Finding Time to Sew with These Easy Tips

Much as we love to sew, it's often hard to find time to set aside for ourselves to sew because we have such busy lives. Everything is so scheduled and hectic, and so many commitments that sometimes we find ourselves with little to no time to sew. A lot of that plays into the American work ethic. We've been raised that work comes first and play later, and that you can't go have fun until all the work is done. That's one thing that leads us to not set aside time to sew. The other reason, and this may sound silly, is that we're overwhelmed when it comes to sewing. Sometimes we have so many options, we don't know where to start. We don't know which project to work on, or we've got several that are in the works and we don't wanna work on them, we wanna start a new one, but then we feel guilty, and it just kind of spirals out of control. So you just really get paralyzed and don't take time to sew. Another reason could be procrastination. Maybe you've told yourself you're going to hem that dress and you won't do anything else until that dress gets hemmed. If you're like me, you hate hand sewing and you just don't wanna hem it. So you put it off and you put it off and you put it off and you keep punishing yourself, and you never get around to sewing. So what's secure? Well, it's very, very simple. You have to make sewing a priority. Sewing needs to have an important place in your life because it's important to you. I had a good friend of mine who was a psychologist and she once told me that anybody can do anything for 15 minutes. So, my recommendation is set aside a minimum of 15 minutes a day for sewing. And you'd be surprised how much you'd get done in 15 minutes and how fast it adds up over the course of a week. In the course of a week, just five-day workweek, that's an hour and 15 minutes of sewing. And that adds up over a period of a year. Anybody can do anything for 15 minutes, and you can accomplish a lot. So, the secret to doing this is, first of all, you have to avoid what psychologists call the all-or-nothing mindset. And I have to fight this a lot of times myself. I want to do it all at once. I want that big block of time and I wanna go from start to finish on something as much as possible. And if I can't do that, I don't wanna do it at all. Well, we've got to break that mindset because we really don't have to do it all at once, especially for something as enjoyable as sewing. It shouldn't become a drudgery or a must-do. It should be something you want to do. So, to break that mindset of all-or-nothing, you wanna take and break your whole project into manageable parts. For instance, maybe the first 15 minutes is set aside to picking out your pattern and then selecting your fabric that you're gonna work with. The next time you have 15 minutes, you iron your pattern and you iron the fabric. The next 15 minutes, the next logical step is let's lay the pattern out. And the next time, you cut it out. They're just small parts, but over that course of a week, you're gonna get a lot done. And you have to be content that you're only gonna do a small thing. Maybe that night you're only gonna sew on the collar. You're gonna put it together, you're gonna sew it on, and you're gonna be happy to stop. So the trick is, you set a timer for 15 minutes. At the end of 15 minutes, if you're having a good time and you don't have any other obligations, keep going! But you've given yourself permission to quit, to say, "Okay, I only said 15 minutes, and now I've got to go get dinner ready. It's okay, 'cause I know tomorrow I'll have 15 minutes again." You also need to take the should out of quilting, or sewing rather. So often we say, I should get that hem in. I should mend those pants. I should. And as soon as we say should, it makes it into a drudgery. Instead, use the phrase I'd like to. I'd really like to finish this dress. I'd really like to just sit down and get the hem done. That takes a lot of pressure off us. And if you can't do that, another option is to look into some of these wonderful time-saving books that are available on the market. And there are many, many different ones. I just have a few out here. And look into techniques that save time and are shortcuts for doing your sewing. Perhaps you cut out two garments at once by laying two different types of fabric on each other. Put the pattern down if it's a favorite one that you use a lot, and cut them both out at the same time. Now you've got the two-for-one special. If you don't have time to sew, this is another good book to look at because it has a very simplified wardrobe with very easy to make patterns and a lot of tips for sewing it faster. And of course, you can look at different magazines and this particular book put out by Sew News Magazine has a wealth of tips, as you can see, I've got it well marked and I refer to it quite often because quite frankly, I don't have a lot of time to sew. I'm a professional longarm quilter and I'm always working on things for clients. I also do window coverings for people and when I get time to sew for myself, I wanna make the most of it. So, I love books like this, and they also inspire me because they remind me that I don't have to do it all at once and that there's a faster, better, smarter way to do it to save time so I can get more out of my sewing time. My mother had a famous phrase, used to drive me crazy when I was growing up. But now that I'm older, I appreciate the value of it. Her phrase was "little and often, honey, little and often." And that's the secret with the 15-minutes-a-day theory. Just do a little bit, but do it often, and you'll be surprised how easy it is to find time to sew and how much more you'll enjoy it.