My journey into learning how to sew…
Growing up in North Dakota, my Mom was the town seamstress and the local Home Economics teacher. She went to school to become a fashion designer and is incredibly talented. She sewed her own wool coat to keep her warm in college, her own wedding dress, all of my prom dresses and wedding dress and thousands of sewing creations for other people over the years, many of which have been “off the wall” requests that required her to stretch her creativity into pure magic.
Even though I grew up with a Mom who embodied these incredible talents, I wanted nothing to do with sewing or making things with your hands or Home Economics or any of those things. I just wanted to play in nature, play with my friends and look off into the beautiful sunsets and imagine the incredible possibilities for life.
Fast forward from my earlier years to five years ago when I journeyed to the Northwoods. One of the women I connected with, was always creating hand made creations when we were together. As we would sit and talk, she would be embroidering things, sewing things, knitting things…and there was something about being in the presence of her making her handmade creations that felt so comforting and so right. Like YES this is what life is meant to consist of. That feeling stayed with me and inspired something deep within myself.
Fast forward again to last year as I was living in the Northwoods. In the middle of my journey there, I began to feel this energy around weaving and sewing. I was gifted a hand-loom out of the blue and a week later had created my first weaving. I began to wonder what was possible for creating things out of fabric. I had already started to create my own version of a “sew-free” skirt by wrapping these beautiful Turkish towels from the local “Healing Shop” in town around my waist and “tying” them together with a scarf. I began playing around with different clothing creations in ways that didn’t require sewing, until…I received the message to visit my parents.
Days before leaving to see them, I received a vision of a dress to make with my Mom. (I had forgotten that when I was younger, I would hand sketch different clothing creations and give and them to my mom to sew.) I sketched the dress with all of the details I saw in my vision and sent my Mom a photo of it. When I arrived at my parents’ home, my Mom and I visited the local fabric store and I picked out a beautiful cream colored linen fabric with a soft leaf pattern on it. We went back to her house and proceeded to bring to life, the dress I had received the vision of! It was so special to sew with my Mom! All of these years later, I finally wanted to learn how to sew and I wanted to learn everything she knew. So, this is the first dress I actually sewed…with the help of my Mom.
When I returned to the Northwoods from visiting my parents, I attended a sewing retreat with my friend who embroiders, hand sews and knits whenever we’re together. She taught me how to intuitively create a dress without a pattern and in that retreat I sewed my second ever dress, all on my own! I even hand stamped the dress with a dandelion patterned stamp.
Since that retreat, I have transformed a beautiful blanket of mine into a “poncho” coat/dress with a combination of hand sewing and simple machine sewing (my Mom recently gifted me a very basic sewing machine. I’m not a very technological person, but receiving a sewing machine from my Mom is such a sacred gift as that is the tool she uses to sew…along with hand sewing…she also does both at times). I have made a baby wrap carrier out of a cotton stretchy scarf I had and old bed sheets we weren’t using anymore. I’ve also sewn a shirt, another dress, a canvas plant holder to create a hanging plant, an apron and recently chair covers to re-upholster dining room chairs for a project.
Wow, I feel so grateful that this love of sewing has found its way to me or maybe I’ve found my way to the love of sewing!