During the summer of 2025, I sought out one-on-one sewing and patterning lessons from The Sewing Hive in Columbus, Ohio. I spent two hours a week getting personal instruction from Martha West, one of The Sewing Hive’s instructors. First, I started off with the Stitch, Style, Create lesson program, which took me through the basics of utilizing a sewing machine, utilizing premade patterns, and creating patterns from scratch. After that, I worked personally with Martha to enhance my skills on all of those areas, as well as practice more advanced techniques in alteration and full garment construction.
As I completed the project, I began to rediscover parts of myself that hadn’t been used in a while. In my day-to-day I don’t often explore my creative side, but throughout this project, that’s pretty much all I did. I kind of assumed that my creativity, since it had been a while, would need some refinement, but as I continued with the project, I found my mind working quickly and was able to quickly find solutions to any problems that came up. As we worked, I was able to come up with designs from scratch which really tested my ability to think on my feet and make quick adjustments when things didn’t go exactly to plan. I think the most important takeaway from my project was realizing that my plans, no matter how meticulously they were made, would inevitably end up going wrong in some way. The restoration process is really where I learned.
The most defining activity of the process was learning to work with different materials. I already had a basic knowledge of sewing on typical fabrics, so when I took this class I really wanted to focus my skills on making different types of clothes for different seasons and occasions. One of my projects included working with a stiff, heavy fabric to make a dressy pant, while the other included an unstable loose cotton weave to create a light summer button up shirt. When it comes to heavy fabrics, the main issue typically comes from stacking layers and learning to help your machine process these sometimes needle-shattering layers (ask me how I know). Learning on the fly to utilize these materials really was a struggle. Whether it needed fixed by using a heavier/lighter needle, by rethreading the machine with a thicker thread, by leveling the presser foot with the stacked layers, by fixing the bobbin direction, or by just fumbling around with the machine, though, I was always able to find my way through, sharpening my critical thinking skills as I went. The amount of critical thinking I had to employ really cannot be understated. Like my instructor said, beyond cutting and pressing, sewing is mostly just troubleshooting the machine.
Beyond working with new materials and machine fixing, my most unexpected takeaway from this experience was learning to collaborate with others and take criticism to heart. My instructor, Martha West, constantly held me to a reasonably high standard and made sure my technique was always up to standard. Beyond showing me how to utilize patterns and giving me tips on becoming an effective sewer, she always demonstrated her techniques first, then watched me to ensure I was doing it correctly and then utilized the finished garment to illustrate the connection between the technique with the proper appearance. She allowed me to not only understand the techniques, but also why we used the techniques, which locked them into my working and muscle memory for any future projects.
Her teaching style also incorporated working with her and others to create a finished project as well. When we worked together, I learned how to let go of my control and let other people contribute to my work. In the past, all my creative projects were primarily done alone, so working with someone else was new. Not only having Martha there to give me criticism but also to help me make creative decisions and fix issues that I may have caused was extremely supportive for my growth. It honestly wasn’t easy letting somebody else into my creative process, but having that extra voice for ideas, especially when she was so experienced, was very helpful. I honestly did not realize how typical it had become for me to only work alone until I reflected on the experience and realized this was one of the first times where I allowed myself to rely on others to make a project better. Collaboration is so important in not only creative spaces, but also any work environment I may find myself in the future, so developing and honing that skill now was and will be extremely valuable to me.
One of the major benefits of this project is going to be my heightened ability to collaborate effectively while taking criticism well, while also having honed my attention to detail. Those two things are really what sewing and the general creative process is all about. So, being able to take those soft, intrapersonal skills into a workplace will be great for me. I also plan on becoming a pathologist’s assistant, which is a job that requires all of those skills to a mastered level. If you are not careful, diagnoses could be incorrect or sample sectioning could go completely wrong, so that’s why working on my attention to detail is so important. I also think that this career choice is a highly communicative one, since you are always working directly under a pathologist, and you always are going to have to work across different departments to get them the diagnoses they need. That’s why developing these communications skills and this ability to take criticism is so important to my life. While actually learning to sew was very fun, the actual skills I have gained from this experience go so much further than sewing practicum.
Here is a picture of two things I have made!
