craft show in 2012, she goes back year after year, staying connected to the crafters she’s met. She’s traveled to Santa Fe, Inuvik, Ottawa, PEI, Montreal and Cambridge Bay for shows and she’s found similarities and kinship she’s felt among the Indigenous people she’s met along the way. 

‍“You can be inspired by so many people if you just sit and listen”

Her advice for another Inuk wanting to get started in sewing would be “get your name out there. Talk to a couple of people. Those people will talk to people and just keep going and going. Give it 150% of your time and …you’ve got to step out your comfort zone.” When Rideout first started, she was timid and felt like her products weren’t worthy but she eventually built confidence. 

If she could share a message with her younger self it would be, “Sandra, you don't have to feel that shy.  Get out there in the in the world, and expose yourself and get creative, and don't let anyone hold you back. Hold your head and keep going.,,, Just go, whether you're going alone or going with a group of friends or going solo, just go, because the world is out there, and it's yours to explore.” Her family was afraid of her travelling but she was determined to do so and she wishes she started crafting in her early twenties. 

The message Rideout shares with her daughter and people she teaches is “The world is yours,” and she told her granddaughter “You’ve got to give it your all and you’ve got to go in the world and explore.” Her grandchildren are supportive of her journey, too. Those who taught her to sew encouraged her not to give up and to keep trying. 

When it comes to maintaining her mental health, Rideout tries to find balance with her sewing to spend time with her husband and care for her mom. Because she loves what she does so much, she can have a hard time setting limits because it doesn’t feel like work. Creating and experimenting with new things, she finds joy in imagining new items that she brings to life without even a pattern.

With it being so joyous and rewarding to be a crafter, Sandra Rideout is creating a retirement that brings her joy. After thirty years of public service and five years of caring for seniors, now she’s doing what makes her happy…making warm, practical clothing from her own creative mind. Overcoming her shyness and getting out there in the world, she’s doing what she loves and inspiring her children and grandchildren along the way.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.