 Today marks my one month anniversary since becoming a in-person sewing teacher. I mean if you guys would have told me 15 years ago that I would be sitting around teaching people in Charlotte, North Carolina how to sew, I would have said you're out of your mind. It was what? But here I am teaching sewing classes at a local fabric and knit shop called Stash. I have acquired about 10 students and each one of them are just so near and dear to my heart. I had no idea that I would just love this truly as much as I do. And so today I'm here to tell you three things that I learned since becoming a sewing teacher because it has been quite eye-opening. The first thing is the variety of what people want to sew. I assumed that I was going to be getting people who wanted to mend clothes. Maybe people who wanted to make clothes. Boy am I wrong. People have such passions that they look to sewing to fulfill. I have one student. She is 11. Like how jealous am I of her that at 11 she is learning this amazing skill. I hope she sticks with it forever and ever. But she's 11. She and her grandmother go thrifting. They go to Goodwill all the time and all she wants to do is refashion. And I am just like, yes. You are a girl after my own heart. I love refashions. Every time she signs up for class I wear a refashion garment because I feel like I want her to look at me and think, oh cool. Like she's doing it. Most of the time she's kind of just like, yeah okay fine. But I'm excited about it. Her very first project that we sewed was a skirt that she designed. It was an elastic waist skirt. She wanted it to be two tiers with like a shiny-ish black curtain as the outer. And then peeking out of the bottom hem would be a white sheet. We made that. She put it on. She loved it. It was incredible. I also have a guy who I guess, I don't know what he is for real, but I'm guessing like late 20s, early 30s. And he wants to sew like, think of like hiking, rock climbing, fishing gear. Think of like nylon bags and waterproofing and things of that nature. Things with lots of clips that clip on to different things. That's what he wants to learn how to sew. He came to class with samples of things that he had purchased that he'd like to sew on his own. He had questions from a Reddit thread that he had been following. So he has already done like a deep dive into this as a possibility and then found the store and me to help him execute it on an actual sewing machine. I mean who would have thought like nylon bags, like dude gear, you know, like active. I've never sewn a bag like that before, but I can teach him how to sew and then we can figure out how to make the bags together. Another example is a woman who gets Ankara fabric from a supplier in Ghana, and she wants to open a Netsy shop. She wants to make Ankara garments. She's got like a like a grown on sleeve cardigan type of situation. Very simple, very basic, kind of like a robe-ish type of thing that we're working on together. She's got these super cute shorts she wants to sell. So she's got a lot of really fun ideas and just needs somebody to help her execute like how to learn how to do it. She was one of those who just hit the ground running on her own and then sort of reached a bit of a wall and was like, no I actually need to learn the techniques if I'm going to do this. So she came in with some knowledge, some things that she was like getting by with, but weren't the right way, but definitely worked in a pinch. And so people like that are also really inspiring to me because they just go for it, you know what I mean. And so that's actually a good segue into the second thing I learned and that is fear is real. People are afraid of failing and I think that because that's not inherently who I am, I am not necessarily someone who's afraid to try something new, who is afraid of failing. I will go after it and if I can't catch on, then I'll just you know let it go. It's not like a big deal. So in my sewing journey as well, that lack of fear enabled me to learn a lot really quickly because I was trying projects that were probably outside of my skill set, but I was learning so much from everything. But there are those who are truly afraid of failing and of even trying something new. I have so many people, men and women who sit down next to me at that sewing machine and go, I'm nervous, I'm scared. And I'm like, there's nothing to be afraid of, nothing about what we're going to do with this machine is permanent. All of it can be undone with a seam ripper, right? But there is that just inherent like I'm working with a machine. I'm doing something completely foreign. All of these words and terms are like another language. And there's a real fear there. Hopefully by the end of at least our first class, maybe a few of classes, they have let go of some of that fear, but I do have one student who says she will never be able to sew without me by her side, which we know that's not true because I can't just like follow her around for the rest of her life. But that's where she is, you know, she likes having me there as a sort of comfort to make sure that she's not going to go astray. So we're working on building up her confidence in addition to teaching her how to sew. So many life lessons are coming up in my classes. That's another thing that I'm learning is sewing is not just sewing, right? We're talking about, you know, sometimes fitting and like, you know, body positivity and accepting you for who you are and all of that. But we're also talking about failures and if you fail or if you mess up how that's perfectly okay. And we're talking about how like I had one student, he's a high schooler who was trying to sew around a curve for the very first time and he was picking up his needle and his presser foot. So the garment is just like willy-nilly going everywhere and then resetting it and putting it back down. And I'm asking him, why are, why is your brain telling you that that's what you need to do? And he's like, because I need to go back. I need to go back a few inches or whatever it is and redo that. And I'm like, we can't go back like that. The past is the past, right? What we've already stitched down is stitched down and we can either stop completely and undo it and then go back or we just keep powering through and try and fix our mistakes in another way. But I thought when I said that to him, obviously I was specifically talking about sewing, but I'm also thinking about him being 17 years old, right? And like on the verge of like his whole life ahead of him. He wants to learn how to sew so that he can go to design school and like he has such a unique style, such a unique personality, but he's also got learning deficiencies and things that he struggles with in order to fit into the, you know, school structure that we have set up here in the United States. So as I'm saying that to him and talking about going back and fixing the past and all of that, I'm wondering probably for no good reason if any of that is like resonating with him in terms of life skills as well. Yeah. So it's just been so inspiring. I cannot tell you watching someone wind a bobbin for the very first time will change your life. We do that how many times? A few times a week maybe for some of us that are sewing a bunch and it's just become so mundane. I had someone who was using a rotary cutter. I her brain exploded in front of me. She was like, Oh my God, that is the coolest thing I've ever seen. Yet here I am in my sewing room cutting up things with rotary cutters, almost like complaining about how this is like the boring part, you know, like I'm forgetting, I forgot all the joy in all of those little parts of sewing. And then of course, seeing them finish their projects, there's nothing like seeing someone hold up something that they have completely sewn on their own and just the amount of pride that they have. So it's just been a real pleasure and a real joy. And I just wanted to share some of those stories with you guys. I think no matter where you are in your sewing journey, hopefully you were inspired by them. If you've been sewing for 1000 years, maybe you like me are like, you know what, I need to stop and enjoy the little things again. And if you've been sewing for one week, hopefully you found a little bit of validation and some of the feelings that you're feeling and just know that it does get easier. It really does. And that fear starts to wash away and the pride starts to take over the fear and the confidence starts to take over the fear. And who knows who you will become one day with your new sewing skills. So I am just having an absolute blast teaching sewing. So we're one month in, I will keep updating you guys and checking in with you guys and letting you know as things progress. But yeah, it's been really great. I'd love to hear from you some stories about either when you first started sewing, maybe your first sewing teacher, maybe if you were a sewing teacher, share some stories that you have that are very memorable from your students. I would love to just kind of like be a little bit, you know, in the fields in the comments with this video. So leave those in the comment section below. But that is going to do it for me today, y'all. Thank you so much for watching. I will see you all very soon. Bye!