unfortunately, sewing is a process
thoughts about the details
I think a lot about the details. Of sewing. Of life.
I think about how committing to a creative practice yields results over long periods of time.
The death in it all is that we want immediacy. We want the results now. We crave it. And it stops us from flourishing.
I have felt a bit smooshed down lately. Like I am not creating. Like I am not making progress on the knowledge and the skills of it all. I want to make GRAND COSTUMES and ORNATE GARMENTS that speak to my CREATIVITY. But the problem is that my current skills do not quite line up. Sure, I can read a pattern and make clothes, but I cannot yet draft a pattern and I cannot yet design a garment on my own.
I want skills that I do not yet have in my brain and that makes me sad but it also makes me determined. To learn. To chip away at the behemoth before me. I want to create GARMENTS. And I will. Alas, that will take time.
If you want to start your sewing journey, consider buying some of my zines here.
Some videos:
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When I started sewing in early 2020, at the age of 56, I wanted to make everything I’d dreamed of making over all those years I didn’t have room in my crazy life to make. I immediately felt grief that I might never learn and do all the sewing I wanted to. But that has dissolved, along the way, into wonder and awe and wild gratitude, because I’ve finally found a practice, a process, that will sustain my creative devotion for my remaining lifetime. I celebrate the fact that design, pattern making, and sewing is so wonderfully vast, diverse, and engrossing, I could live out my life not knowing everything because there’s SO MUCH to know (how thrilling!). Because it IS a process, and process—however tedious or frustrating—is devotion, is companionship, is constancy. This gives me comfort. Perhaps this can bring you comfort too. Your sewing is a friend you can live out your life learning and loving and anchoring yourself in. I’m likely saying things you already know, but wanted to reach out with encouragement all the same. I LOVE seeing your process and your creations. Thank you for your vulnerability and generosity of spirit.