The Whipstitch Podcast is your listening destination for thinking about sewing. It’s a place to talk ABOUT sewing even when we aren’t sewing. The most recent episode is all about why sometimes, talk isn’t enough–and we need community.
I share ten reasons why I think a sewing community is right for you, and what you’ll discover when you join one. That can mean a club at a local quilt shop, a chapter of the American Sewing Guild, or an online community like The League of Dressmakers. If we’ve learned anything in the last five years, it’s that nothing can replace the value and importance of community in our lives. That is even more true of our CREATIVE lives.
Read along with the transcript below, where you’ll find links to most of the mentions from the episode! Thanks for listening. (Remember to like and subscribe, yada yada.)
Podcast transcript: Episode 29, Ten Reasons To Join A Sewing Membership
Deborah (00:00):
It seems like everything has gone to subscriptions lately, and I know that you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you learned during lockdown that you could have your groceries delivered like I did, even the grocery delivery wants you to have a subscription so that you save on grocery delivery costs. Seems like everything’s a subscription. So why, Deborah, you’re asking, why would I join a subscription sewing community? Isn’t that just one more thing? Aren’t I getting that by scrolling TikTok or Instagram? Isn’t that my sewing community? Aren’t I getting that by watching YouTube videos and leaving comments? Isn’t that my sewing community?
And I’m going to be honest with you, no, that is not a community, but I have ten reasons why a sewing community is worth it, why you should definitely join. Full disclosure, I host the League of Dressmakers, an online sewing community for people who want to learn to love to sew, where we support one another and do sewalongs and live events and have exclusive patterns and where I walk you step by step through what to sew next and how to get your great results.
(01:26):
So I do have an ulterior motive because I think The League is the best sewing community you could possibly join, but even if you never explore The League, I would like to share with you ten reasons why joining a sewing community is worth it for you even when you’re just about tired of subscriptions.
My name is Deborah Moebes. I write the blog at Whip-stitch.com. I’m the author of two bestselling sewing books. I’ve been teaching sewing for more than twenty years, and I am delighted to welcome you to this episode of the Whipstitch podcast. Thanks for listening.
(02:16):
So let’s lay some sort of groundwork here so that we’re all laboring with the same definitions. A sewing community, I would define, is a consistent place, which is to say whether it’s digital or literal, a specific place where you can consistently go in order to get support, encouragement, information, guidance techniques or inspiration. It requires, in order to fulfill that definition, that it be populated with other people and that while you are there, you are also forming relationships which serve to motivate you to continue to sew. If you don’t have relationships, it’s not a community, like the COM, the “com” part of community is WITH, it’s that prefix that means “with.” And so you can have, there are lots of influencers who in their TikTok account or their Instagram reels or something will talk about the community they’re building. You can’t have a community without consistent recurring relationships.
(03:35):
It’s nice. It’s nice that you’ve created a place where people can consistently go to consume your content, but that is not the same as community. And what I hear repeatedly from people who really want to improve their sewing skills or who have a philosophical reason for wanting to sew more, like they want to get away from microplastics in their clothes or they want to get away from clothing made in sweatshops or they want to get away from fast fashion for lots of reasons, or they want to embrace their own personal style and they can’t find it in the stores. Whatever their reason for wanting to sew, the thing I hear from them consistently is that it’s very difficult to put together your own sense of what to do next when you are kind of piecemeal learning different skills along the way–that there is a lot of content, but there’s not a lot of guidance available.
(04:35):
A sewing community, for my definition, is a place where you will find that guidance in addition to finding recurring repeated relationships that encourage and motivate you to move forward. That’s the COMMUNITY part of community; it isn’t only the content, as important as the content is, it is also the people who are there. So I’m going to give you, with that definition in mind, that a community is a specific place that you can go where you’re going to find inspiration, technique, instruction, but also relationship, encouragement, motivation. It’s in a specific place, like a URL or a physical store where you can get that.
These are the ten reasons why you will benefit from that community even if the definition isn’t enough. Because for me, and obviously I’m biased, but for me that definition… I’m like, yes, I want those things. That is enough. I’m sold. You can stop talking.
(05:36):
I’m done. Sign me up. I want those things. For other people, they may feel like: I know, it’s still just another subscription. I don’t know. Do I even want to go to the same place over and over? I’m not sure because part of it is about finding your people, but here are ten reasons why you would benefit from a sewing community.
Even if you are testing the waters on that community, even if you look at a bunch of different options, you’ve got your local quilt shop and they’re really warm and they’re friendly, but maybe they’re focused on quilting and you really want to do garment sewing. Or you look at a local American Sewing Guild chapter and you really like them, but they’re not really the same demographic as you and you’re in your twenties and you really want to do kind of cutting edge fashion forward stuff and maybe that’s not what they’re doing.
