Stitch Therapy

When I was about 6, my seamstress grandmother's eyesight had begun to deteriorate sufficiently for her to require a young trainee needle threader.  I was recruited for the position and so began one of the few enduring passions in my life.

I don't know if anyone else encountered this but part of the learning curve with sewing when you are 6 is overcoming the urge to half-ass things to just get them done. Projects not pinned or tacked properly were shabbier and quickly fell apart.  There is a pleasure and  a pride in a beautifully neat row of hand stitching that is still over 40 years later hard to surpass (except these days by a perfectly straight row of topstitching).

In school we made an apron. I still remember mine. It was baby pink and burgundy. A frilly frothy light cotton concoction and lovely.  My next project at home was a lemon cotton skirt which took me so long that my waist was too big for the skirt by the time I had finished it.

Next up was a turquoise cotton jumpsuit. I was getting adventurous.  I wore it until the shoulders strained and  burst as my ever increasing 12 year old lanky frame grew.

Sewing stayed with me as something I could use to be creative but in the practical way that suited me. Not for me the moulding of clay into misshapen and soon discarded gifts for friends.

Sewing has been something that I can use to absorb my attention when I need to leave reality for a bit. Something to keep me sane when my mental health is a bit wobbly. It makes me so happy to see so many people online now sewing for their better mental health.  I have Graves Disease and that can make me rediculously anxious when it flares up. It is difficult to be in the future in your head when you have a piece of something pretty in your hands or in the machine that requires your absolute attention now.

Sewing has given me so much. It has in part formed who I am. My love for a job well done. My appreciation of the practical things in life. My patience and ability to slow down when something requires more from me. The calm that descends with the whirr of the machine motor. The heady intoxocation of a spree in a fabric shop.

It is good to occasionally acknowledge the parts that make up the sum of who we are.