Did I Tell You How My Sewing Teacher Hated Me?

9-minute read

My sewing teacher hated me.

There, I’ve said it.

I’ve started this so many times and each time I abandon writing it down because I felt bad about revealing just how awful this woman was to me. I've felt ashamed that it happened.

Why did she hate me, I hear you ask? Why indeed. To paraphrase Kez says in Every Smile You Fake: I’m convinced I’m a nice person so I’m always taken aback when people don’t like me. But why would a perfect stranger take against me when she’s meant to be teaching me how to take my sewing to the next level? Well, I have my suspicions.

Before I explain my suspicions, let’s be real for a moment: despite me thinking I’m a nice person, I do know I am not everyone’s glass of pomegranate cordial with fizzy water. I do accept that disliking me is everyone’s prerogative. But, usually, that dislike comes from spending a bit of time with me, you know, putting in the work to discover just how irritating I can be.

This sewing teacher hadn’t known me for more than five minutes before she took against me. And why? Because I had ambitions to make a supercool, super-cute denim jumpsuit that I saw in a sewing magazine and she decided she couldn’t possibly let me make it. It felt very much like she thought I needed to be taken down a peg or two, that she thought I was an uppity thing who had delusions of sewing skills and I needed to be put in my place. And she was very targeted in how she set about bringing me down.

First, she declared the pattern was too complicated to work out from the way it had been printed in the magazine. It was complicated, I’ll concede to that. So it was a good thing that Dorothy and Dr K had spent that afternoon working out the pattern, tracing it out and cutting it out for Dorothy to take to class then, wasn’t it?

When I produced the pattern pieces, her face fell. But don’t you worry, she rallied admirably. She examined the instructions then looked up at me with a look of delight on her face: ‘You can’t possibly make this jumpsuit,’ she says to me.

‘Why?’ says I.

‘Because it doesn’t go up to your size,’ she replies.

Reader, dear reader, is this not the point of making your own clothes? So you can make things go up to your size? So you don’t have to be bound by what the clothes’ manufacturers decide your size is?

When I said something to that effect, her answer was basically: ‘Yes, but not in this case. Because in this case, the pattern is trash (she implied but didn’t say that) and your body shape – slender frame with a large bust – is all wrong for this pattern.’ She did say that part. And you know what, I probably wouldn’t have minded so much if she hadn’t looked so damn triumphant while saying that this pattern wouldn’t work for my curves.

Suitably chastised for how I look, and thinking I could sew something a little challenging, I slunk away to sit in the corner feeling terrible about myself. I left the class wondering how I managed to pay someone to make me feel bad when there are places all over Brighton, nay, all over the country where I can get that type of treatment for free.

But, you know, I’m nothing if not a trier, so I ordered myself another slightly similar jumpsuit pattern in time for the next class. This one went all the way up to well past my dress size and this was going to be all good, yes?

No.

Still too small, still wouldn’t make enough jumpsuit for these curves. So, under great sufferance and with much sighing, she decided she was going to get some extra paper and help me reshape the pattern. And thus I entered a new level of hell – standing in a room full of strangers, being fitted with a paper pattern and having my chest periodically hoisted up to show where it should be and how we were going to have to alter the pattern to make accommodations for the lack of hoistedness.

Yeah, at this point, I’m feeling royally body shamed. I’m battling hard not to, but it’s difficult. The thing is, I love my body. It does a lot for me, even when I don’t feed it the best food, I don’t give it its vitamins, I don’t sleep or exercise enough, my body keeps showing up for me. And I love it for that.

 I’ve spent *cough, cough* years trying to resist and unlearn the message that my body has to look a certain way to be ‘normal’; that it has to fit a certain size of clothes or there’s something ‘wrong’ with it. It’s a message we’re constantly fed, and we’re constantly supposed to internalise while we do everything we can to meet impossible body goals. I’ve fought and fought it, I’ve spent years on an even keel – so I didn’t expect a new villain to enter this battlefield in the guise of a woman who was meant to be helping me with something I found fun.

Back on t’webs I go, seeking out a pattern that will contain my apparently overgenerous proportions. Quick aside here, body sizing on patterns, particularly older patterns are seriously messed up. You need to measure and measure and measure again to get the proportions right – and size 16 you may be in the real world but size 24 you could well be on a sewing pattern.

I go back to class with a third pattern and that is big enough (!). Hurrah? Erm, no. The sewing teacher is annoyed I’ve got a third pattern (not as annoyed I, believe me) and manages to get a few swipes in about the size of my chest and how we’ll still have to work hard to make it fit around there.  

