Sew What

How is it that we’ve come to live in a world where clothing is disposable–and I’m not talking about diapers! And how is it that I’ve managed to raise kids who think this as well?

Case in point: recently I picked my daughter up from a sleepover, and I noticed that she was wearing her friend’s shirt.

“Where’s the shirt you packed?” I asked, tossing her sleeping bag in the trunk.

“Oh, I put it on and it ripped,” Annie said, buckling her seat belt. “You can turn it into a rag if you’d like.”

I didn’t think much of her answer because, truth be told, I had grown used to turning unwearable clothing into rags, a trick I’d picked up from my mother. It was the eco-friendly thing to do and saved a ton on paper towels.

But as the days went by, I kept thinking about this torn shirt, which was still stuffed in Annie’s backpack. We’d bought it during our back-to-school shopping at Aeropostale and it was not cheap. I surely wasn’t going to buy her another to replace the torn shirt, and I couldn’t in good conscience “ragify” a shirt she’d worn for only a few months.

So I decided to mend it. This may seem like the obviously solution to anyone who was raised with a mother that sews, but the truth is, whose mother sews anymore?

I guess I was lucky to have been raised by a mother who was raised in borderline poverty in rural Maine. Because of this my grandmother sewed and my mother learned to do the same. When I was a child my mother made a lot of my clothing, and stitched up anything that ripped or needed hemming (or letting out). Not surprisingly, one of her prized possessions was her sewing machine, a device I never quite got the hang of (I always managed to snag the bobbin, even when I took sewing in my 7th grade home ec class). Luckily, my mother was my Girl Scout leader, and I still remember her working with us to earn our sewing badge.

Our troop had gone on an overnight, and throughout that weekend we worked on various sewing projects and learned different hand stitches. We made squares of a quilt, sewed already earned badges onto our sashes (to save our mothers from the task), and created homemade pillows.

For this last project, I still remember how to do it. It involved placing the two pieces of fabric onto of one another, print side in; stitching three sides; “un-inning” the fabric so it was right side out; stuffing it with fluffy fill; and then carefully stitching the final side to finish it off.

If I wanted to today I could make new pillow covers for our living room, but who has the time? And if I were to figure things out based on hourly costs, I’m sure I would see how much cheaper and more time efficient it is just to buy new pillows at the store. Then again, in doing so, I’ve lost the opportunity to teach my children how to sew and that sense of accomplishment, that “Wow, I made that” feeling that comes with sewing something.

Last week I not only fixed Annie’s shirt but a pair of brown leggings that I discovered had come apart at the seams in four places. It took about 20 minutes all together, and then I placed each item back in the dresser–instead of in the rag bin.

“When did you fix my shirt?” Annie yelled from her bedroom yesterday morning.

“On New Year’s Day,” I replied.

“Wow, I didn’t know you could do that. I’m going to wear it to school today.”

I’m guessing that one of my 2008 resolutions should be to teach my daughters to hand stitch stuff. This way, when gas is $5 a gallon and they discover that all of those disposal, “Made in China” fashion items we’ve been buying forever are actually laced with lead, my daughters will have another option for getting the most mileage out of their wardrobe.