Close your eyes and picture someone sewing. Is it a man or a woman you’ve conjured up in your mind? I can be fairly confident that you’ve imagined a woman, or a group of women, bent over their needlework or working intently at the sewing machine. Traditionally, sewing has been viewed as ‘women’s work’; there’s often the view that boys can’t sew and that sewing isn’t for boys and men. That’s certainly what Boys Sew Too Founder Clive Bruder was told by his Home Economics teacher when he was a boy – and it made him feel embarrassed that he enjoyed sewing. Now, as the founder of the Boys Sew Too movement, Clive is championing that sewing can indeed be for boys; it’s for everyone! It was my pleasure to catch up with Clive and hear about how he went from not sewing much at all once he became a teenager, to becoming a skilled craftsman and spearheading the Boys Sew Too movement.
Starting young
Clive spent his early years watching his grandmother sew and mend items of clothing on her manual hand
