The framework allows for glimpses of professional and private milestones, such as Foster’s divorce from her first husband, actor Christian Borle (associated craft: crocheted granny-square blanket); and the thrill of finally meeting longtime idol Patti LuPone (paper-on-plywood collage reading “Badass”). Woven through are memories of growing up in the South and in Detroit, alongside her brother, Hunter (also a stage actor), and witnessing their mother’s transformation into a troubled recluse. Cross-stitch “was one of the few things I had ever really seen her enjoy,” Foster writes, explaining that picking up the antiquated art form was in part a way to connect with her mother, and in part a way to deal with her own social anxiety when she was in a touring theater group in her late teens. “It was a form of self-protection,” she writes, “I don’t need to socialize! I have a project to work on!”
