Category: Fat Sewing News

I am a newcomer to the indie sewing pattern scene. I taught myself how to make my own patterns in high school, after several frustrating experiences with Big Four patterns. I went on to get my bachelor’s degree in fashion design, and for the past decade or so, I’ve made one-off sewing patterns in a wide range of styles for myself and occasional clients. Now I’ve reached the point where I want to start digitizing and publishing my own patterns for others to use. Thinking I should do some market research, I decided to purchase a bunch of patterns from other indie companies to see what I liked and didn’t like about their branding, layouts, instructions, etc. I wanted to experience the user’s perspective of sewing from indie patterns before I put anything of my own out there.

For a long time, I didn’t know my body. Hell, I didn’t WANT to know my body. It was not my own, it was something I never recognised when I looked in the mirror, I just didn’t want it. Avoiding my body was actually quite easy, I knew clothing stores just weren’t for me; it only took a couple of times trying on pants in a fitting room only to get them up to just above the knee and not an inch higher, that I got over that.

Hello! I’m Emma (@emma.m.makes over on insta) and I’m a Canadian sewist living in Denmark. I moved here with my husband last year after graduating with a BA in textile design and sadly had to leave the fabric shop I worked at/my sewing family. I miss it immensely so joining the sewing community on instagram has helped me still feel connected. I’m relatively new to this community and first off I have to say wow, what an amazing place. 

I just want to add a little trigger warning. I’ll be speaking about loss which might be triggering for some. 

I was 10 the first time I really remember being misgendered. I was by myself at the salon assigned to foreigners in Beijing in 1979, to get my hair cut before going home to Canada for the summer vacation. I was in shorts and a tee shirt, a lanky-long slip of a thing not quite at puberty. As the stylist cut my hair shorter and shorter, and more hair fell down on the floor, my Mandarin fled. When she finally pulled the clippers out, I shrieked, “Wo bu shi baba! No, no, I am not a father!” Soon I had a flutter of platitude-murmuring, middle-aged ladies about me, trying to rectify my gender with kiss curls around my ears and as much height as they could possibly put in my now-shorn hair, while I wept hot tears of shame into my Barbapapa t-shirt.

When people ask me how I’m keeping myself grounded during lockdown, I reply, “I’m learning to sew!” When people ask me if I sew, I say “I’m a beginner!” I don’t really feel like I’m a sewist yet, because that implies that I have some idea of what I’m doing, but calling myself a beginner feels exciting without pressure – it’s a kind of liminal space where I can thrash around in the pool of fabric without worrying too much about how professional (or not) the results look. I started to sew because I wanted to wear bright colours and bold prints and natural fibres and although the plus-size ready-to-wear market has gotten better, it’s still a slog to find something that ticks all those boxes. I never would have stuck with sewing, though, if I hadn’t found the process so much fun, in the most challenging, infuriating, exhilarating ways.

TW: death, grief and burnout

I started to sew clothes 10 years ago, next July. It’s a weird thing to know the date of, but I remember it as it’s the summer my father died.
I was lucky to have a great relationship with my dad so the months following his death were the worst of my life.

TW: talk of death, body measurements, depression, weight, weighing, body image, body positivity

The other day, Jess (@Fat.Bobbin.Girl on Instagram), posed a question that really got me into my feels.  The question: What has sewing meant to you/ what has sewing enabled you to do?