(06:27):
Or you look at some of the online options and the bodies that are represented there don’t really reflect your body. So you’re not totally sure that you’re going to get the guidance that you need. You’ve got a lot of options and it appeals to you, but you aren’t sure if that’s for you. Well, here are ten reasons why I think that you should take the leap anyway. Even if from observing on the outside you think, that is not my community. It’s a community, but it’s not my community. Here we go.
Here’s my list of ten reasons you should join a sewing community anyway, even if you are only testing the waters to see if it’s a good fit.
Reason 1: Learn new sewing skills
Number one, most obvious, you will learn new sewing skills and all of us know this is true. If you have any exposure to social media on any level–that simply by watching another human do a sewing project, you are going to learn or at a minimum be exposed to new sewing skills, that there are some ways to do a particular sewing like a buttonhole for example, that you’re like, I didn’t know you could do that.
(07:39):
Or applying a trim or adding a neckline or altering a pattern. You’re going to learn something new simply by being around someone else talking about their sewing or showing you a completed project. Maybe you had no awareness of any kind that the seam allowances on the interior of an unlined project could be finished with bias tape so that they’re beautiful. Maybe that never occurred to you, or maybe you’d kind of heard about binding seams sort of, but you’d never seen it. And the minute you see the inside of someone’s khaki barn coat, but the seams are bound with Liberty fabric and you’re like, oh, well, that’s a whole other thing altogether. It can change the way you picture your next project. Someone asked me recently, they were like, so everything that you sew is a pattern that you designed? Because I had told them that I design sewing patterns for the League of Dressmakers, and as I was describing our How to Sew Clothes video series and saying each of the patterns in the video series is very intentional, specifically designed so that it teaches these skills as you go along.
(08:53):
And they were asking me about own wardrobe and the clothes that I wear and they said, well, so are those the only patterns that you use or from that video series? And I was like, oh, well no, definitely not. I have sort of an alarming pattern collection, a disturbingly large pattern collection. And they were like, well, so why? Which is a valid question because there are only so many ways to put fabric on a human body. There are only so many ways, only so many sewing techniques to make a garment. And so they’re like, well, why do you need more patterns? And I said, sometimes it’s just for the instructions. I am willing to pay another pattern designer $16 for their PDF pattern even if I never sew that garment simply for the privilege of looking at how they have worked out the construction steps, for the inspiration and enlightenment.
(09:51):
Yeah, I must have, and I’m probably going to under count here, but I bet I’ve got fourteen patterns for jeans probably, and I mean jeans are jeans are jeans, right? So you would think, okay, so the reason for having fourteen jeans patterns is for all the different pattern pieces for all the different shapes of jeans. And that is NOT why for me, for me it’s because I want to learn those new sewing skills from looking at the pattern instructions. But here’s the kicker. The real place that I learn new jeans sewing skills is by having a conversation with someone who has made jeans. And sometimes it’s not the stuff that they would necessarily put in a social media post or in a blog post or in a presentation at the guild. It’s really in conversation where you’re like, well, so I really wanted to ask you about those rivets, and then you are connecting with another person.
(10:55):
And I’m thinking specifically about a real conversation I had where she goes, oh my gosh, thank you. It was like, what’s a metaphor that I could use? It was the equivalent of being at a fancy dress up party and seeing someone and being like, your eyelashes look amazing. And having her say, “That took me five tries. Thank you for noticing.” This was like that, but it was about making jeans. So for me, the community part of learning new sewing skills goes far beyond: This is an environment with a tutorial–because you and I both know we can find… Google’s going to find you Google, AI is going to find you a tutorial. It’s more than that. Sometimes you don’t know what to Google because you don’t have the words for the thing you’d like to do. You need a relationship in order to work out what’s available to you. And in order to learn new sewing skills, something, you have to know that those techniques exist. So number two, second reason to join a sewing community is creative expression.
Reason 2: Creative expression
(12:03):
For me, secret/not so secret, I really believe that all sewing is a form of therapy. It has been my experience over and over again that you cannot lie to yourself at the sewing machine. If you are feeling anxious, if you are feeling down, if you are feeling angry, if you are feeling worthless, if you are feeling hopeless, that is coming out at the sewing machine and it does not matter how good you are at masking in the rest of your life. That nonsense is going to show up. And what I appreciate so deeply about sewing is that when it shows up, the sewing machine gives me an opportunity to tell myself the truth in a way that I don’t always get in other parts of my life because you will roadblock yourself, you will hit a spot where you really can’t move forward. And my experience with that in my creative expression has been that when I hit those roadblocks, sometimes I don’t want to sew, I don’t have ideas, I don’t have interest or I have too many ideas and I can’t just get started and I feel tethered.
