I would agree. Sewing is an important tool!
Remember we’re talking two different things, what is correlated to success in engineering and what gets students into highly rejective schools.
Without question, facility with and level in math is the top correlate to success in engineering. Curiosity and drive, exemplified by any number of activities, is important to being a good engineer. Tinkering per se, is not a requirement. That can be done by techs in high level applications. It does show a problem solving drive though.
Now, highly rejective schools. That’s a bit of a game, one my son didn’t play. He had no interest in MIT or Caltech. They will dig deeper into things like math competitions, level of math, etc., but will still reject most of their applicants. There’s no evidence that they produce better engineers. Much of what makes one good at it is intangible.