>> Susie Bright is an amateur dressmaker and a professional writer. She blogs at susiebright.com.
My mom once made me a remarkable dress for my 14th birthday. After modeling for her with a frozen smile, I covertly wadded the dress up in a ball and hid it in the knot of a tree a half a block away.
My birthday frock was Italian Swiss cotton, a lime and lemon print, with elaborate smocking on the bodice, and hand embroidery, which took Mommy two months to complete. An heirloom treasure, by any account.
It was 1972: a decade of hot pants, polyester shine, and sleek silhouettes. My dotted Swiss frock was adorned with puffed sleeves, a Peter Pan collar, and a hem that fell two inches below my knees. I looked like a doddering child from a Father Knows Best episode. If I wore that dress to school, I would’ve been beaten up, egged, TP’d, and left for dead in the girl’s bathroom.
I tell you this tragic tale with a lesson in mind: it’s a dicey proposition to make a hand-sewn gift. The levels of potential rejection, disillusionment, and incomprehension are hazards without parallel.
Clearly, the mother-daughter scenario is the most deadly. The daughter’s anguish over puberty leads her to believe that anything her mother makes for her is designed to destroy her social life. She is probably right.
But what about more neutral territory? What if you want to craft a garment or bit of home decor for a dear friend? Won’t they be charmed, pleased, in awe of the labor you put into art?
Not necessarily. People who don’t sew (or knit or weave, etc.) have no earthly idea what goes into even a simple project. That’s why they hand us their trousers to be altered and imagine it’s a five-minute affair. They think little fairies come in with (free) needles, (free) thread, and magic cloth (that doesn’t cost $10 a yard) to whip up cute dresses and jackets over the course of a sitcom or two.
In her famous yarn primer, Stitch ’N Bitch author Debbie Stoller took a hard line on knitting presents: she advised that you knit gifts exclusively for other knitters, since they are the only ones who will “grok” what you’ve put into your passion: the money, time, endurance, and invention.
So why do we all ignore this hard-won bit of advice? Because we’re showoffs. We know modesty is supposed to go hand in hand with our steady stitches, but we yearn for people’s jaws to drop open at our handiwork. We like making things for our beloveds and watching their hearts melt. We’re sentimental fools who want only to be adored for our talents. Is that too much to ask?
Seeing a friend or family member wear your handmade clothes is like a musician hearing their song for the first time on the radio. It’s a rush. Just imagine how a designer feels witnessing thousands of people influenced by a little decision she made one afternoon in a sewing room. We’d all like a little taste of that.
I have a few gift projects to suggest. These items do not rely on how many hours you spend making them, but rather the opposite: the hours your loved ones will spend wearing and using them.
Your family, both immediate and species-wide, spends about a third of their lives in bed. This is where you’re going to insinuate yourself: in their blankets, their PJs, their bathrobes — even where they lay their heads at night.
Pillowcases are easily made and instantly treasured. The fabric prints you can find in flannel and cotton today are mind-boggling. If you have a friend who is into Buddhism, cats, and absinthe, there is very likely a print of that exact composite. Go to a site like fabricparadise.com, where you can put in a subject, like “vintage,” “Chinese food,” or “news headlines,” and you will see fabrics that play the part.
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