Goodbye Sewing

I started sewing back in the mid-70s, when it was the in thing to do. I was about ten years of age when I started designing and making up my own barbie doll clothes. Oddly, I enjoyed designing and making the clothes more than I did playing with the dolls. Who would have guessed I would be destined to run my own pattern making company one day? Life is weird, and I digress.

In the 70s, everyone sewed, at least in Texas. You could buy sewing notions and fabric at dime stores. (Dime stores -- there's the old phrase of the day for you.) Even the mom and pop grocery stores had sewing notions on hand.

By the mid 80s sewing was dying out. By the early 90s almost no one I knew actually sewed. The reason was two-fold.

• The cost of fabric, patterns, and notions became more expensive than purchasing the ready made clothing now easily available at mega-stores. Why spent $8 on a pattern, $15 on fabric, and another $5 on notions when you could now buy a dress for $20 in almost any town?


• The introduction of new forms of entertainment pulled young people away from sewing as a hobby. Television and game consoles were more common than sewing machines in most homes.

The lack of interest resulted in a lack of places that carried sewing items. Oh, you could find them, but the selection was poor and the prices weren't.

But during the last decade sewing has made a come back. It became acceptable and exciting to sew your own clothes, make your own prom dress, or make up items as gifts. All of a sudden every town had fabric stores and every Walmart had a sewing department. Every craft store had a fabric section. It was great! Prices were competitive, classes were being offered, the prices of sewing machines dropped.

But over the last two years I've noticed a total turn around, again. One-by-one every Walmart in my area went from having a fabric department to having either a fabric isle or no fabric at all -- just notions. Over half of the fabric/sewing specific stores I know of in Austin have closed their doors. And the big sewing stores like Joann's and Hancock's have reduced their fabric sections and turned half their stores into home decorating or craft supplies.

When I mention the turn around to friends and family their response is surprise; you would think with the bad economy more people would be turning to sewing. But I'm not surprised. While more people seem to be asking for sewing machines on Craigslist or Freecycle, they don't have money to purchase NEW sewing supplies or material. In this economy, the really needy will be making do with sewing up what they have or making items from recycled fabrics or clothing.

While my sales on sewing patterns have slowed down, I've had an increase in hits on my pages of free patterns, on my pages about sewing with recycled and free fabric.

But as I silently watch the avenues once open to me as a seamstress vanish, I felt like someone needed to say "I noticed." Someone needed to say "Goodbye!"