(13:20):
I feel like you go to the beach and you’re excited to swim, but there are all these floating barriers that you can’t swim past and they’re really near you just can’t get very far. So where’s the fun in that? A sewing community is a place where even when you are roadblocked, you have the opportunity to engage in relationship with other people who are feeling the same way you are feeling or recently got over feeling the same thing you’re feeling or have a solution for the thing that you are feeling or have an ear to listen as you work through the thing that you are feeling. There are some times where my creative expression is so blocked that it really does take the warmth and acknowledgement and understanding of another person for me to feel motivated to sew again. So all my good intentions out the window, I’m not going to buy any new clothes this year and suddenly it’s just easier to buy new clothes or I’m going to dress so that my outsides match my inside.
(14:29):
This year I am going to explore my own creative nature. I am going to experiment with things. I’m going to be fearless, and then it just is, where do I even start with that? Well, a sewing community can help you access your sense of creative expression, and sometimes that’s very formalized. Sometimes that’s a whole, like, we’re all going to do thirty days together–which the League of Dressmakers is actually doing in March. We are going to do thirty days together where we explore our own creative habit and build our creative muscles through a series of exercises, and sometimes that is a lot less formal. It is simply in conversation or in reading what other people share out of vulnerability or transparency or courage share about their own creative journey. And sometimes it’s just exposure. Sometimes it’s just watching other people do their own creative thing and saying, I mean, I didn’t know you could do that. I mean, I can do that. So it’s exciting to be in community with other people who get excited about your creative ventures. Maybe you did something that you think is absolute garbage and you share it because you are feeling super down on yourself and then they dog pile on you to say, are you kidding me right now? That is amazing.
(15:50):
One of the things I love about working with The League was a comment somebody made about my first book where she said about my writing that it was like learning to sew from your best friend’s big sister, and I carry that with me every day. I take that as a vocational blessing. I really believe that’s what a sewing community should be. It should be a room–real or virtual–filled with best friends, big sisters who are encouraging you and cheering you on and supporting you and inspiring you and motivating you so that your creativity comes out in big ways and in small ways. I really believe community is the best way to do that.
Reason 3: Increase your practical skill level
The third reason to join a sewing community is to increase your practical skill level. Now, I actually think this is different from learning new sewing skills. This is more like taking the skills that you already have and making them better.
(16:51):
Whereas learning a new sewing skill is about, what, the burrito method for making a button up shirt. That’s amazing. I’ve never seen that before. And you get all excited because here’s something that you didn’t even know was possible. Increasing your practical skill level is more, oh, that I have been sewing my curves that way. No wonder, oh, that is what’s been happening. Every time I sew a sleeve and I get a weird little tuck, I had know I could make it better like that. Oh, you can do that when you’re top stitching. That really does make a difference. Increasing your practical skill level is about being exposed to new ways of doing familiar things, but in a gentle way, right? Not a critical way, not a, you need to do this to improve your sewing skills, not in an infomercial way more in a way where someone says out of excitement for their own discovery, you guys, I just learned there is a better way to get a consistent seam allowance.
(17:58):
Or when someone posts a really tragic picture and says, this keeps happening to me. I’m actually in a Facebook group that’s like a very general Facebook group, and some of the people who are in there are tremendously experienced and some of them are tremendously inexperienced and watching some of the inexperienced sewers post photographs and ask questions, I always hold my breath just a little bit because some people have a real gift for answering those questions in this particular group, a real gift for answering those questions in ways where they’re like, oh, I know what the problem is here. Here’s the best solution I have ever come up with for myself for how to solve that problem. But then other people are like, you’re doing it wrong. You must have learned from somebody who didn’t know what they were doing LOL. So that’s not super helpful and it really does undermine the entire community.
(18:55):
What you’re looking for is an environment where you can screw up something as basic as a straight seam and say, I’m making this T-shirt and I keep skipping stitches. I do not understand what I’m doing wrong. This is a practical skill. I want to sew knit fabrics. I’m working with this cotton jersey, I don’t understand. And for someone to come in and say, oh, that used to happen to me all the time. I switched to a ballpoint needle, problem solved, and they’re like, what’s a ballpoint needle? That is a practical skill level, that is a beginner who doesn’t realize there are different sewing machine needles and who is now exposed to this idea that, okay, here’s something I can do that’s very simple. It’s not a new skill, it’s just an improvement on my previous skill and it’s going to transform my experience, not just my results.
(19:47):
For me, a community of people where you have consistent, recurring, repeated relationships is the place to do that while preserving your own heart. I just watched so many people get beaten up asking for help and for a lot of us, and this might be a me thing, but for a lot of us asking for help was not something that was rewarded very heavily when we were younger, and that carries over throughout your life where, okay, asking for help, that’s definitely not a thing. I’m just going to pretend I know what I’m doing and you’re going to ask me if I understand and I’m going to say yes, but inside I wasn’t even clocking the words coming out of your mouth, I fully dissociated during your explanation. Now I’m going to go figure it out for myself, but if I can’t figure it out, I’m going to feel ashamed and less than.
