From sewing lessons to a runway show in south Rockford, ‘Miss Cleta’ makes learning fashionable

By Helen Karakoudas
Special to the Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — On a pop-up runway Saturday afternoon in the city’s newest art space, 17 young people — from just over age 20 to as young as 7 — showed off to family and friends clothes that the teacher they know as Miss Cleta helped them make.

“Each student had a part in doing something on their clothes: from designing them, cutting them out, and sewing them. Some of the students have advanced to the place of completing their own garment, needing very little help,” Collettia Berryhill, their teacher at Cleta’s Stay and Sew, 1029 S. Main St., said at the close of the show.

Fashion in the half-hour show ranged from such casual looks as top and pant sets, and top and skirt sets, to such glamorous looks as high-low dresses (where the hemline is asymmetrical from front to back) and high-low gowns (where a dress with a straight hem is layered under a skirt with an asymmetrical hem).

The classes that led to these creations are free.

The three-hour sessions, which include instruction on quilting, are weekly during the school year and multiple days a week during the summer. Berryhill provides the material, tools, notions, and lunch she often prepares herself. She also offers adult classes. All you need to bring is the willingness to learn.

Students start out making pillows, tote bags and small quilts. Then they graduate to clothes.

Several students walked the runway in more than one ensemble. One student came out in three ensembles. Most designs were original, sketched by a student on an iPad and translated to a paper pattern with the help of Berryhill coaching how to apply arithmetic to taking your measurements. Audience members – 52 seated and over two dozen standing – cheered the confidence, the smiles, and the level of detail: lace sleeves, bows on shoulder straps, tulle on pant hems. A kimono designed by a 10-year-old had pockets, a belt, and fur trim on the sleeves.

“People say it’s is a lost art. I don’t think so. These kids are really enthused about sewing,” Berryhill said in an interview Thursday afternoon, pausing to praise 10- and 13-year-olds stopping in to check on finishing details for what they would be modeling.

‘I sew, but not as good as her’

One of those students was London Lauder, 10, a student at nearby Barbour Elementary School.

She modeled a top and pant set. “I didn’t have a pattern. I did it on my own,” London said. Asked about the lace and tulle trim on her pant bottoms, she said there were several ways she could have attached it but thought it through and found the better one. As for the trim at the neckline, wasn’t something with so much metallic thread tricky to sew through?

“No. I cut it to size and sewed it on. You need to use white thread and go right in the middle.”

The Lauders have a sewing machine at home.

“I sew,” said London’s mother, Bethany, “but not as good as her.” Bethany Lauder and her own mother, Susan Lauder, who lives in Machesney Park, take turns bringing London to Cleta’s Stay and Sew.

“It’s like a community center here, but not your typical community center. It’s somewhere safe where they can come, be kids, and learn something new in a different environment,” Bethany Lauder said.

Berryhill has run Cleta’s Stay and Sew since November 2022 in the century-old building in south Rockford where she and her late brother, Ruben Samuel Jr., had run Ruben’s Pharmacy since 1978. Her brother, the region’s first African-American pharmacist, died in 2019. She kept the building, honoring a promise to him that this would be a place for giving back to Rockford.

One student lives in walking distance of the building at the northwest corner of Main and Morgan streets; others come from throughout the city and the region, including from as far as Belvidere.

In the fall of 2023, after a barbershop moved out of the adjacent space, Berryhill didn’t seek another tenant. She decided this too had to be for community. In time for the Rockford Area Arts Council’s Fall ArtScene this year, she opened 1025 S. Main St. as Cleta’s Art Space. Lining its walls for ArtScene, and still, are paintings by Rockford-born artist Nathan Jalani Taylor. His work had previously been on limited display next door among her sewing supplies.

Just as she pieces together fabric scraps for her students to upcycle, Berryhill has a patchwork of funding to keep the nonprofit afloat. Berryhill relies on donations and grants. A grant from the Community Foundation of Northern Illinois, for example, helped replace several sewing machines, all of which had been donated.

A clothing designer herself and expert seamstress (having learned to sew at age 8 from her blind grandmother), Berryhill brings in a thread of support for her nonprofit by making and selling one-of-a-kind Afrocentric clothing items. Dresses, like the one featured in Rock River Current’s 815 Holiday Gift Guide, start at $70. She makes various styles of dresses (plus jackets, tunics, skirts and two-piece ensembles) from vividly patterned fabric she imports from Ghana, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

She also sells the fabric from Africa in bundles; a 6-yard bundle is $60. Fashion accessories made in Africa from African prints are also available. A set of purses, one large and one small, made from the same fabric is $100. A fabric fan is $15.

‘My teacher, an icon’

Berryhill’s humility is as strong as the bold colors in her beloved African fabrics.

Though this youth fashion show is her first, she was a featured designer — and the guest of honor —at last year’s Gilded Paradise Fashion Show at Nicholas Conservatory. Those details about her presence at that show surfaced in a web search. To hear Berryhill tell it, she was simply happy to be there in support of the organizer, Kelvin Candie II, and on hand to make it known the purses that he bought for the show were made by her students.

