Sewing is Cool Again (NYT gift link)

aunt_bea
Mon, 08 Sep 2025 20:39:16 +0000

I wish my daughters or son learned to sew because it’s just so useful. I imagine later they may take it up but it’s their choice so whatever they do I’m fine with.

When I did therapy at a residential school for troubled youth teens, the occupational therapist and I got to talking about sewing since we shared the same office.

We talked about knitting and crocheting, neither of which we were good at and we talked about sharing our skills with our students/patients and teaching them basics about sewing. These were some violent kids so we were super cautious when we approached the Principal.
She cautioned us about their behavior but the kids were really good about being respectful to us.

So we approached their counselors and the counselors wouldn’t agree. So we approached the students and we asked them “if we teach you some basic sewing skills, will you stay “on-task” long enough for us to teach you about the machines and how clothing is made?”.

No one had ever approached them about doing anything vocational that might seem interesting. And we didn’t know that. They were really excited and we forewarned them that their behaviors had to be appropriate with us and with their staff.

We asked them to approach their counselors and their counselors came up with a laundry list of behavioral tasks.

Kathi and I brought in our machines so that the kids could look at them and inspire some use of compliant behaviors.

We started with really simple lessons about how clothes is constructed and how people use patterns. We had four students who actually made it through the behavioral parts and we pre-cut a number of their first tasks. Gym bags.

They couldn’t wait for their therapy days! They were so interested in sewing! I got to use a lot of new language terms with them about sewing tasks and order of tasks. Kathi showed them (fine motor skills) how to use seam rippers to recycle jeans. They eventually realized that we would incorporate their IEP goals with sewing.

It was a really popular event and soon we had a long waiting list but the problem was that not everyone had IEP’s with speech or with occupational therapy.

They tried to bring in other people that could volunteer to teach some home economic skills. The problem was a lot of people weren’t trained to work with behavioral students. So once we left the program, the sewing program stopped. But from what I understand the four students requested a used sewing machine, so that they could continue to sew.

We were brought in by our County office to provide therapy. (These schools have a lack of professionals interested in working with them because of the extreme behavioral issues.) Kathi and I grew up in tough neighborhoods so we could physically take care of ourselves. We were “nominated” by our districts. I initially didn’t want to do it but it turned out really well, but they do rotate the “volunteer” therapists.

I think the sewing really calmed them down a lot! And I think they continued with it.