You Will Never Sew Better Than You Can Iron

I still remember learning to sew from my mother when she was young. It was an uphill battle – not because I am inept, but because I am spectacularly lazy, and I was only ever interested in the fun parts. It’s taken me until my mid/late thirties to make peace with this and finally learn some goddamned patience. If I’d mastered this a little earlier, I could be so much better at this than I am now.

The funny thing is, I am also spectacularly anal-retentive, it’s just that I’m only anal-retentive about the things that I really care about. If I could sit down with 8-year-old me, or 12-year-old me, or 16-year-old me, I would tell her a lot of things, but when it comes to sewing, the first thing I would tell her is: “Make peace with the iron. You will never sew better than you can iron.” I would also tell her to get the hell over it while you still live close enough for mom to teach you more of this, so you don’t have to fumble through clumsily once you’ve got your shit together. She wouldn’t listen, of course. This is ME we’re talking about, after all.

Side note: I’m laid up with the flu, and last night on the phone, after I finished talking to her, Russ’s mom told him to “make sure she rests”! I cackled when he replied, “have you met her? I can’t make her do anything!” I am nothing if not consistent.

So I have had to learn the hard way that the difference between great sewing and shit sewing has fuck all to do with sewing. It has absolutely everything to do with all of the shit that happens BEFORE you begin the sewing – properly ironing your fabric before pinning out your patterns, cutting carefully, reading every word of the instructions before you do either of those things, really LOOKING at your fabric as you lay out the pieces of your project, picking the right interfacings and taking the (unbelievably tedious amount of) time to apply them correctly, etc. All of those things will not only make your finished project much, MUCH better, they will also make the sewing parts much, MUCH easier.

Take, for example, the humble four-fold strap…

Easily 80% of the strap is done before you ever sit down at the sewing machine. You cut out the fabric, apply the interfacing, fold in the short sides for a finished ends, fold and press the entire length of the strap in half, then open that up and fold the entire length of BOTH sides to the center and press, and then refold that in half and press again. It’s a very simple and elegant design, very sturdy, and so versatile that nearly every bag I’ve made has featured one. And your strap will be absolute shit if you don’t do the pressing steps well. The ends of the strap won’t be even, you’ll end up with puckers as you try to wrestle it into proper shape, and the entire thing will give you trouble and never look right. Ask me how I know.

But if you take your time and do the thing correctly, through every step, it’s an exceptionally easy thing to make, and you can easily add it to almost any bag design with just a few steps.

It’s a great metaphor for so many things in life, now that I think about it. You’ll never succeed past your willingness to do the mundane things well enough to smooth the way for greatness.