Why Sewing?

    I’ve been sewing since I was a kid. My mother taught me, along with a room full of 4-H ladies with a million opinions. I think my first real project was a sky blue cloud print mini-skirt with sparkles. SPARKLES. It still exists somewhere in my mother’s attic. It was horrific, but it would be the first of many more crimes against fashion I would create and perpetuate in the early 2000s. 

 

Only recently has sewing become something I do thoughtfully. It’s a skill I want to develop not only because it is rare but because I want to reclaim the personality in my clothing and the humanity in what I purchase. 

1. Sewing is a creative outlet that produces something useful. The product is valuable because it is unique and because it is a useful good. (Unlike the embroidery I am also obsessed with. Shh.)
2. Sewing allows one (with reclaimed fabric, two) more degree of control over the manner in which the goods I am purchasing are produced. 
3. At home sewists can focus on creating quality, timeless garments that last far longer than one season and ultimately consume less.
4. Sewing is engineering with fabric! I think because at-home sewing has always been female-dominated, it’s assumed to be easy. But, as Feynman discovered, there can be quite a lot of math. 
5. Sewing is cool. 

   

Vacation on the Moon

My room is filthy and my bed is unmade. I’ve given myself 15 lashes and not done a damn thing about the mess.

            This shirt was a first for me- the first time I have ever completed a pattern a second time. I used BurdaStyle’s Hawaiian Shirt pattern in a European size 48. The first time around, I worried that it would dwarf my tall-and-skinny manfriend, the intended recipient, based off of his measurements alone. I had never sewn for a man before, but I learned that they are generally used to a good deal more ease in garments than us gal-folk who’ve grown used to showing off our curves. Both the original Dinosaur Shirt (pictures to come!) and the above Space Shirt are made of standard quilting cotton. 

I swear the back band isn’t actually crooked. In the absence of the intended torso, my self-made body-double dressform (with boobs, a large backside, and wonky shoulders) is filling in.

    The pattern sewed up with no problems, even though it was my first experience with collars. A point of frustration was Burda’s infamous lack of included seam allowance. It’s a print-at-home pattern. Let me waste my toner on some seam allowances, please! The only other comment on the pattern is that the collar stand/ collar attachment described in the instructions is kind of mental and produces inferior results to this method from Sew, Mama, Sew. I would love to try this in a much more lightweight printed cotton or linen. However, silly novelty prints speak to both myself and my manfriend, and quilters certainly have a monopoly on those. Silly apparel prints, especially in knits, tend toward the infantile.