Sewing on Kimberly Hirsh

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 20:32:32 -0400

🔖🧵 Read Just Make it Already! How to Boost Your Sewing Confidence.

Brooks Ann Camper includes this as a bonus link in the orientation for Skirt Skills, which I’m taking right now. It’s exactly what recovering perfectionists need to heal & works for any creative endeavor.

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 08:05:55 -0400

🧵 I made a pillow! Well, I covered a pillow. I used instructions from the Sewing 10 class from Brit + Co. My seams were so wobbly that I actually had to go back and hand sew a gap closed. I used a messy whip stitch to finish it but I’ve hidden the seam on the bottom here.

Sat, 10 Dec 2022 12:03:00 -0400

📝🎭🎨🧶🧵🎵💃🏿 This is a reminder that I write Genetrix, a very occasional newsletter curating stories of creative mothers. If those are the kind of stories you’d like to know about, please sign up!

Mon, 25 Jul 2022 13:20:45 -0400

“When we are making our art we must bend all of the resources and possibilities to work for us, not the other way around.” -Jami Attenberg in this week’s issue of Craft Talk 🎨🧶🧵📝

Tue, 15 Mar 2022 09:21:52 -0400

🔖 Read Storytelling and the Craft of Quiltmaking. 🧵

My personal history with sewing 🧵

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 18:02:00 -0400

I promise I’m going to write about what I learned from sewing napkins soon. But first: my personal history with sewing!

I’ve known how to machine sew for a long time (and how to hand sew for even longer). My mom is an accomplished sewist and made a lot of clothes and costumes for my siblings and I as we were growing up. She even made my prom dress. I didn’t sew with her, but I learned a lot of techniques just from being around while she sewed. Mainly how to be a perfectionist about your sewing, which has both benefits and drawbacks. (She never presses seams open or leaves a pinked edge. All her seams are French seams. Gorgeous, but intimidating to a less experienced sewist.)

I didn’t actually use any of what I’d learned from watching her until I took a required tech class as part of my dramatic art major; I chose costuming (this is where W. shakes his fist because in his day you had to do both cost shop AND set but by the time I got there 3 years later, you got to choose). One of the assignments was to design and construct a garment. I made a dress to fit me, lightly inspired by this Drusilla costume from Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

The process involved making a paper pattern on a dressmaker’s dummy (heavily padded in my case), then a muslin, and then finally the real thing. I finished the edges with a zig-zag stitch and pressed the seams open, because that was what I had time for. I wished I’d been up to French seams but it just wasn’t going to happen.

The dress had darts out the wazoo: bust darts at both the sides and bottom of the bodice, back darts, darts at the back of the waist. I made sure it fit me just right and I wouldn’t settle for anything baggy or saggy. (Maybe that’s why I didn’t have time left for French seams.) The director of the costume shop saw it and said I could do haute couture with that level of fitting.

I loved making it. I was very proud of it. I also learned that you really need to include a slit in the skirt if you’re going to make a long sheath dress, or your stride will be limited to teeny tiny steps. (I did not include a slit. In spite of it’s excellent fit, the dress didn’t get a lot of wear because of this.)

I wanted to sew more but I was saving all my money for traveling to *BtVS* fan parties (that’s an account written by a journalist of the first Posting Board Party I went to) so I didn’t grab a machine until my mom noticed one at a yard sale down the street from her. The machine and its cabinet were going for around $70, so I bought them.

I sewed exactly one thing on that machine, a costume for me to wear to go to the movie Troy. (Remember when Legolas and The Hulk were brothers?) It was actually a costume that, if historically accurate, would have been no-sew, but I was afraid a no-sew version would fall off. So I made myself a chiton with some success.

And the next time I used that sewing machine, the needle got stuck in the bobbin. And so I did not use it. I kept moving around with it; I think that machine moved with me five times.

At the North Carolina Maker Faire in, I don’t know, maybe 2014? I sewed a quilt square for a big communal quilt somebody was building there. I loved it. It reminded me that I actually loved sewing, and I wanted to do more. So I promised myself I would.

But I didn’t.

When I finally got the machine out for the first time recently to try again, after great success winding the bobbin and threading the needle, the same thing happened. I tried cleaning and oiling the machine, but that didn’t fix the problem. I decided to give up on that machine, for which I could not find a manual online and which was lacking many features of modern machines, such as numbering on the thread guides to tell you what order to thread it in.

So I asked for a new machine for my birthday, and I got one!

And I decided to use Craftsy’s Sewing 101 class to help me get back into it, since I hadn’t really sewed in 17 years.

Which is how I ended up making those napkins.

And I’ll tell you what I learned from making them soon, I promise!

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 22:10:00 -0400

🧵 I made napkins today and I learned a lot! I’ll write about it soon.

Sat, 05 Jun 2021 15:25:00 -0400

🔖🧵🧶 Read

What We Learned From a Year of Crafting - The New York Times nytimes.com
Read: www.nytimes.com
Www.nytimes.com https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/style/craft-boom.html?smid=tw-share

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 19:04:00 -0400

Sewing is not going great because my machine is old and unhelpful and difficult to find a manual for. (I’ve tried all the places but if you find me a manual for the Seammaster 1700 you’ll have my undying gratitude.) 🧵

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 18:12:00 -0400

I threaded a needle and pulled up the bobbin thread! 🧵

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 17:55:00 -0400

I wound a bobbin! 🧵

Tue, 09 Mar 2021 23:09:00 -0400

No YOU meant to go to bed an hour ago but got distracted by online window-shopping for sewing supplies. 🧵

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 16:18:00 -0400

We share our hot takes in order that we may refine them: Makerspaces should consider sewing equipment equally valid when compared with digital fabrication equipment. (Thanks Heather Moorefield-Lang @actinginthelib & Bethany Smith @bethanyvsmith for helping me refine my thoughts.) 🧵

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 15:29:00 -0400

A refinement of my earlier hot take: a sewing machine with a zigzag stitch should be considered basic equipment for a makerspace; if you have the money, it’d be great to get a serger, too. 🧵

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 15:12:00 -0400

Hot take: A serger should be assumed basic equipment in every makerspace. 🧵

Mon, 17 Aug 2020 08:18:00 -0400

Want to read: Craftfulness by Rosemary Davidson and Arzu Tahsin 📚🧵🧶

Sun, 16 Aug 2020 15:40:00 -0400

I’ve got all the pieces of my sewing machine, my sewing basket, 2 sewing books, and 2 sewing classes on Blueprint/Once-and-Future-Craftsy, so GET READY FOR SEWING-RELATED CONTENT. 🧵