Why We Sew
I am planning an afternoon at my sewing machine today. Concerned about the difficulty in guaranteeing the provenance of my clothing I have been working to improve my dressmaking skills over the last few months. I am yet to construct a dress I am happy with but am learning a lot about different fabrics and how they behave in different circumstances and enjoying the journey. My activity has prompted questions from my daughter:
Why are you sewing?
Isn’t dress making something your granny did during the war when clothing was rationed?
Its true there is no economic justification for dressmaking today? One can buy a skirt for less than a cup of coffee on any high street. So why then do people still make things?
I think it is instinctive, intuitive if you like, and goes way back to early man and woman. We all have an innate drive to make things - some people choose to express this through baking, gardening or knitting, and dressmaking is another way this creative urge can be satisfied. Over the last twenty years, the digital revolution has initiated a hunger for texture, and the physicality of touching fabric and thread is a great stress-beater. Sewing is soothing and mindful and is generally less expensive than therapy.
There is a great sense of achievement at being able to follow a pattern and assemble a garment. Once one becomes more proficient, adjustments can be made to achieve a perfect fit. One can choose the fabric - Cloth House in Berwick Street has a wonderful selection of interesting and unusual fabrics from India and Japan, which would be hard to find in high street garments. Over the past couple of years, companies like The Makers Atelier and Merchant and Mills (I am planning a visit to their newly expanded shop in Rye next Saturday) have introduced stylish, easy-to-follow patterns, which have made entry-level dress making more accessible. This is essential as the skill continuum was broken in the eighties when dressmaking was decidedly out of fashion. TV shows like The Great British Sewing Bee have also helped to raise the profile of sewing to a new audience, as has the Knitting & Stitching consumer show.
Personalisation is one of the biggest trends in retail at the moment and dressmaking is the perfect vehicle for expressing one's creative skills. A dressmaker will never make the social faux-pas of wearing the same dress as another guest at a social function. Even if it is something discreet, like the choice of a quirky button or trim, small touches can transform an outfit. I have a delicious piece of cotton velvet from The Draper’s Daughter to work with and will leave the raw selvedges as a detail at the cuff.
Sewing is faster than knitting and lasts longer than a Victoria sponge - but I will probably have a slice with a coffee once I am finished.
Blog post by Polly Leonard.
10 comments
I totally agree that proficiency is required for a perfect fit – I can insert a zip, do buttonholes etc but still need help achieving fit. You can comfort yourself with the knowledge that shop bought clothes don’t fit properly either!
Hi Polly, I learned to sew at school, in the days when girls had sewing lessons and boys did woodwork. However, it proved a hugely helpful skill to have and through my teenage years, through the late 70s and 80s when I continued to make my own clothes… dresses, shirts, trousers. I eagerly scoured the latest editions of Vogue Patterns and kept myself ahead of the trends. This carried me through to adulthood, right up until I had children. Having made my own wedding dress as well… I imagined that I would make my own children a succession of lovely things. But, in fact, time was the big killer. Children’s clothes are fiddly to make and quite time-consuming when, for relatively little money, I found I could buy the most adorable clothes which, of course, they grew out of in a matter of weeks. So, even my lovingly made toddler dungarees were worn for about a month or two. The upshot was that I basically gave up. Scroll on 10 years and I once or twice offered to make my teenage daughter something… normally met with an incredulous curl of the lip, to be honest. However, The Great British Sewing Bee did spark a new interest and although it hasn’t been on for a year or so, it sowed the seed and now she is talking about me making her Prom Dress for next summer. Plenty of notice and she wants something fab and individual. So, I am back! And, I will rise to the challenge and maybe this will kick start the sewing habit again. Having watched, recently, the Stacey Dooley documentary Fashion’s Dirty Secrets on the shame of Fast Fashion, it really shocked me back into thinking about where my clothes come from and is another spur to go back to homemade. Although, I will also want to know where the fabric comes from as well, which I feel might be equally hard to be reassured about unless I literally know the producer!
It is a tragedy that sewing is no longer the basic skill that it once was. Besides the joy of making (and I can attest to the peaceful calm feelings that sewing engenders having learned to sew from my talented mom in 1951) there is the even more marvelous happiness of repairing and altering something that is important to myself, a loved one, a friend or a person who got my name from the local fabric store. After 20 years as a clothing, leather, and textile designer I became a college professor teaching art and fashion design across the US sharing my skills and love for all things textile with the students. They had to struggle in their first years because most of them came without those skills I had absorbed at home without even thinking. And the final delight, as an old retired lady living in Hawaii with my husband, I go to the dump and get clothing others have discarded and remake them into beautiful objects, both art and clothing. Sew! Knit! Embroider! Smile and share your skills.
I sew because I am petite and it is a financial decision, why pay good money to have to alter the garment oneself or pay for someone else to shorten sleeves or trousers. Also skirts that cost the price of a cup of coffee are not made in a fabric that I like the feel off, or made in a country where the workforce are appreciated.
I buy fabrics from The Drapers Daughter and Joel and Sons, both good websites and
excellent customer service.
My mother taught me how to sew and I have lots of happy memories of sewing, sorting buttons and using her ’tricks of the trade ’ to finish a garment to the standard I am satisfied with.
Happy 😊 sewing x
thank-you for what you do and for sharing your thoughts!!!