(20:42):
I genuinely hope I’m not describing you right there because I was fully describing most of my own growing up where I had to increase my practical skill level on my own through self instruction, and it wasn’t really pride or hubris, which I was also told that’s what that was. So just pile on the shame. It’s cool, no worries. It was, in fact, that asking for help was not rewarded. It wasn’t warmly supported and encouraged. For me, increasing your practical skill level in a community where you have actual relationships, you’re not shouting into the void, asking the hive mind to answer your question, but rather you are going to people who have already interacted with you warmly, who have already showed you kindness and support and encouragement, and now you are being vulnerable by asking for help with the expectation that they will continue to show you warmth and kindness.
(21:33):
That is what a community does and I will tell you, all biases aside, the members at the League of Dressmakers are those people. They are kind, they are funny, they are warm, they remember details about one another’s lives. We do live chats and they check in and they’re like, oh, that’s right. You went on that trip together. Oh, tell us about it. They will post photographs of when they meet one another out in the real world, if one of them is having a hard time, they will chime in from all different directions saying, please let us know if there’s anything we can do or I went through something similar, I have some resources I can share or just know that we are thinking about you and we can’t wait to see you next time. That warmth and encouragement creates a place where you can feel confident that you will be able to go with your questions when you are ready to ask questions, and those questions will be received in a beneficial way.
Reason 4: Sustainable and eco-friendly items
(22:32):
Reason number four, to join a sewing community is because you have an investment in sowing sustainable or eco-friendly items. And this might feel like a weird reason to join a community, but hear me out, hear me out as the kids say there really is a movement on and I hope you’ve noticed it. I hope it has grown enough that this is not news to you. If it is, then I am thrilled and honored to bring this news to you. There really is a movement on recognizing exactly how much clothing there already is in the world. A truckload, I heard this this morning, a truckload of garments gets dumped in the garbage every second of every hour of every day. It’s so much you guys. There is a garbage patch in Argentina of used clothing that can be seen from space. I read that one in an issue of National Geographic Magazine.
(23:32):
Many people who come to sewing do so because they genuinely feel convicted and motivated by the idea that the fashion industry as a behemoth industry has kind of sold us a bill of goods, convinced us that we need new stuff all the time and they’re not entirely wrong. A lot of us, our bodies are changing. A lot of us have growing kids, a lot of us, no matter how minimalist you are, things wear out and need replacing. I do need new clothing sometimes, but they are engineering into the clothing. They are selling planned obsolescence. They’re using cheaper and cheaper and cheaper materials and cheaper and cheaper and cheaper construction methods with underpaid and poorly treated labor and toxic chemicals. They are shedding microplastics like a crazy person all over the place. They are adding carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from their factories. It’s really nuts what’s happening in the manufacturer of these items that are intended to fall apart so that you are obligated to replace them.
(24:47):
And some of us are real bowed up about that as we say in the American south. And so we want to find a solution. We would like to dores ourselves in more sustainable ways. We would like to be more aware of the impact of our wardrobe ecologically economically, globally. We want to have some measure of influence, maybe not control because like that might be an illusion, but definitely influence and it is very difficult because you end up stuck. If I make my own clothes, am I contributing to the problem? Am I not just making more clothes? So in what way can I enter into this? Let’s use the word discourse about garment production, the garment industry. In what way am I making a statement by sewing my own clothing? How does that function in a real person’s life who gets up every day and goes to work and takes care of a family and is still obligated to make dinner? What every night, how does making my own clothes even factor in? Can I make a difference? A community can.
(26:05):
That’s how that links back to you being in a sewing community, a community can. And even just listening to that, what three or four minutes of me talking about where handmade clothing might fit into the larger discourse of the fashion industry. It’s very hard to think that that drop in a bucket will make a difference, but it only takes a match to start a fire for lack of a better metaphor. And so joining a sowing community is an opportunity to start to get some answers to those questions and to start working through those conflicting, I want to make my own clothing, but isn’t there already enough clothing? So how do I settle that discrepancy? Is it a dichotomy? Is there a way for those things to live harmoniously for me to have a creative expression without adding to the problem? Those are conversations you can have in a sewing community in a way that’s very difficult in a comments section.
(27:07):
Come on. Even if you are fortunate enough to find yourself in a thread where someone else is responding to your concerns, rarely does that parlay itself into a real relationship where you can consistently go back and say, oh, I saw this article and I thought of you. Good luck finding that person. A community is a place where you can find that person and when it’s in a consistent place, again, whether that’s in real life at a shop or a guild meeting or whether it’s virtual in an online community, a consistent place where you can go back and say, Hey, I was thinking about this idea the other day and I remembered somebody had mentioned fill in the blank. Does anybody have that information or link or source or person? I would love to talk about that some more. A sewing community is a place where you can do that, but if you don’t have a consistent place, you cannot build those consistent, reliable relationships and that is where your growth stagnates.
