I have been thinking about why I sew and why I like to sew. My husband does not understand it, and I've been contemplating it myself, trying to make sense of its importance to me. Here is what I have found:
- Satisfying a Need to Create:
Why would I cut apart a piece of fabric and stitch it back together to make another piece of fabric? My husband simply cannot comprehend. What is the point? Well, when viewed in such bare-bones logic, yes, the making of a quilt is rendered quite a folly. But there's more to it than that. I am made in the image of my Creator, and He delights to create stuff. I have an innate desire to express myself through created stuff. I make stuff because God makes stuff. I try my hand at making something beautiful from bits; my puny attempt at copying the Master Craftsman who makes beautiful things out of nothing. I delight to make stuff, too!
- "To Make the Best Better"
Having grown up in 4-H, this motto has been hammered somewhere deep in my character. It means to improve upon the present, and as my father always admonished: to add value. I take a perfectly good hunk of cotton, cut it to pieces, and stick the pieces together again in a pleasing fashion because I am adding value. When I am gone, I think my children and grandchildren will cherish a lovely, detailed quilt into which I have poured my time, effort, and energy far more than a pile of the same fabric stored away in a box all those years. I can just imagine their conversations:
"Wow, look at this amazing double wedding ring quilt that Grandmother made! She must have spent so much time on it! It's so lovely! It even smells like her!"
vs.
"Wow, look at this huge pile of fabric no one has done anything with all these years. Honey, can you put this in the Donations bin?"
Adding value - it's important to me. And very much related to that need to create.
- Honing a Skill:
Having been favored with a penchant for sewing, it behooves me to make good use of it. It's doing more than just sitting on a pile of latent talent; it is actively seeking to add to and sharpen the gift I've been given. It means practicing what I know and learning more about what I don't. It means deepening and widening my experience so that I, my family, and those around me may benefit from it. There are several verses in King Lemuel's description of a woman who fears the Lord that speak of her industry within her home, to clothe and care for her household. "She is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet." Her lamp does not go out at night, she clothes herself and her household in fine raiment. The point of King Lemuel's description is not an absolute pattern for every woman, but it does show the earnest industry of her hands to care for her family. And I do not think she could do such a thing without practicing. She may or may not have been talented in those domestic endeavors to begin with, but she certainly made them her own and practices them, so that her household is blessed with the fruit of her hands. I sew because the more I sew, the better I become and the better I can bless those around me with the fruit of my labors.
- A Time to Decompress and Be Refreshed:
I sew to keep my sanity. I'm not even kidding. Matt Chandler once said to do the things that stirs your affections for Christ, no matter how silly. Fresh black coffee, being outside on a pretty day, getting up before daylight, and - you guessed it! - sewing, are my favorite ways to draw near to God. When I don't make time for these, I start feeling crippled somehow. The moment I sit down to work on a project at the sewing machine, though, the world slows down and my dizzy, hurting soul is refreshed and renewed. I have time to think, and am in a better frame of mind to do it in. Which leads me to my last thought about my sewing:
- A Time for Reflection:
Some of the best and most clear-headed thinking I have done is in the middle of a sewing project. Granted, some sewing is too complicated for thinking of anything but the work at hand, but in much of it I find myself pondering over many things, often deep things that I wouldn't otherwise get to in the daily flow of life. I have mulled over most of these reasons why I love sewing while I was sewing! It is my best time for thinking through problems, for daydreaming, for pondering God's Word, for any kind of thinking, really. To each his own: The Steward takes a long walk in the wood, or sits quietly outside if he needs or wants to think something over. I pick up a sewing project. :)
So there you have it. The reasons I love to sew!
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