Sewing the Pieces of My Life Together

I’ve been sewing again.

This doesn’t mean much to anyone but me. But for me, it’s a return to a pastime I thought I’d never be able to re-gain. For more than ten years, I’ve lived in places which, while big enough for my family, were too small for me to have my sewing machine (and my fabric stash) out and available.

A year ago, we moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to New Hampshire. There’ve been many differences to get used to (everything is semi-rural, there’s no public transportation, it snows), but counterbalancing these shocks is the simple joy of having enough room to find all my things.

I’m not even talking about having all my books out where I can see them (because that’s a whole post on its own, the joys of having my library available again!), but I’ve been able to unpack my fabric. All of it. It’s pleasantly on shelves, just looking at me, waiting to be unfolded, re-discovered, and then sliced into pieces and sewn into projects.

I have fabrics I bought on my first honeymoon, still unsewn into the quilts I bought them for. I have fabric my grandmother gave my mother; fabrics that she never made into anything, but which I still love, for the direct connection to my gramma.

As I unpacked box after box of fabric, I fell into memories. Fabric has been one of my chosen souvenirs for decades; I’ve bought fabric on every vacation, in every new place I visited, just waiting for the moment when I’d have ‘enough’ time and ‘enough’ room.

But I’m not sure that I haven’t waited too long. I have quilt patterns saved — intricate things with carefully pieced shapes. But I’m not sure I want those quilts any more. I have dress patterns saved — beautiful, fitted things, which won’t fit me anymore. I’ve magazines with patterns that I’m no longer interested in. My life has moved on, even while my past, in the form of the beautiful fabrics I bought, has remained static.

And they are beautiful, these fabrics. I’m sure they’ll be amazing, when I sew them into things I want now, in this stage of my life. The memories they hold are still good ones, the colors are still vibrant, the cloth still sturdy.

And finally, after decades of barely having a space two feet square to do anything in — a space only just large enough for my sewing machine itself — I have a whole room to sew in. My sewing machine can stay set up, I’ve got a basket filled with all my spools of thread (and the matching bobbins), my scissors are all standing in a heavy vase, waiting for me to pick them up and make the first cut.

Yesterday, I realized I needed a way to hold my pens onto the notebook I use to keep track of my daily tasks. Instead of just carrying them, or forgoing having them with me when I need them, I could go into my sewing room, pick up a zipper and some cute fabric, and make an elasticized pen case. It just took ten minutes.

I think I’m going to pull out the magazines and patterns I’ve been hoarding. It’s time I stopped hoarding and started using. There’s no point to having all these supplies unless I use them. If I don’t, they’re just something to dust.

It’s time to connect the parts of my past that I’ve been carrying around forever to the present.

There are quilts to sew and shirts to make, and bags I’ve wanted to sew for years. I can’t wait for the beautiful Hawai’ian fabrics from my honeymoon to see the light of day again. I’ll sew them to my grandmother’s cottons, and all this coming winter, my past will wrap around me, cozy and soft, warming my dreams.

From now on, when I buy fabric, I’m going to make it into its intended project immediately. No more holding onto the past, in the hope that sometime in the future I’ll have time. There is no time better than now.