Contributed by Laura F.

My first blog post for this challenge advocated inefficiency as a way of incorporating more exercise into one’s day.  My second post advocates a different kind of “inefficiency,” but this time applied to needle arts.

Sewing has been a passion of mine for decades.  Decades of experience, however, do not mean that I am the kind of skilled seamstress who constructs three piece skirt suits with two dozen different darts artfully shaping the jacket and a corresponding number of darts, pleats, and tucks transforming the skirt into something simultaneously tightly tailored and figure-flattering (not always a combination that go together).

No, my sewing specialty has always been the type of pattern labeled as “Super-Easy,” “For Beginners,” “Quick and Easy,” “Learn to Sew,” and so forth.  After all, why spend hour after hour after hour on one garment when there was an entire world of potential garments just waiting for my itchy fingers to seize the fabric and plunge right in?  Yes, I spent a lot on fabric, but hey! I spent so little on ready-to-wear clothes!  Besides, I only bought fabric on sale.  I wasn’t completely emptying my bank account and I was having a lot of fun.  Why not continue this same way forever?

Two words: fast fashion.  Like many people who do a lot of sewing, I felt smugly (some might say “insufferably”) virtuous about the fact that I didn’t buy the output of exploited workers in polluting factories run by what were surely evil people.

However, even in my smug cocoon, I gradually became aware that many people who sewed were getting concerned that home sewing could itself be part of “fast fashion.” What about the factories that pumped out fabric instead of ready-to-wear clothes?  What about the way textile workers were treated?  What about the environmental harm done by textile manufacturing?

Need I add that the kind of dirt-cheap fabric I had been in the habit of buying was the fabric equivalent of the worst excesses of fast fashion?

I didn’t want to give up sewing and I haven’t.  But I have made certain changes, some in where I find my fabric and some in how I sew that fabric once I have it.

Thrift store sheets are now the fabric with which I sew most often.  So much fabric!  Oodles of fabric!  Not only that, but the main concern most people have about thrift stores is that so few thrift store items actually get sold.  This might make donating to thrift stores problematic, but it doesn’t mean there are any problems buying from thrift stores.

Once I have this virtually guilt-free fabric, what comes next?  Not necessarily a trip to the sewing machine.  With the super-simple patterns I use, a project sewn on a sewing machine can be finished in a few hours and then.

But what about needle and thread?  What about hand-sewing?  Like all my other good sewing ideas, I did not originate this thought.  I first came across it in an article by a woman who advocated hand-sewing as a way to make sewing a more portable hobby.  I can attest that sewing without a machine DOES make sewing more portable and also – this is the big benefit that I have gained – much, much slower.

I’ve always found sewing supremely relaxing; hand-sewing adds another layer of relaxation because removing the whirring noise of the machine enables me to listen to music, to engage in conversation, or to watch a movie while I sew.  There is a meditative quality to hand-sewing that soothes the spirit.

Are the resulting items as sturdy as machine-stitched ones would be?  Absolutely not.  That’s why I reserve hand-sewing for items that I will not be putting to seam-busting, hem-ripping tests.  A delicate scarf, a loose bathrobe: these are the types of sewing projects where hand-sewing shines.

I expect a sewing machine to be a part of my household right up until the time when I depart for that sewing studio in the sky.  However, making hand-sewing an integral part of my sewing experiences enables me to keep enjoying one of my favorite hobbies in a more sustainable way.  Perhaps hand-sewing could do the same for you.