“I am very grateful and thankful to call her my teacher,” Candie, the designer behind the brand The High & Mighty, said of Berryhill in a message via his Instagram page. “Cleta is a great pillar of the Rockford community. She has guided and mothered me and a lot of artists and creatives in this community. Her unwavering support and her desire to pass on her knowledge to the next generation makes her an icon.”

Garments designed and made at Cleta’s Stay and Sew weren’t just on the runway at Saturday’s event. They were in the audience too, proudly worn by women who each had their own story of a Cleta gesture. The most dramatic look was a shoulder wrap. It was worn by 12th Ward Alderwoman Gina Meeks, who took a page from A$AP Rocky and Rihanna’s one-time entrance to the Met Gala and sported a quilt. It’s made up of pieces saying what cancer can’t take away from you.

“It was so important for me to see this at the beginning of my cancer journey,” said Meeks, who received the quilt from Berryhill last year shortly after she heard of the diagnosis. “My favorite piece is ‘Cancer Cannot Silence Courage.’ We all need to be so grateful for Cleta – she puts heart into everything.”

Meeks first met Berryhill at Candie’s show at Nicholas Conservatory. “ ‘Why don’t you do your own fashion show at Cleta’s Stay and Sew?’” Berryhill recalls, crediting Meeks with the idea.

“I hadn’t thought about that,” Berryhill said. “But she was right. I had the space. And when they were ready, the kids could put on their own show.”

But for this, like so many other aspects of a nonprofit in a building built in 1920, there was a cost.

Sixth Ward Alderwoman Aprel Prunty sponsored the show with a grant from the city’s Forward for Fun initiative. An English teacher with Rockford Public Schools, Prunty represents the neighboring ward.

“As an educator, I’ve always believed that investing in our youth is investing in the future of our community. Supporting a youth-led fashion show goes beyond the runway,” Prunty said. “It’s about providing young people with hands-on experience and skills they can carry forward. Under Miss Cleta’s mentorship, the youth are learning to sew their own fashions — a lifelong skill with real career potential.”

‘A lot for one person’

One student, Zaniah Gray, 19, is now an intern at Cleta’s Stay and Sew, a paid position. With Gray’s help and that of a volunteer assistant, Berryhill manages the youth class. But to maintain the 1-to-5 level of attention she wants to offer, Berryhill isn’t currently accepting students. All her classes are now full.

As she seeks grant opportunities and awaits to hear about those she’s applied for, Berryhill works on designing and making quilted wall hangings hoping their four-digit price can cover some utility and building maintenance costs.

Her latest creation, finished last week, is a wall hanging she calls, “God heard their cry.” This quilt is an assembly of machine-embroidered portraits of 27 Black people who died in incidents involving police. For every portrait, bordered in African prints from Ghana, she has machine-embroidered the date of death and their age. She is asking $2,000.

While she could have put the time and materials into making something purely decorative and more marketable, she didn’t.

“This just means something,” Berryhill said. “One little girl said, ‘Miss Cleta, you like history, don’t you?’ I said, ‘Oh yeah, baby. That’s what we live by: history.’”

Candie said it’s important for children to have a teacher like Berryhill: “She leads by example.”

One of her examples is making do with what you have when the ideal tool isn’t yet in reach.

The quilting on the wall hanging with the portraits, just like every other quilt that Berryhill and her students have made, was done on a basic home-use sewing machine. The larger a fully pieced quilt gets, the more difficult it is to gather it in sections and guide it through a home machine to stitch through its top.

“It’s a lot for one person,” said Denise Kittel Noe, referring both to projects like this and all of Berryhill’s day-in day-out work at Cleta’s Stay and Sew.

A quilter herself and a professional fundraiser for Rockford nonprofits for over three decades, Noe is part of a team at the Northern Illinois Center for Nonprofit Excellence working on a campaign to help Cleta’s Stay and Sew purchase a longarm quilting machine.

This tool, which can run in the tens of thousands, would make the last step of the quilting process efficient and give students additional skills in working with textiles. Given the age of the building though, its purchase would also mean the need for electrical improvements.

In the meantime, Berryhill appreciates the here and now.

“We have a messy environment we work in next door,” she said at the end of the fashion show. “But we don’t care because in that mess, (the kids) have peace. They are learning sewing and quilting and just having fun with one another.

“This story, my story, will never change. This is my mission: If one student walks in their passion and becomes a designer in the fashion industry, they will slay,” said Berryhill, 70, winking over the last word and noting she too learns from her students.

Cleta’s Stay and Sew | Fast Facts

Where: 1029 S. Main St., Rockford

On the web: Follow Cleta’s Stay and Sew on Facebook

Contact: cletasstayandsew@gmail.com;
or cleta131@hotmail.com

Hours: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday

How to help:  You can make a donation in person at the shop or via CashApp to $Collettia or via Zelle to Collettia Berryhill, or by personal check.

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This article is by freelance journalist Helen Karakoudas. Email feedback to news@rockrivercurrent.com.