Why I Sew

Note: I came to love blogs, and to realize how spectacularly beautiful some of them are, through sewing blogs. Grosgrain is a favorite of mine, and so is Made. Dana, the author of Made, has a section in her blog about why she sews. I thought I'd answer the question too, since some of what I'll be posting here is stuff I've sewn.

. . .

A few months back, I started to post a lot of my little sewn things on Facebook. I liked showing my friends what I had made, since sewing is a pretty solitary activity (at least the kind I do is), and it was fun to get some props for making something on my own.

After I posted a photo of a felted wool owl I had handstitched, a friend of mine (you know who you are and you know you're reading this!!) wrote to me and basically said, "You should be writing more and sewing less. You're a writer."

I responded to the sentiment by sewing another owl.

I should write more because I'm good at it. I sew because I'm not good at it, and that's why I like it and why it's meaningful to me.

My grandmother was 89 when she taught me to embroider. I was 29. This is not the usual image people have of a grandmother teaching her granddaughter to stitch, but there we were, in the kitchen of her little ranch house in Newton, Kansas, in the retirement community where she and my grandpa lived (and she still does, at 94, God bless her every day). She still has that classic midcentury furniture and the little square breakfast table (think blue-collar Mad Men!), and that's where we sat while she held the hoop and told me what to do with the thread and cloth. My embroidery looked loose and wobbly, fluffy almost. Grandma's embroidery--the embroidery she did that day, a decade after having a stroke that affected her arm--was straight and tight and efficient and gorgeous. I said to her, "Grandma, mine doesn't look like yours!" To which she replied, in her frank, Kansas way, "Well, I've had more time to practice." Uh, yes.

I love it that my grandma can still school me in sewing. I have always prized book-learning and conceptual understanding; you can't get a master's degree in sewing. It took me a long time to really appreciate that that didn't mean it wasn't really hard or didn't take a lot of critical thinking. I stood in the fabric store today, awed by a older woman's quilt for her grandchild. She'd done the whole thing by hand. It was a heaping dose of "You can't do that, so shut up about yourself," a medicinal moment that helps prevent The Smug and also comes in "Car Repair," "18-Wheeler Driving," and "Aircraft Carrier Propeller-Welding" flavors.

I sew because some of my problems stem from not doing enough on my own. See the yard sale post. Would that much stuff be in our house if I had to make it all? Oh most definitely not. I would have four skirts, maybe one dress, and for shirts, I would wear pillowcases with armholes cut out of them (Shirts are crazy to make. I don't think it can be done without magic.)

That my grandmother or my mom or anyone else can look at a bunch of 2D shapes on tissue paper and figure out how to turn them into something that flatters a 3D person is an insane feat of cognition and engineering. I'm not good at that part. I think I made a skirt upside-down once, and I know that I sewed the top part of a dress inside-out to the bottom part, which was inside-in, and you can't fix that without taking a blade to it. The pattern drawers at fabric stores should be labelled "shirts," "dresses," "pants," and "despondent insanity." Then people would know.

The machines break, the needles break, the fabric tears or pulls or won't feed through, the thread is too strong or too weak or not the right color even though you thought it was the right color, the presser foot is the wrong kind and is now eating your owl, the felt won't stitch together, you have to do it by hand. You have to stop and do it over. Or you have to keep it, and live with it. You have to decide what you're going to do. It's harder than it sounds.

I made a skirt once and the zipper pinched a tiny bit of my backside every time I zipped it up. I'm not redoing that zipper, ever, but I sure am going to wear that skirt. Even if it makes me bleed.

Why would I still sew?

Partly, I sew as a lesson in economics, a field my husband will tell you I clearly know nothing about. So it's my kinetic education in labor and cost and profit. I continue to be amazed that it is cheaper to buy a toddler dress at Target than to make one, but of course I'm not surprised that it's less risky too. If Ellie doesn't like it, I just take it back and no one's feelings are hurt. High-end quilts can become attractively priced when the alternative is (even machine-)stitching them yourself. On the whole, I have found that I'm more thoughtful of the people behind the making of the clothes I buy, be they in factories if I'm buying something at a warehouse store, or those artisans from whom I might buy something handmade. That little doll at the craft fair I didn't want to pay $50 for probably took 3 hours to make, plus material. What's my time worth to me? What is someone else's time worth to them? This consideration is especially real when I buy shirts, because I hate making them and can't imagine spending all day, every day doing just that. That would be a circle of hell. I've tried more and more to buy used things of every sort, to eliminate the worry about labor (and, let's face it, cost). Much of the fabric I use comes from the thrift store, usually from men's shirts and sweaters, since they can be so large. When I buy yardage from a fabric store, I tend to feel it's out of laziness or lack of patience ("I didn't check the thrift store first. I should have browsed fabric lots on eBay..."). But sometimes I just need wide, flat yardage right now, which is its own lesson in time and energy and money. I know it sounds a little Michael-Pollan-meets-Martha-Stewart, and I get that. But there it is anyway.

Mostly, though, I sew because of what happened just before and just after I put that owl on Facebook.

Before I put it online, I finished it. That's it, that's the "it." I just sat there, knowing that I got my project to "work," and it felt disproportionately exhilarating to what I had actually done. I just sat there at my table, thinking, "It's not exploding. It's not melting. It actually looks cute! I did it! I'm calling Grandma!"

Right after the photo went on Facebook, I gave the owl to Ellie, who was right around 2. I asked her if she liked it, and she looked at it, really considered the question, shook her head solemnly and said, "No."

Then I told her I made it.

She made this puzzled face like, "I don't know what you're saying to me right now. Please hold on." And then a smile came over her and she lit up and grabbed the owl and hugged it. It's on her bed right now. Even if it's not perfect, and even if its creation meant swallowing a tablespoon of growling frustration, there's a deep, lasting sweetness to something handmade.

I hope that the things I make for her will help her understand, even as a toddler, that people can make things (and not just out of Play-Doh). My dad made her 180 blocks for Christmas, and the box to put them in. He also made her a wooden duck that waddles when she pulls it. She asks regularly if something was made by someone she loves. That's pretty awesome, even if she quickly follows up by asking, "...Or is it just Target?"

I'll be turning the fabric in the first photo into two skirts over the next few days. They're really easy to make, and the tutorial is here, on Made. I'll also be dyeing and fabric-painting a comforter for Ellie's new bed, and painting the bedframe, so that the bed she calls "Red Bed" because of the flannel sheets will actually be a red bed. I'll post pictures. :)