Working On: a little bit every day

Early spring is such a strange season. The weather is restless and moody, which makes me feel that way, too.

It's light out until past 7pm now, but we have an inch of snow on the ground. A daffodil in our front garden bloomed during the snowfall this week. As I write, flurries descend; everything is blanketed in white.

I’ve been finding it hard to focus on most things. I suppose that’s why I’ve been neglecting this newsletter a bit recently.

For the Little One, 1896, William Merritt Chase

It seems a little ironic, in these circumstances, that I've been trying to work on my sewing consistency for the past couple of weeks. At the beginning of March I saw someone post on Instagram about trying to sew a little bit every day this month, and thought it would be a fun challenge to try. For a while now I've wanted to make sewing more of a habit, the way that knitting is for me. Most nights, I work on a knitting project while watching TV, reading a book or sitting by the fire with a podcast. In contrast, I tend to binge-sew, cutting and sewing a garment in a whirl of activity, then abandoning my sewing machine for a few weeks.

This is a perfectly acceptable way to do things, but ideally I would like to sew in a less frenetic way - to stitch a little bit every day. Or at least, most days.

Thus far I've been quite successful - I think I do sew most days. Sometimes just a few seams, but there have been days where I've holed up in my sewing room for hours at a time. Sewing seems to be one of those things that the more I do, the more I want to do. I can get so focused on a project that I completely lose track of time. It's like being in a fugue state. I just really like doing it.

comic Valentine c. 1850

At times I have even felt resentful that I have to go and do something else instead of working on my current sewing project. Sometimes I abandon something I really should be doing (ie, going grocery shopping) in favor of my sewing. I’ve felt so flighty this month, waiting for the weather to warm up, but sewing seems to be the thing that keeps me grounded.

As a lover of routine, once something gets integrated into my daily life, I find it hard to give up. I fall asleep at night thinking about what I’ll sew the next day. My projects have become more varied, as I search for things to fill the time I’ve set aside for sewing - I’ve been making draft excluders, and clothes for my two-year-old niece; I’m planning another pair of espadrilles.

As I stitch, I’ve been thinking frequently about this idea of consistency. It’s something that I really value - sometimes. I like consistency in myself, but as I’ve often remarked to my husband, I love living in the Northeastern US because of the changing seasons. I don’t want to live in a place where there isn’t the possibility of a surprise snowfall on Easter.

Consistency can often slip into rigidity, if one isn’t careful. I don’t want to hold myself to arbitrary rules like must sew every day - and I also know that I really can’t do that, even if I tried to. My making practice has always ebbed and flowed. I tend to knit a lot in the winter, and sew a bit more in the summer. Years have been gone by when I haven’t sewed a thing, but I always come back to it. We all move in cycles.

That said, I’ve often struggled with the tension between structure and stricture. Like many, I crave stability but also need to leave room for improvisation. My inclination can often lean towards the austere, which I try to keep in mind - I joked once that I love to completely plan out my day, but have learned that I should include in the schedule a block of time for ‘doing whatever I feel like at that time’.

So, while I do want to prioritize my sewing more, I don’t necessarily want to formalize that. I’m not scheduling my sewing. Instead, I’ve been trying to stick to what is, increasingly, my mantra in all areas of life: the idea that a little bit is better than nothing.

In my sewing practice, this means that even if I only have time to sew one seam, or one button, that’s still worth doing. (Having my dedicated sewing room makes this a lot easier, obviously.) If I know I have a free fifteen minutes, I’ll go up to my sewing room and maybe just pin a side seam together, or sew the gathering stitches on a shoulder cap. Previously, I would only sew if I knew I had an hour or two to devote to it; now I’m working on projects in bits and pieces. This has both slowed down and sped up my sewing, as I feel I am working more slowly, but I’m actually finishing whole garments in a week, rather than working on a piece over two or three separate weekends, for example.

This is a kind of consistency that I’ve been enjoying immensely. It’s flexible, but easy enough to stick to that I’ve been able to keep it up. I look forward now to taking 15 or 20 minutes to do a little sewing task when I get home from work. In other areas of my life, I’ve been a little bit less than disciplined recently (see aforementioned unwillingness to grocery shop), so it’s been good to feel that I’m working away at something.

Mentally, I’ve only committed to doing this through March, but it’s been so lovely that I might just try to do this for the foreseeable. I still have a lot of fabric in my stash that I want to sew up, and plenty of ideas for garments I want to make. And for now, I’m getting a lot of joy out of sewing.

How are you finding this season? Or maybe you live somewhere there aren’t any seasons - or are in the Southern Hemisphere, preparing for winter? What are you working on? I’d love to hear.

Best,