I'm a Sewist!

In a comment on Facebook today, I said I'm a "sewist." An old friend asked what a sewist is and where the term came from—she had never heard it before.

I've read it many times, as I read lots of sewing articles and blogs. No, it's not in the dictionary. I found this blog post where the writer had researched the term. The author, Ardeana Hamlin, said, "So call me seamstress, call me tailor, call me stitcher, call me needleworker, but please don’t call me 'sewist.'"

For many years I said I was an avid sewer, but that sounds like I'm a place where shit falls. And I prefer not to think of myself that way.

In the last five years of my first marriage, I made all my husband's suits. But I'm not a tailor. (In fact, after our divorce, he began having all his suits tailor-made. Hmmm.)

I do many sorts of things besides sewing seams. I don't want to be called a seamstress.

"Stitcher", to me, sounds like someone who holds a single threaded needle in her hand and runs it around and through fabric. I use both machine and hand techniques. I love doing handwork—sewing down bindings by hand with immaculate little stitches—but I don't think I'm a stitcher.

And "needleworker" sounds more like someone who does needlepoint or counted cross-stitch. I've done and enjoyed both those art/craft forms, but I don't think I'm a needleworker.

I love working with all sorts of fabrics. I love the whole process, from choosing the pattern to pairing it with the perfect fabric to struggling to determine the proper fit for a new pattern to sewing on the buttons and tying the final knot in the thread. I love wearing the new garment out to dinner the night after I finish it. I love seeing my granddaughter pull her favorite grandma-sewn nightgown out of her drawer and crawling into bed wearing it. I love hanging the new curtains or pleated shades at a window in my lovingly decorated home. And I love cleaning out my stash to share with other like-minded people. I am a sewist. We are sewists.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, one of the things I routinely thank my mother for is signing me up for a Singer sewing class out on West Colonial Drive a thousand years ago (well, 1963). She enjoyed sewing and wisely wanted to pass that on to me. I'm so glad.

So don't call me any of those terms that Ardeana Hamlin prefers. Bully for her, but call me a sewist.