Saturday, September 18, 2010

National Sewing Month

September is a busy busy month.  There are 29 health related awareness days or weeks listed for 2010.  The only month that appears to be busier was May although I didn't actually count.  I have already posted for Suicide/Depression, Celiac and Invisible Illness so here is something a bit more light hearted: National Sewing Month.

Prior to becoming Ill I used to sew a lot.  It is one of those things that I'm good at but not overwhelmingly fond of.  I learned to sew from my Mum when I was little.  I sewed my first dress for my doll when I was about 6 from fabric scraps from my Mum sewing a dress for me.  My doll and I ended up with not quite matching dresses.  By the time I was in my teens, I was sewing entire outfits and when I hit college I started designing medieval costumes without patterns.   After college, I didn't sew for about 20 years.  I took it up again a couple of years ago as a result of skating. 

After a 30+ year hiatus from formal figure skating lessons I started taking classes again.  After a while I decided to start testing and competing.  Now I am not young and I am not skinny.  All skating outfits are designed for 13 year old girls.  Even if I scaled the patterns up they still wouldn't look right so I bought myself a serger and learned how to sew knits.  I've also been designing my own patterns either from existing dresses or from pattern pieces cobbled together from different dress patterns.   I've made four skating outfits and a skirt.  The one I made for a friend came out the best.

What I find most disturbing since I've returned to sewing is the loss of information.  It seems to be a dying art.  It is amazingly hard to find fabrics, notions and sewing machine accessories.  The large fabric stores have had to resort to including crafts of all sorts to keep themselves viable.  While I understand this, I wonder why no one sews anymore?  Why is this becoming a lost art?  So lets celebrate sewing during National Sewing Month and hopefully it will see a revival like knitting has.

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