Hello, lovely people! I’m Anna (sometimes also known as Jo) and I’m a 43-year-old sewist living in Somerset, England. These days I share house space with my partner, Andy, and three kids: Daisy (15), Gabriel (nearly 6) and 2 year-old Lauren. There are two cats here as well, but they don’t get much of a look-in these days. Sorry, cats!
I’ve been sewing pretty much all of my life now. I learnt to sew at my Mum’s knee, and my very first sewing project was a little soft toy made of lots of felt scraps. I called him Mouseshaker, for reasons best known to my five-year-old self, and he’s somewhere in the attic, in a box full of sentimental crap. One day I’ll get on with my decluttering and find him again, and there will be pictures (that’s both a threat and a promise!)
So, Mum was good for teaching me embroidery, but she wasn’t a dressmaker. I didn’t learn to make clothes until reaching secondary school. I made myself a dreadful pair of MC Hammer-style dropped-crotch trousers in a lovely skeleton leaf woven fabric. They had a wide elasticated waist and were extremely comfortable, but not very stylish even in the early 90s. I seemed to remember they were relegated purely to loungewear, but then I found this picture from a summer holiday in 1992. Proof I did indeed wear them out of the house on at least one occasion. Please ignore the bandana. I was going through a (mercifully) brief Guns ‘n’ Roses phase at the time.
My second school dressmaking project wasn’t as successful. I made a long-sleeved knit tee in powder blue, but finished before the rest of the class so my teacher made me add a patch pocket on the front, despite my stylistic objections. And then I accidentally left the presser foot up and sewed right through my finger. There was a lot of blood. I never wore that blood-stained tee and perhaps unsurprisingly, I didn’t carry on with dressmaking the next year…
So, for a long time I was afraid of sewing machines and the only sewing I did was the odd bit of repair work by hand. But then after having Daisy, I felt the need for a new creative outlet. And for clothes that fit my 30-year-old post-childbearing body properly. And so I faced my fears, enrolled on a dressmaking evening class at my local college and sewed up a few Butterick and McCalls patterns, to varying degrees of success. I haven’t kept any of those garments and I don’t have photographic evidence either. Actually, that’s a lie. I have one red wool self-drafted lined skirt that I fully intend to remake into something that fits me now I’ve lost all the baby weight. I would post a photograph but it’s just hanging off me now and would look like one of those dodgy ads for the latest diet fad.
After those initial early dressmaking disasters I took up running, lost a load of weight, and then discovered Craftsy. Taking a few classes there really upped my game when it came to making garments that fit me properly. From this period in my sewing career I have a fairly extensive range of cocktail dresses, a steampunk burlesque costume and a corset. Yep, technically impressive but not the kind of clothes that really get worn all that often. Still, I’m spoiled for choice when choosing clothes for a posh night out. Shame that doesn’t happen more than a couple of times a year!
It wasn’t until I discovered the world of sewing blogs (about seven years ago) and the wonderful challenge that is Me Made May that I started to realise the possibilities for making the kind of clothes that I would wear every day. It took me a while to get started–getting pregnant with Gabriel put the brakes on temporarily as I knew my body would change size massively over the next couple of years–but in 2016 I finally felt like I had enough me-made items to take part in Me Made May. And it was a huge amount of fun.
Learning to sew with knit fabrics has really been a revelation. I had lots of technical skills when it came to fitting and sewing tricky fabrics, but the garments I made rarely felt comfortable enough to want to wear all that often. Now I’m a bit of an old hand at knits I’m wondering why I found them so scary to begin with. These days I’d much rather sew with knits than with wovens–I just wish it was easier to find a good range of knits in fabric stores!
This blog’s been going for a few years now (first post 23rd January 2015) and I’ve learnt lots along the way. For a while I was posting at least once a week, but that’s fallen off since baby #3 came along. It will happen again, though, I’m sure. Definitely once they’re all in school!
These days I’m much more organised about my sewing than I used to be, planning capsules and keeping a sewing journal. I’m also honing in on my personal style–for a while it was Rockabilly-Librarian, but it’s morphing into something like the bastard love child of Kibbe Dramatic Classic style and Rachel in Friends. I’m now definitely improving my ratio of hits to misses. I haven’t completely vetoed the idea of buying ready-to-wear clothing, but I’m finding these days that I’m way more likely to think first: can I make it myself (in a reasonable timeframe)?
I’m interested in sewing sustainably and am doing my best to choose earth-friendly fabrics within my rather small budget. I’ve got to admit, though, sometimes synthetics are the only practical choice for a certain kind of garment. Perhaps there will be more refashioning of old makes in the future as I run out of stash to sew up. I do believe that creating things that will get lots of wear is probably the most important factor in sewing sustainably, though I realise others might think differently. But wouldn’t life be boring if we all thought the same thing?!
Please feel free to browse my past makes: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. I’d love to read your comments. Sewing is so much more fun when we can chat about it with others, and I’d love to make more sewing friends!
And here’s me with Andy and my three little lovelies, who I sometimes make things for too:
