Neither the threat of a looming recession nor monthly economic blackouts can keep a real clothes horse down, so, at the start of Mardi Gras Break, I committed to doing less doomscrolling and more sewing. In addition to keeping my wardrobe nice and full, sewing calms my mind in a way even writing can’t. Writing needs intense thinking, after all, and I can’t speak for anyone else, but my own thoughts are often my worst enemies. Sewing, on the other hand, requires such complete focus for me – I have ADHD, and maths was never my strong suit – that everything else slowly fades away.

The average person reading this probably doesn’t sew, so they may not realize sewing is as much prep work as anything else; it’s very much like cooking in that way. To have the best chance at a great finished product, one must begin well, and the result is largely, though not entirely, dependent on the quality of the materials. In other words, so far, there’s been little actual sewing happening. Mostly, I’ve been taking stock.

When I packed up my home in Shreveport to move to New Orleans (I’m about to celebrate my two-year Nolaversary!), it was excruciating, and the task was, not surprisingly, mine alone to manage. Charlotte and many others helped enormously, of course, but my ex-husband never packed a single thing; he didn’t take so much as an overnight bag when he left me. With a moving date on the horizon and the father of my children charging me rent for every single day I stayed in our marital home after we separated, I had to decide very quickly what to keep, pack, and put on the truck. It was a nightmare, and I only got through it by staying focused, keeping my goals in mind, and remembering karma’s a bad bitch. I’m not really joking when I say I have no idea what I own anymore.

Thankfully, it seems most of my sewing supplies and the really good fabric made the cut, so to speak. I started by carefully cleaning every part of my sewing machine. The poor thing’s been moved a lot the last couple years, so she was full of dust, lint, crumbs, and god-knows-what else. I vacuumed out all the little compartments, wiped it down, checked the motor*, and replaced the needle. Despite being dragged from pillar to post and relentlessly banged around all along the way, she’s as spiffy as she ever was and ready to go back to work.

Sometimes all you need is a glow-up, am I right?

Next, I inventoried my supplies. Before, whenever I thought about sewing again, it made me anxious and sad because I thought I probably no longer had suitable materials to make a napkin, let alone a garment of some kind. Turns out Past Kelly was savvier than I gave her credit for; while she sold a LOT of sewing supplies at garage sales, the only things I found I needed to get started once more were some bobbins and a few extra machine needles – less than 10 bucks’ worth of stuff.**

It amazes me how often, when we’re finally ready to begin, we find we had everything we needed all along.

Before starting anything new, I felt I needed to finish a couple projects I abandoned when my life fell apart. There was a blouse with little Edward-Gorey-esque illustrations printed on the fabric and a flow-y tank top I started during a pandemic vacation in the woods of Arkansas that was ideal for Shreveport Kelly but New Orleans Kelly will probably never wear. Regardless, unfinished business gets in the way of new beginnings. Finishing what I started serves as good practice, gives me confidence to keep going, and makes room for the new things to come.

Going forward, I am giving myself permission to make mistakes and let go of the idea of “perfection.” I learned to sew from a true artisan, a literal master – my mother – and I probably don’t have to tell you how incredibly high her standards are. (I didn’t get like this in a vacuum, folks.) When I find myself ripping out a seam for the eighth time, I remind myself:

This is not Paris Fashion Week.
You are not one of les petites mains.
Helmut Lang is not going to scream at you in front of Grace Coddington.
Bitch, this fabric is from JoAnn’s and you’re wearing this garment, at best, to a coffee shop.
Simmer down before you bust something.

My neuroses aside, working with my hands is comforting as the world falls apart. It’s a practical skill, yes, but it makes me feel connected, in a way, to my women ancestors – to all women of the past, really. As far as I know, every one of my female forebears, including those in more recent generations, sewed; they had no choice. For me, that feeling of connectedness used to come from Catholicism, from realizing I was worshipping in much the same manner as all Phelans who’ve ever been, probably, although I got to do so in a cathedral with a kickass HVAC system, and many of them had to make do with Mass Rocks in the Irish climate. But thinking about all the tribulations women have not only endured but overcome – not just my kinfolk, but all women – gives me hope we can do the same, that we can create something that far exceeds what we’ve been given to work with. And, just as I do now, many of those women probably took up their sewing in the middle of the night when everyone else was sleeping, when their cares became too great and they couldn’t rest. They quietly stitched away to calm their minds.

And to plot, of course.

Keep those blades sharp, ladies. We’re gonna need ’em.

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Footnotes for sewists and aspiring sewists:

*I have a Singer 9960, and this model doesn’t require me to lubricate it – no, really! Inside the motor compartment, everything that would normally need oil is coated with a silicone lubricant that looks like toothpaste.

**IMPORTANT: Despite massively purging my possessions at least twice, I still have a metric SHITLOAD of sewing supplies. I don’t mean to discourage anyone, but – just keeping it real – you can’t get started sewing for less than 10 bucks. If you’re OK with hand-sewing, you could get started for less than $50, and that includes, like, a nice pair of scissors. A base-model sewing machine is about $100 these days, so you could probably start machine-sewing for less than $150. Fabric for the sewist, much like lumber for the determined woodworker, can come from practically anywhere. Thrift stores and the remnant bins at fabric stores are great places to find materials. (I refuse to leave a fabric store until I have THOROUGHLY pawed through the remnants.)