This is the debut of On the Fold, where I talk about sewing and the lessons I learn from it. The lessons may not necessarily be sewing lessons. They could very well be life lessons.
I grew up around sewing machines. Industrial ones and beautiful home sewing ones with wooden sewing desks that put to shame any real desk. I distinctly remember playing with a Singer hand wheel and messing with the bits and bobs around the machines I grew up with. My grandparents owned an upholstery shop and both sewed as well as my great aunt, aunts, and uncles. My mom hand sewed quilts, blankets, clothing, etc and my dad could mend anything he needed. As much as I played around the machines and with the sewing equipment, I never had much of an interest in it.
After I had a couple of dresses altered into skirts and pants taken up because I’m short, I decided it was more cost effective if I bought a sewing machine and learned to do it myself. I had already spent hundreds on alternations, why not spend a hundred more and get a sewing machine. So in March of 2024, I purchased my very first sewing machine, the Singer Start 1306. I unboxed it and still to this very day have not altered anything in my ‘to be altered basket’.
I instead decided to learn how to make bags, got bored with that, made a couple of skirts and dresses, and then bought a pattern for a dress, and decided to completely ignore its instructions and go it on my own. That’s who I am. How my brain works. Glance over instructions and toss them to the side. Get frustrated that nothing works, then follow the instructions. Everything I have ever taught myself is that way and sewing has been no different. I learn as I go.
My neurotypical brain needed the patterns, the fabrics, the haberdashery, but couldn’t pin the bits and the bobs together to make a cohesive anything. So while I collected everything I could possibly need for sewing, the machine collected dust.
Then something clicked. I wanted to get serious about sewing. Not daydream about sewing. Of course as a dreamer, I had these grandiose ideas of creating and selling bags and clothing to others, starting my own line, and business. But let me be honest, I’m not that great at sewing nor am I that skilled. I still have to look up what most of the terminology means.
As I started to learn and as I became frustrated, I recalled Mercury Stardust, aka The Trans Handy Ma’am, saying “You are worth the time it takes to learn something new.” This became my mantra as I sewed, unpicked errors, cut too close to the seam, and did just about everything wrong. Of course I was going to make mistakes, and plenty of them, I was learning something new. I had never actually sewn before and as my simple errors made me hear my Grandma Taylor and Great Aunt Caroline laughing from the heavens, I was becoming more confident with each stitch sewn and each unpick. I was learning as I go.
I don’t have to be an expert to start something. I just have to start. I can learn as I go.
Photo by Alex Andrews
