The Sewing chair #10

The Trouble With Sewing Is That I Want to Know Everything

I am jealous of people who know how to sew.

This is an awkward thing to admit when I also know how to sew. I have made quilts, worked with appliqué, tried English paper piecing and Manx blocks, and begun hand quilting. I understand a quarter-inch seam, have preferences about rulers and know which of my machines I want for a particular job. I am not standing in front of a sewing machine wondering where the thread goes.

But another quilter will look at a block and immediately see four ways to construct it. She knows which method wastes the least fabric and which will give her better points. I am still trying to determine how the block was assembled in the first place. Someone else matches striped binding so neatly that the join disappears. Another person identifies a fabric collection from a sliver of print in a photograph.

I admire them. I also feel a small, unreasonable flash of jealousy. I don’t want them to know less; I would just appreciate knowing what they know, preferably without making every mistake required to get there.

What makes this especially ridiculous is that I never expected to care about sewing at all. I certainly never imagined I would become this wrapped up in it. I thought I might learn to make a few things. I did not anticipate spending an evening reading about batting, developing opinions about seam allowances or looking at someone’s bag and trying to work out how they made the corners. At some point, “I’d like to try sewing” became “I need to understand everything that can be done with fabric and thread,” which was a fairly significant change in scope.

ONE QUESTION LEADS TO TWELVE MORE

Quilting alone could keep me busy for the rest of my life. There is piecing, appliqué, foundation paper piecing, English paper piecing, hand piecing, hand quilting, free-motion quilting and longarming. Each one comes with its own tools, techniques and people who have very convincing reasons for doing things differently from one another.

I can decide to learn more about hand quilting and immediately find myself comparing needles, thread weights, batting, marking methods and thimbles. I came in hoping to make smaller stitches. Apparently, I first need to choose a position on approximately six other matters.

Even sewing two squares together can become an education. We sew them, press them, cut them apart and sew the pieces back together in a different arrangement. Then someone explains a method that would have produced the same block more accurately with fewer steps. That explanation usually arrives shortly after I have finished mine.

And quilting is only part of what I want to learn.

I want to sew clothes that fit well. I want to alter a pattern without wondering whether one small change will somehow move the entire sleeve to the wrong side of my body. I want to understand fabric drape, ease, linings and why a garment that looked lovely in the pattern photograph looks quite different once a real person inhabits it.

I want to make bags with neat zippers, sturdy straps and enough structure to stand up without resembling a piece of luggage. Bag makers seem able to choose between interfacing, fleece, foam and various other materials with complete confidence. I would like to know how they do that before I commit several hours of work and a perfectly good piece of fabric to the wrong one.

Then there is home décor. Curtains, cushions and slipcovers sound approachable until measuring becomes involved. A quilt can be a little larger than planned and still be a quilt. A curtain that is four inches too short will spend every day informing you of that fact.

These are all forms of sewing, but competence in one does not automatically transfer to the others. Knowing how to make a quilt has not given me the ability to fit trousers or install a professional-looking bag zipper. I think the shared use of a sewing machine creates a false impression that they are all roughly the same activity. The machine knows better.

THE PART I TEND TO FORGET

The internet does not help with the jealousy. It puts a beautifully fitted jacket, a quilt with perfect points and a handmade bag with immaculate topstitching in front of me within five minutes. I see the finished work, not the years of practice behind it. I know, intellectually, that the person who made the jacket may have sewn twenty others. That does not prevent me from looking at mine and wondering why I have not mastered jacket fitting yet, despite having made exactly zero jackets.

At the same time, I have caught myself doing something that surprised me: explaining sewing to other people.

I can explain why a scant quarter-inch seam matters, why I might press one seam differently from another or why I reach for a particular ruler. I can look at a block with points that do not match and usually work out where things went astray. I have learned when a mistake needs fixing and when I have simply been staring at the project from four inches away for too long.

Some of what I once had to look up now comes easily. I have preferences based on what has worked for me, not just what the packaging promised. The knowledge arrived a little at a time, attached to projects, mistakes and seams I would rather not unpick again. Because there was no obvious moment when I became more skilled, I had not quite noticed how much I had learned.

I wonder if the quilters I envy feel the same way. They may be completely comfortable constructing the block I cannot figure out, then go home and stare suspiciously at a garment pattern. Someone new to quilting could probably look at my work and assume I have everything figured out, which would be flattering and wildly inaccurate.

I still feel jealous sometimes. I want the experience behind those beautifully made clothes, bags and quilts, and I am impatient about how long it takes to acquire it. But I am also beginning to recognize that I have already acquired quite a bit. I am not starting from scratch every time I sit down to sew, even when the project in front of me asks something I have never done before.

The interest that took me by surprise has grown into something much bigger than a list of projects I want to make. I want to understand how they work. That may mean I will always be aware of what I have not learned yet, but it also means there will always be something interesting waiting when I return to the sewing room.

Happy stitching! Chris