(28:12):
And so my goal, not to make it all about me, but my goal with the League of Dressmakers is always to promote the idea that we are going to sow better together, that our sowing is growing because we are doing that in community.
Reason 5: Charitable opportunities
Number five reason to join a sowing community is charitable opportunities. Many of us as we sow end up with scraps but not time. Some of us, some of us, you luckies, end up with time but not scraps. Almost all of us, the people who I have met in the world of sewing are generous, kind, good natured, open-hearted humans who actually care about others. Few of us consistently have opportunities to engage in charitable opportunities that tap into our creative expression. A sowing community gives you a place to do that. Some of us found that out under lockdown when we started sewing masks.
(29:16):
It is, I mean, it borders immeasurable. The number of people who came to sewing to start with or came back to sewing because they were making masks under lockdown. And after that, there were some folks who just, they didn’t want to make their own clothes, but they also didn’t really want to make quilts and they had enough housewares, but they really enjoyed the meditative creative nature of sewing and they were looking for places to do that. Some people make cloth napkins and cloth placements for Meals on Wheels where you deliver that to the recipient’s home so that there adds a little bit of warmth to the meal. They’re receiving some of it through Project Linus. Some of it do it through days for girls, which makes menstrual kits for girls in other places where water is a scarcity so that they can still attend school when having their cycle.
(30:07):
There are some really incredible charitable opportunities that are geared toward people who sew. There’s an organization that does adaptive garments for veterans who’ve been wounded and they need clothing that they can put on and take off easily that accommodates their injury or their amputation. I mean really amazing organizations out there. They will give you the patterns, they will give you the guidelines, they will show you the protocol for how to get these things done. They’re asking for your time and your fabric, but outside of a sewing community, it can sometimes be difficult to get plugged in to those opportunities. It can also sometimes be difficult to stay on track with those opportunities so many of us love doing for others, but it can become one more obligation we’ve added to the list and as soon as it becomes something you need to check off in order to move forward, or as soon as it becomes something where if I don’t do this first, I don’t earn the privilege of making something else.
(31:14):
It takes some of the charity out of your charity if you follow. So in community, however, can offer a challenge or a group project or a reward for engaging in those charitable opportunities where there’s, I don’t always love this term, but there’s a carrot there for you, something that’s going to encourage and move you forward in doing something you wanted to do anyway because you are in relationship with other people who feel the same way you feel and are doing the same activity. It really is. Even talking about it is really warming and encouraging and linking back to that idea of creative expression and roadblocks and getting stuck. Let’s say that’s where you are. It’s the beginning of the year and all these people are like, new year, new you. Or they’re like my 2025 sewing plans and it’s 97 pages, single spaced of all the things they’re going to do.
(32:12):
And you’re like, that must be nice because I am struggling just to turn on the machine or care right now a charitable opportunity for sewing done in a group setting with people you already like where all of you are sharing your results together and then mailing them off on a deadline. What? Talk about a great way to get your creative juices moving forward so that you do feel more free. It is such a great opportunity and I have rarely seen that happen outside of a community setting.
Reason 6: Master tricky techniques with guidance
Number six, reason to join a sewing community. The opportunity to master tricky techniques with guidance. Again, for me, the baseline definition of a sowing community is that it is a consistent place where you go with consistent people and you don’t only get facts. It isn’t only instruction, it is also support and encouragement, but it’s not instruction, right?
(33:15):
I have been a member of guilds or clubs. It’s more formal than a club, but organizations that have meetings and you’ll go to the meetings and there’s a meet and greet time, and then there’s a show and tell time, and then there’s a club business time, and then they break. And at no point is there ever a guest instructor or sometimes there might be a speaker who does a slideshow, but there isn’t always, alright ladies, let’s turn on your machines and gentlemen, obviously there’s not always this opportunity to actually do something practical. A sowing community, a good one is going to give you that chance where they say, here’s the thing that you’ve been putting off learning how to do. And today’s our day last year because I host the murder mystery quilt in addition to the League of Dressmakers last year for our assembly pattern at the end of the year, I included a partial seam in our pattern.
(34:21):
Now, there was a workaround where they didn’t have to do the partial seam if they didn’t want to do the partial seam, but it, it’s a trickier technique that is not intuitive that once you learn it, you always know it and it really does open up some opportunities for you if you’ve got that in your toolbox. I would gamble, I didn’t actually do any statistical analysis on this, but I would gamble 60% of the quilters who tried that technique last year had not done it before or hadn’t done it in a long time. Some of those, it was active. They were like, yeah, I’m not doing that. They read a pattern and they were like, mm m, that wasn’t enough of me. I’m out. Being in community with other people and being part of a live workshop or a recorded workshop or an online class as a cohort, as a group, like we’re all doing this together really is empowering.
