Never Acquire Clothes the Same Way Again

I started to sew for a simple, selfish reason: I just wanted cool clothes that actually fit my body. I was a very tall teenage girl in an era long before online shopping was popular, living in a small town where the mall options were limited at best. (Our mall did not even have The Limited.) And I was lucky enough to have a crafty midwestern mom who had a sewing machine set up in our basement. One day, I started using it.

I did not think then that I was forever altering my relationship to buying clothes. If anything, I was just following a teenage whim. I rode my bike to the Goodwill up the street, bought some floral bedsheets, and turned them into pajama pants. (This was not couture. I remember mismatching the crotch seams and having to resew them with my mom’s help.) Soon after, like any good grunge girl of the mid-’90s, I made a skirt