When most people go on vacation and buy a souvenir, they come home with a T-shirt or some postcards or maybe a refrigerator magnet.
That’s not how Natalie Eberlein does things. Instead of buying a tacky tchotchke from a souvenir shop, she’ll visit a fabric store instead.
“I like buying fabric in different places,” she said, “then I go home and I sew it, and I have the souvenir that I wanted out of the fabric from the place, which is fun. I have a skirt that I really like that’s a fabric that I bought in Spain, and some cushion covers from Guatemala.”
She’s also made dresses from tablecloths she’s found at thrift stores.
Eberlein began sewing a couple of years ago, on a cheap machine that she had had for several years. She began with small projects, like an apron, then a costume for a school play. She then began watching sewing videos on YouTube and following along. She made a pair of pants for herself — “wide leg, elastic waistband, easy to fit,” she said — and then progressed to creating dresses. She moved on from the cheap machine when she inherited a “very nice sewing machine” from her uncle’s mother a year ago.
“My mom always sewed, so it just felt like a household item,” she said. “You have your KitchenAid mixer and you also have a sewing machine because it’s something useful to have.”
Eberlein grew up in Colorado and graduated from Colorado College, a small liberal arts school in Colorado Springs. She has a degree in education with a minor in dance, both of which she puts to use in her role as director of fine arts at Live Oak Classical School, where she also teaches ballet and leads choreography for school musicals and the dance team. She moved into her fine arts role after some time as assistant dean of the grammar school.
She previously taught at a classical charter school in San Antonio until she and her husband Nathaniel, a Waco native, decided to move to Waco. Nathaniel graduated from Live Oak, and both of his parents work there. Dr. Christopher Eberlein is dean of the grammar school and Jennifer Eberlein is the grammar school reading and math interventionist.
“Being creative is an important part of life and of having a fulfilled life,” she said. “You should have these creative outlets, and a big part of my role at school is encouraging creativity in students.”
Eberlein said that sewing and cooking are her creative outlets. Her parents, Paulina and Rolando Cuadrado, met at a cooking school in France, “so I grew up around great food,” she said.
“Cooking can be a creative outlet as well. I think cooking can be really boring if you’re only seeing it as something that you have to do, but it’s also something that can be really fun and have a lot of creativity.”