(35:23):
It begins to make you feel like you are not in it alone because you’re not. So one of the things we do with the League of dress makers, sometimes we will do a sew along, like sewing instructions. So for example, for that, how to sew clothes, video, I sow every single step of every single pattern on video. And that way as you are doing the pattern, you can watch me do it in real time and then duplicate that to get your own results. Other times we do what I call a So with me, which is similarly video recorded, every single step is on camera, but it is a pattern where I am sewing it and I haven’t made it before. So you get to watch me do it even if I don’t know how to do it. And there are definitely times where I’m sitting there with the instructions and I’m like, yeah, I don’t actually know what that means, so here’s what I’m going to try.
(36:18):
There are times where I make an egregious error and we’re all looking at it, and there’s definitely a temptation because video and social media and perception being what they are, there’s a temptation for me to be like, I’m just going to cut that out, except that’s literally the point is I’m not going to cut it out. A so with me is literally we are mastering tricky techniques and we’re going to do it together, and I want you to not only see this is the way I did this thing. So with a pattern that I’ve designed, I want you to also see sometimes you’re confronted with instructions that you don’t understand and you’ve got to solve that problem to get through it. I want you to see sometimes you’re going to make mistakes and you don’t want to throw the project out, you still want to get to the other side.
(37:04):
So here are some ways that we can troubleshoot whatever came up. Yeah, that’s really important to me, but it is also something I have not experienced outside community. Even for me as the content creator, there are times that knowing that community is on the other side of that video where I am really motivated to be creative or to get outside my own way of thinking, or where I’m motivated to do even more research and bring back those answers. It is the fact that there’s a community waiting for that. So with me video, that keeps me moving forward to do it because that’s the whole point is to have that guidance.
Reason 7: Meet guest speakers or learn from “pros”
Reason number seven, similarly for why to join a sewing community is to meet guest speakers or to learn from prose. So because you are in a community with other people with similar interests, it is possible to bring in a guest speaker every year.
(38:04):
The League of Dressmakers, for example, does a tournament, a sewing tournament. It is a bar bracketed tournament so that we’re round robin so that we can try projects that we haven’t tried before, get unstuck creatively, challenge ourselves to step outside of what we’re used to doing, give ourselves a deadline. It’s all voluntary, but we always have a guest judge. It’s one project a week for a series of weeks, and there’s always a guest judge who comes in and looks at all the projects and critiques them and compliments them and praises you. And it really is an exciting opportunity to have an individual or a personality or a familiar account like somebody from social media, show up and look at your sewn project and give you feedback on it that you probably couldn’t get in any other way. In live opportunity, like live settings where you’re with a guild or you’re with a local quilt shop of some sort, they will bring in people from around the country who you can meet.
(39:07):
I used to own a fabric store here in Atlanta, Georgia, and we brought in people from around the country, Dana Willard from Made by Dana or made every day, I guess is her blog now, or Ray Hora from Ray’s. She does a whole series of patterns online that I guarantee that you have seen, or I’m trying to think of who else we brought in. The ladies from Ruby Star came. I mean, this is years and years ago, maybe ten, twelve years ago, all came and did a whole weekend of workshops. That was really exciting. And people in the community at the store had the opportunity to come in and meet and talked to them and listened to them and ask them questions. And those opportunities build community, but they happen in community too. Those are things that because there is a critical mass there formed by people in relationship, it makes those opportunities happen.
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It’s not the other way around. So I wasn’t inviting people to the store to get people in the store. It was the fact that we already had a community and the store was the hub that made it possible to bring people to come and host an event for them. It was really exciting and rewarding and it gave us all a chance to learn from those pros, from those experts, but it also gave us a chance to see one another and have a shared experience that kept us all creatively primed and moving forward. Which brings us to number eight.
Reason 8: Improve emotional well-being
My eighth reason why you should join a sewing community is to improve your emotional wellbeing at the end of the day, much like working out, sewing is something that you do fundamentally on your own. You can go running with a group or hiking with a group, or you can go to the gym and see the same people every day, but you are the one who has to pick up one foot and put it in front of the other. Ultimately, you cannot be part of a running community if you’re not running, which seems like such an obvious thing to say. And yet, if you are someone who sews, most of your sewing will be done alone. There will be seasons in your sewing where there’s no sewing getting done. Some of that is part of sewing. My best and most successful sewing projects are the ones that I thought about exhaustively.
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I taught theater in a performing arts high school for a long time, and the tech director, the guy who did all the behind the scenes set building and crew work, he had a phrase that he would repeat all the time so that any of his former students, if you said this to them, they’d be like, yep, PP equals pp. Poor planning equals poor performance. And sewing is one of those places where I actually do think about that phrase a lot. Thank you, Mongo. PP equals PP: Poor planning equals poor performance in sewing. You’re not always sewing when you’re sewing. Sometimes you’re thinking about sewing, sometimes you’re thinking about thinking about sewing before you’re sewing.
