I’ve noticed that whenever I tell someone I have a hobby of sewing (or embroidery, or cross-stitch…I like fiber arts), the default reaction is surprise. Exclamations like, “really?!” or “you sew?” are reactions I’ve gotten too many times to count. Maybe that’s due to the assumption that these hobbies are only done by older ladies, but I don’t think my sewing skills should be THAT surprising. Sewing is ridiculously useful and something that, in my opinion, everyone should have at least a little knowledge of.
Basic sewing skills can keep garments usable for years and years. For instance, in high school I noticed a hole in one of my favorite pairs of pants. Most people would’ve gotten rid of the pants. Instead, because I know how to sew, with five minutes and a needle and thread, the hole was repaired and my pants were good as new. I still wear them to this day! A basic running stitch fixed my pants, and it’s such an easy stitch (just weaving in and out of the fabric, very straightforward). Yet, if I hadn’t known it, I’d have been unable to save and continue using those pants. Simple repairs like that extend the lives of pieces of clothing, preventing me from having to spend money on new clothes and from contributing to the issues of overconsumption and fashion waste.
Aside from basic clothing repairs (like those described above, or replacing a broken button and hemming a too-long dress), sewing teaches important qualities like patience and focus. Sewing projects can take a very long time—I’ve known people who worked on quilts for anywhere from a few months to several years, and even simpler projects can take weeks to complete. It requires patience to see a project through, and as the saying goes, patience is a virtue. It’s a skill that can be applied to many other areas of life, like long chemistry labs or writing a paper. Sewing teaches you the patience necessary to accept that a project will take time, and to see it through to the end anyway. Similarly, sewing teaches focus. Sewing projects often require intense concentration, especially for detailed or difficult work. This concentration teaches an ability to tune out one’s surroundings and focus only on the task at hand, which, again, has many applications in daily life.
From the actual, physical ability to sew to the qualities sewing instills, sewing is a useful and practical skill. Sewing can be of great help in many situations—I once used my sewing kit to repair a friend’s dress strap about twenty minutes before a school dance—and the non-sewing skills the activity teaches can be helpful in many other ways. Sewing is definitely a life skill, and one I think more people should learn.
