Making My Own Clothes

We all get caught up in the fashion frenzy from time to time, especially if we are woman.  It is a vanity thing.  Of course we want to look nice, be appealing but not everyone looks nice or is comfortable in the same styles.  What looks nice on Jane can make Susie look downright frumpy or cheap.  How you dress says a lot about your character.  It says a lot about how you feel about yourself.  Your clothes will also reflect how others see you and what they will think about you.  They won’t be looking at the label; they will be looking at you.  Your clothes and how you wear them is your signature. .  Making your own clothes can give your signature a real flare and fashion a person with genuine polish. 

I’ve never had a lot of money, or I should say extra money, that I could go out and spend on fancy clothes, shoes, jewelry and accessories, fashions by the best designers but I like to look nice too, well put together.

In my younger years, as a child, I grew up pretty much on hand-me-downs from my older cousins with maybe 3 or 4 new outfits a year from a store but not from a boutique or fashion shop.  We never went “Label Shopping.”  It was unheard of in my world but oh how I dreamed of have clothes like those “rich kids” or famous people wore.  I wanted to be beautiful and I was under the impression that clothes could make you beautiful.  Silly, it’s not so.  Clothes don’t make you anything.  All they do is cover up what you don’t want others to see.  Think about that for a minute.

Anyhow, by the time I was in my early teen I learned to sew.  I learned to use a pattern and I learned I could combine patterns and come up with some pretty “chic” designs of my own.  I began making my own clothes.  It is lots of fun and a good way to exercise your imagination.  I made some very nice clothes and it didn’t cost me an arm and a leg to look fashionable.

I also learned another secret; what looks awesome on one person will look cheap and frumpy on another person depending on your height, your build, your weight, and your coloring.

I loved to look through fashion magazines and dream and browse through catalogs and wish I had the money to buy this or that; and then I discovered the Simplicity Pattern and the dry goods store (fabric shop) with its yards and yards of material. I was walking on clouds because I knew how to sew and I could make clothes that were just as nice as those in the fashion shops for a third of the price.  And, the really nice thing about it, those Fashion Shops didn’t always carry the colors that looked best on me but I could make something very similar in a color or pattern that looked great on me and fit my personality.

I learned to sew on an old treadle Singer sewing machine and to embroider my own designs or crochet my own lace.  I had good teachers.  Eventually I was able to have an electric sewing machine with lots of attachments that could do a lot of these additions for me, even hem but it was also fun to do it myself.  It gave me a sense of real accomplishment.   Making my own clothes was a good thing to know how to do

and I could and I was “cool,” just as well dressed as the elite that I admired; if you didn’t check the label.

A label doesn’t cover up much, not really, but dressing neatly and appropriately in clothes that fit your body and you can feel comfortable in says a whole lot about who you are and the confidence you have in just being yourself.  Trying to be like someone else never really fits very well.  Be an original. 

I liked Simplicity.  It turned out to be a very good way to pattern my life. Keep it simple, make it you.  Be an original.