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Are you an overthinker too? I don’t know if you heard it in my voice just now, but I’m definitely an overthinker and you can get caught in a flat spin. My husband is a huge fan of the Top Gun movies. He’s a military veteran. His dad’s a military veteran. His grandfather’s a military veteran. My dad’s a military veteran. My grandfather’s a military veteran. Very easy to love Top Gun when you’ve got four generations on two sides from the Air Force. I mean, it’s easy to love Top Gun anyway, but so we have incorporated some top gun terminology into our lexicon, and there are times where he’s scrolling on whatever social media platform and he kind of has disappeared, and he’s got that face on where he is not totally in the room anymore. And I’ll say, babe, pull up. You’re in a flat spin. Even thinking about a sewing project can do that.
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Have you had that experience where you’re thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it for so long that it stops being a fun thing to think about, but you still think about it? I will confess to you that the jca blazer by closet core patterns, which I bought, girl, I’m not even going to tell you how long ago I bought that pattern when it first came out and only just finished this year after having the fabric for it for two years, and it sat on my table for most of that time. I just thought about it and thought about it and thought about it, and I started it and put it away and started it again and put it away repeatedly because I was in a flat spin. It wasn’t good for me to have this sewing project that I’d been like suddenly it’s become my white whale and it isn’t rewarding anymore because I am part of a sewing community with the League of Dressmakers.
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Rather than beating myself up, getting down on myself, undercutting my confidence, letting my inside voice take over and say all kinds of unkind things, I was able to improve my emotional wellbeing. I had the support and encouragement and empathy of other people who were like, I have always wanted to sow pattern. I have had my foot on the brakes so hard. And I said, well, what if we do a so with me and I will make it on camera? That will definitely get me out of this slump and it will prevent me from giving up again and not pushing forward because I’m overthinking it. And the encouragement and warmth with which they received that suggestion was really, really healthy for me. It was so good for me to push past something that could have become a roadblock. It made me feel better about my abilities.
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It made me feel better about my resilience. It made me feel better about my steadfastness. It made me feel better about the reception of having made something, the personal, internal reward of what I was making. And it made me feel like it was okay to have it be imperfect. It was okay to make mistakes. It was okay if I didn’t finish. All of those things were okay. It elevated the experience of making the project in the first place and gave me a place to go if I got bogged down. So having your people, and this is where maybe you’ve tried a community before you tried a guild, you’ve tried a local quilt shop and it wasn’t really your jam. They weren’t really your people. This is where I just encourage you to keep trying. Try another one. There are others somewhere. Your people are out there.
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And I really, really do encourage you to continue looking until you find something formalized. Not only your favorite TikTok account, no shade. I have them and I do get inspiration and motivation, and I get excited when they’re real show up in my feed. But also look for a consistent formalized organization where you can predictably see the same people again and again so that you can ask questions and feel safe and be encouraged and be received and get that sense of acknowledgement and acceptance and affirmation that all of us need in order to be well.
Reason 9: Elevate your personal style
Reason number nine, to join a sowing membership to elevate your personal style. All of us have seen lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of sewing projects that are finished. Most of us have certain content creators or influencers, bless the fact that I have to use those words, but you know who I’m talking about, whose personal style you admire or want to emulate.
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Many of us do not at this stage necessarily have the clearest sense of our own personal style. Not everybody, some people have it nailed, but I would argue that post lockdown, many of us are left feeling as though we are back at ground zero for our own personal style. We’ve gone back to the drawing board. Locked lockdown was a time when so many of us put on stretchy pants and lounge wear. You can see that looking out in the world today. We’re not locked down anymore, but people are definitely in their jammies. And I have said, and I stand by this as someone who has worked from home for almost 20 years, that getting up and getting dressed every day is a way of telling yourself is you telling you that you are worth it? And there is real power in that. However, it undermines that power.
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If you are telling you you’re worth getting dressed for, but the things you put on make you feel less like you, that’s not helpful. So when you are part of a sewing community where other people are also focused on making their own clothes by definition and extension, they are asking these questions. What is my personal style? How do I reflect my personal style? If I am committed to sewing my own wardrobe, where do I find the fabric that looks like what I want to wear? Where do I find the patterns that are closest to what I have in mind? How do I combine those? Like what fabric goes with what pattern? How do I know that a particular silhouette is going to work for my body’s type? Or what if I want to dress against my body type? How do I do that with handmade clothing that I can’t try on before I sew it?