Keep in mind, please, this is week three in our sewing course journey and everyone else is cutting out fabric, constructing garments and using the machines and I am still without a viable pattern. And then she starts to tell me that I need to get some toile to make a practice garment first. She hasn’t told that to anyone else. And a couple of people do have garments that are as complicated as mine. At this point, I’m already on the edge when she pipes up with, ‘Are you sure about this pattern when it has those pockets on the chest area – and will be, you know, quite large?’

And I was done.

Someone needed to stick a fork in me because I was done. D.O.N.E. I couldn’t take any more and decided to quit. While she was a bit rude to others, she was going above and beyond with me. Not only had she effectively stopped me from sewing while everyone else is well away, she had made me feel awful about myself. And I didn’t want to be feeling terrible about myself and my body at this age. Not at any age, really, but at this one? Really?

She was making it very plain that she hated me.

It wasn’t just me who saw this – a couple of the other students saw it as well. And when I made it clear I was probably not going to come back, they told me not to leave because they liked me, liked my energy. Which was a nice reminder that I can get on with people, I am nice and likeable (mostly).

Despite them saying I should stay, I was very close to rock bottom. I decided I should probably throw the towel in and get rid of my sewing stuff while I was at it. After all, I wasn’t going to be doing this large chest refitting and redrafting every time I wanted to construct something. Even if I wanted to do all that, how would I be able to attempt it without being reminded of how this lady made me feel, how she made me start to doubt the beauty of my body? As Maya Angelou said, ‘I’ve learnt that people will forget what you say, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’

How this woman made me feel was awful. Absolutely awful. But I had paid my money upfront and I knew I would encounter a whole world of gaslighting about my experience before I got a refund because this woman tried to diminish me. I had to find a way to not lose my money by getting what I actually came for – to learn sewing techniques such as how to do zips and plackets and elastic waistbands and buttonholes.

So, week five I returned with zips, buttons, scrap material and a determination to get what I actually wanted from those lessons. By hook or by crook I was going to learn those sewing techniques.  

She was not happy, of course. She asked why I didn’t want to carry on with the jumpsuit. Short, internal answer, ‘I’ve had enough of your brand of body shaming’, answer I said out loud: ‘I need to know all these techniques so I can finish off the jumpsuit at home.’

She couldn’t say anything to argue with that so, triumph for Dorothy, yes?

Kinda.

That week, she (begrudgingly) showed me invisible zips (evil things), normal zips, French seams and top stitch seams. This is cool, I thought. This is what I thought I’d be doing. Real-life guidance that I couldn’t quite replicate in the online lessons I took. This is what I need.

So imagine my face when the next week she gave me a book and told me to look in there for any info I needed – including how to shape clothes to the larger bust. 🤪😭 Everyone else was adding lining to their stuff, flirting with top stitch and using the overlocker to finish off, I am reading a book to work out how to do fell seams.

The week after that, I sort of gave in, I decided to make something. I thought I’d test out how to add elastic into a garment by making pj bottoms from leftover cat print material. She happily helped with that, with nary a word of body shaming.

We parted on fairly amicable terms – I finished the pj bottoms and said goodbye knowing I would never see her again. For her part, she didn’t break me, but I think she had a bit of fun trying.

Thankfully, my love of sewing is stronger than her attempts to immolate my confidence and I’ve carried on laying down those stitches whenever I get the chance. I even managed to crowbar a sewing joke into Give Him To Me and thought about applying for Sewing Bee.

But, you know, it was a close thing. I nearly went down. The thoughts that woman put in my head about the shape of my body were no joke and if I weren’t an innately stubborn being with a sense of self, who knows what could have happened? Where I’d be? I truly dread to think.

You know the biggest casualty in all of this? My bank balance that has borne the brunt of trying to find a jumpsuit pattern that would satisfy that woman. I currently have eleventy billion jumpsuit patterns in my house, and I can’t even begin to look at any of them.

I guess you’re wondering why I’m telling you all this? To be honest, I don’t know. I opened up a document to type a very different weekly update, and this came out. Obviously, it was time. Obviously, my subconscious wanted to feel unburdened about this after all this time. Actually, I’m not only feeling relieved, I’m feeling pleased and proud that I am who I am, annoying and irritating bits and all. I hope you feel that way about yourself, no matter how tries to bring you down. 

And if you’re in need of a jumpsuit pattern, I know a lady who can sort you out.

Come see me!

I’ve got a few events coming up, have a look at the poster above and click this link to my website events where you’ll find links to buy tickets.

I cannot tell you enough how I hope I get to see you. And if none of these are near you, don’t worry, there are a few more coming up come Autumn.

Hope all is good with you lovelies.

Talk to you soon.

Dorothy x