Ill Fit
I started sewing because of my ankles. It sounds Victorian, but I was an awkward teenager, rangy and tall. My school pants flapped about my calves like I was some kind of sailor. This might be in fashion now but it wasn’t then, and I dreamed of wearing clothes that looked normal—clothes that would make me invisible, which is to say, visible only to the right people in the right ways, thanks very much.
It wasn’t that I hated my height, though like a lot of teenagers I sure hated a lot of things about my body, in all the usual cliched ways. Mostly, I just hated that nothing fit—wrists sticking out, socks always on show—and that seemed like a good part of the reason why I didn’t fit. The logic is flawless, of course.
Looking back, it’s easy to be scornful. Teenagers are so relentlessly self-absorbed and it hurts now to think of what all that energy and emotion could have achieved instead, if only I’d been a little kinder to myself. But one thing that happened, in among all the disordered eating and mirror time, was that I decided I wanted to learn to sew. It was the answer! I would make the perfect clothes! I would finally fit right in!
I know, I know. But honestly, this is the joy of starting anything new. And I still love this feeling, when you don’t have any real conception of the difficulty curve, or how long it will take you to get good. You’re just excited. You learn how to use new tools. You doodle and fill notebooks. You let yourself fill up with plans and hopes and schemes. And it’s glorious.
Back then, it was something I was doing more or less on my own. I badgered my mother into buying a sewing machine but she wasn’t able to teach me how to use it. For her generation, it was a feminist badge of honour to be shit at handicrafts and the most scathing insult was ‘housey mousey’. My mother did what she could to support the dubious turn in my character but it wasn’t her lane. This was just before the arrival of the online communities, so that left me with the instruction sheets from Big 4 patterns and, after a surprise discovery in the bargain bin at the bookstore, the wonderful, most perfect Reader’s Digest Step-by-Step Guide to Sewing & Knitting. There was still so much I missed though. I didn’t even know to clip my threads as I went and would get frustrated at the shaggy mess at the end. I didn’t understand about toiles or fitting either. Anything more complicated than an A-line skirt left me cursing.
Sewing has taught me a little patience, maybe. Over the years, learning how to fit and alter patterns has also quietly rewritten how I see my body. These days, I am a series of adjustments: square shoulders, forward shoulders, small bust, pelvic tilt, extra rise and extra length. It’s a mechanical perhaps, but that checklist has helped to undo some of the internalised misogyny I grew up with: less tits and arse and more tracing wheel and tissue paper. The clothes should fit you and not the other way around.
The home sewing world thrives off that kind of liberatory message now. There are so many stories of people who’ve found confidence through sewing, discovering a new means for self-expression or simply the tools to fill a need. One sewing influencer talks about a childhood accident that left him with asymmetrical arms, and how tailoring his own shirts makes him appear more balanced. Another started an indie pattern company for plus-sized sewers, frustrated by the lack of both ready-to-wear options and commercial and independent sewing patterns. Yet for the most part, unless you’re drafting from scratch, you’re still a set of deviations from the fantasy of standard body measurements. Pattern designers may tweak their blocks based on their taste and what they think they can sell, but most size charts still come packed with assumptions about body types, skewing towards young, white, athletic straight sizes.
Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll do more with my copy of Winifred Aldrich’s guide to metric pattern cutting than just look at it. But for now, I can only recognise the luck and privilege of having a ‘straight size but still individual’ body as my starting point. What holds me back is skill, not choice.
And skill is, well, let’s just say it’s something I’m continuing to work on. But if I’m very honest with myself, I know I still have a whole lot of buried notions about what ‘normal’ looks like too. Giving up the critical eye is easier said than done—especially when it’s targeting not just the body but the style, fit, fabric and construction of homemade clothes as well. As the German saying goes ‘Wer die Wahl hat, hat die Qual’ or ‘whoever has the choice has the trouble’. Quite a lot of choice goes into making your own clothes.
Yet while I’ve never quite found that ‘fit’ that I’ve been looking for—and the problem is both bigger and smaller than it used to be—I’ve kept sewing on and off throughout my adult life. I think it’s partly because of the pleasure of having a silly little hobby: one small thing where it’s possible to feel some measurable improvement in life, in among the chaos and curveballs everywhere else. But I think it’s also because sewing changes how you plan for the world, and plan to be in it.
It’s inevitable. Sewing changes the speed at which you sift through desires and needs. The questions go from do I want this and can I afford it, to do I have the skills to make it and is it worth my time? Sometimes the answer is simply no. Often, the real measure of an idea is whether it sticks around. Layered into this, too, is the way that skill filters the options down; you begin to imagine yourself within your abilities.
I still over-dream. I still get caught up in that excited, early phase, not really thinking about what it will take to bring the latest shiny, attractive idea into the world. And if I’m stressed about something—say, a work or family event—that often channels sideways into planning what I could make and wear, as if armor’s the only kind of preparation. Maybe sometimes I need that distraction, but there’s no doubt it always involves more anxiety than necessary. That’s why, when I first read the provocation to write about a dream outfit or textile object, I couldn’t settle on just one. They’re all different; they’re all the same. I just want to be comfortable in the world. I want warm ankles in winter and pockets in my gym shorts. I want to be invisible but visible, and wear leopard print but not red, and appear competent but not prim. But the difference now, the difference that comes with age, is knowing a frictionless life is a pipe dream. There is no such thing as a perfect fit, only fit for purpose. Close is enough.
Jane O’Sullivan’s non-fiction and art writing has appeared in Sydney Review of Books, Vault, Art Guide, Apollo, and ArtAsiaPacific, while her short fiction has won the joanne burns Microlit Award and been published in Island, Meanjin, New Flash Fiction Review, and Okay Donkey.