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A community is the place to do that because it is essential that you have a sounding board and that you are able to just spitball stuff, right? Do not bring an umbrella to a brainstorm. And a creative sewing community is the place to start asking those questions and experimenting in a way that it’s not going to get you criticized. It’s always going to get a warm reception, but 98% of the time, it’s also going to get you honest feedback. So let’s say for example, you really want to sow your own genes and you’ve made the muslin. You check the measurements, you are sure this was the pair of jeans and you put them on and the fit is appalling. It isn’t only that. It doesn’t feel right when you’re wearing it. It’s that you look in the mirror and you’re like, this just looks hopelessly homemade.
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I mean, it might as well be a flower sack. What is happening here? A sewing community is the place where you can go and say, you guys, something has gone horribly wrong. Help me diagnose it, and people will help you diagnose it. And it will be we listen and we don’t judge. That’s what you’re going to get because they’ve all been there or they are there, or they know it’ll be their turn next. So there is this warm environment where I’m going to borrow a business word that we all love to hate where there’s a synergy. Yeah, two plus two really does equal five inside a consistent, reliable returning sowing community. We aren’t asking strangers who don’t have any context. We are asking people with a shared sense of membership, a shared sense of emotional and intellectual obligation to one another that because we’ve all chosen to be members here, we are going to give you honest but kind feedback.
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We’re not going to lie to you in the name of being nice. We’re going to tell you the truth, but we’re going to do it in a way that builds you up instead of tearing you down. So not only do you get to elevate your personal style by finding a different pattern or finding a way to refit this or finding a way to learn a new sewing technique that’s going to solve this problem because other members of the community have that information to share. But you’re also going to improve your emotional wellbeing because there’s an empathetic audience that’s also part of this community who are equally invested, and they are going to share with you their own experience. They are going to give you encouragement and support and empathy about your current experience. They’re going to get you over this particular roadblock moving forward to better sewing.
Reason 10: Earn discounts on patterns or supplies
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And finally, not to pivot into Baseness, but reason number 10 for joining a sewing community is that you can earn discounts on patterns and supplies. You can, I mean, let’s just, let’s be honest. All this stuff sounds nice, but it also costs money. And so it’s great that inside a sewing membership, you get these, you do get included patterns a lot of the time. The League of Dressmakers certainly includes exclusive patterns. You can’t get them anywhere else. They are part of your membership. They are yours forever. So you do get patterns that you can own as part of your membership, but you can also get discounts on patterns with other manufacturers. If we do a so along or a, so with me and that particular pattern designer is up for it, sometimes I’ll offer a discount. When you buy your copy of that pattern, sometimes there are supplies that are included where you can get a discount or a kit from another vendor.
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Very often I will bring coupons or coupon codes or sales or discounts or something that I’ve learned about out in the rest of the world. I will bring that back to our sewing community to share with them and they do the same thing. All of those are part of having a membership because again, you want a consistent place where you can reliably go to say, I love this fabric. Where can I find something similar? And if you can get a discount on it, that’s even better. You may also be looking for a consistent place where philosophically they are on the same page as you. And if you can avoid buying something new, they can give you a direction and say, here’s where that should go, or where. When you have a bunch of scraps left over from a project that you don’t feel good about throwing out, they can suggest to you, Hey, there are ways to use that.
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Did you know you can compost your cotton fabric? Did you know there are organizations that take scrap donations? Did you know you can use that for this charitable project over here? There are ways inside a sewing membership that you can discount the cost of what comes into your sewing and increase the value of what comes out of your sewing that really are difficult to come by in any other way. So again, I do have a vested interest. I love the League of Dressmakers. We have existed for over 15 years at this point. It is a small enough community that you really do feel known right away. When you arrive, you are welcomed in with hellos and getting to know yous. People want to find out more about you. We have a live chat every quarter. We have starting this year, a live workshop. Every quarter.
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There are opportunities for you to participate in our annual tournament that happens every March. It’s a really great place where I have felt more fulfilled than in any other part of my sewing. I feel enormously grateful to be part of the community of the League of Dress Makers. It has inspired my garment making, inspired the way I think about my wardrobe, inspired the way I think about my sewing. I feel equally grateful to be part of the community of the murder mystery quilt who are witty and warm and caring and generous. It really is knowing that I have a sewing community where I can turn so that even if all I’m doing in my sewing room is thinking or sitting existing standing, I can go to this very specific place. I can log onto this digital community and find my people has been an actual lifesaver, literally more than once. I’m tremendously grateful. I invite you to come be part of it. But even if you are not part of the League of Dressmakers, I encourage you to go out into the world and find your community. Join a sewing membership where you are welcomed and feel excited and find your people. Have fun sewing. Thanks for listening.
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This episode of The Whipstitch Podcast is brought to you by the League of Dressmakers. The League of Dressmakers is your online creative community where you will sow more satisfying garments through playful challenges, exclusive patterns, our entire video library, mentorship with good guidance, and lots of members who will lead you to joy-filled sewing and lasting connection. Come sow the best clothes of your life with us at the League of Dressmakers, L-E-A-G-U-E of dressmakers.com.
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