Vintage Sewing Advice & Why It’s Not Stupid

Herself

About every six months, a short piece from Mary Brooks Picken rolls around the sewing interwebs, to great and derisive guffaws.

About every six months, I get crabby about that.

Now, Mary Picken is well past my preferred era. The piece she wrote that gets passed around wasn’t published until the 1940s. However, she’s an astonishingly productive and well-skilled woman (NINETY FIVE BOOKS!), and her advice is not for naught.

Here’s the quote from 1949:

Prepare yourself mentally for sewing. Think about what you are going to do. Never approach sewing with a sigh or lackadaisically. Good results are difficult when indifference predominates.

Never try to sew with a sink full of dirty dishes or beds unmade. When there are urgent housekeeping chores, do these first so your  mind is free to enjoy your sewing.

When you sew, make your self as attractive as possible. Put on a clean dress. Keep a little bag full of French chalk near your sewing machine to dust your fingers at intervals. Have your hair in order, powder and lipstick put on. If you are constantly fearful that a visitor will drop in or hour husband will come home, and you will not look neatly put together, you will not enjoy your sewing.

And this gets all manner of negative commentary.

But let’s break it down a little, and I hope you’ll see how much benefit you’ll get in your mid-19th century sewing endeavors from just following a few 20th century Mary Picken notes.

Prepare Mentally

Seriously, do this. Read the pattern or project through. Walk through it in your mind. Make samples of new techniques or skills. Don’t start with a grudge. Arrange your space for mental and emotional calm and even happiness. Don’t go for slapdash–you’ll make mistakes that are uncomfortable to wear, or take time to repair.

Good Environmental Conditions Count

If the kitchen is a wreck and the house is in chaos and your bed is a heaped pile, fix those things to basic and tidy first. You’ll avoid things like:

• Butter marks on your good cloth because you brushed against it in the kitchen, didn’t realize, and then bent over your lovely silk or cotton or wool and transferred the oils right to the middle of your bodice or skirt pieces. Had the kitchen counters been wiped down, and things put in their places, you’d have no crisis.
• Needing a warm beverage and not having a single clean mug. So it’s either suffer for want of a beverage, or stop your productive work and try to scare up something that won’t give you cholera.
• Needing to take a break and stretch out, but not having any space to do that because the couch is covered in laundry and your bed will take a week to sort out… or, you know, two minutes to make up after you’re out of the shower.
• Hangry and Hanxious You and any other household members. Hangry-Hanxious Me makes mistakes. Stupid ones. And gets mad about it. And tossed projects, and wastes materials and time and effort. Not a fan of her, actually. One of the best things I do when starting into a spurt of sewing is to make and shop for a simple meal plan, and kit up things, so I don’t have to spend any time prepping, making, or cleaning up meals for myself. I can turn it over to household members, or if it’s just me, cater to my own needs without interrupting my productive time or forgetting to do things like rehydrate, fuel my brain-jelly, or visit the loo.

Functional Project Space Counts

I don’t have a dedicated sewing studio. Haven’t had in 15 years, actually. This may shock some of my readers to their core. HOW CAN IT BE?

I work at the kitchen table, or in my very pleasant bedroom (cross-legged on the bed in the afternoon light–it’s amazing), or in the front garden under the porch and tree, or in the living room in front of the big window, or in the car on drives, or in airports… pretty much anywhere can be my functional project space, because I work best in tidy settings, without too much visual chaos, and I don’t subscribe to the idea that Creative = Chaos at all. The visual overwhelm that typifies many casual shots of other peoples’ creative spaces makes me itchy and panicked.

I very honestly do best at my work when my thread bits go into that little pile by my right hand, and get tossed every time I stand up to refill my water or take a personal comfort break. When I press along the way and there’s nothing piled on the board that has to be moved in order to do it. When my cut fabric is folded up neatly and not getting mangled or stretched from being in a heap. When my supplies are right at hand in a compact, tidy way. When I’m not distracted by debris on the floor that makes my feet feel gross. (Seriously… that’s a huuuuge sensory ick for me.)

When I’m on top of my game, and wrap up a project, I take 20 minutes and get everything actually put away. All the tools and supplies go back to their respective containers. Scraps go to the donation box, or garbage. Usable “cabbage” (thanks Bernadette Banner for this charming vocab!) goes into the appropriate container (sorted by fiber and era, usually). Measuring tapes get rolled back up and popped into their little storage container. Flat surfaces wiped down, floor swept up.

New project to be started? All that same stuff needs to happen, so I can then pull out the tools and materials and supplies needed for the new project, pop them into a project bag or bin, and have everything in one contained, tidy, organized spot. No Frantic Me. No Frustrated Me. No Take-Over-The-Whole-House-With-Chaos Me. It’s kind of awesome.

Functional Me Counts

In addition to having a functional environment both for the continued sustaining of life and household sanity, and the sewing stuff, having a Functional Me is kind of amazing.

Put on a clean dress/powder/lipstick: this is not a joke, actually!

Dude.

Shower. Moisturize. Put on clean underwear. If you have breasts, add a bra. Try some jeggings and a comfy tunic top. Dry your hair and toss it into a bun, ponytail, whatever. Wear some cherry chapstick (and stop it with your bad habit of snipping threads with your teeth, because it’s hard on your teeth and leaves chapstick residue on your project.)

We’re not talking a full face of makeup and glam hair and an evening dress. Mary Pickens mentions clean clothes, basic hygiene, and a non-greaseball face, plus something to make it look like you have lips on your head instead just a vast expanse of blended flesh from shoulders to nose. This is not extreme.

We’re talking “don’t get featured on People of Walmart” because you’re in basic human comfortable clothing that looks decent if you have to run out and grab anything, or if someone you care about pops over for a visit, or if you get a surprise chance to do something awesome. Zero stress about personal appearance, even if you’re not a person who stresses a lot about it. I like that.

If you’re in fitting mode for a historical project, jeggings or yoga pants or a skirt plus a tank and light top make it really easy to pop into a corset and do a fitting, but you’re still Quite Dressed for everything else.

You’re not sitting there greasy, lank, stale, and sporting Ozark Bosoms somewhere near your waistline. You’re not going to get stale sweat on your new, clean project. You’re not going to transfer butter from breakfast toast to your good fabric.

It’s a lot easier to feel good about your work when you feel decent about your ownself, so basic human upkeep ranks high on my reasons why Mary Picken’s advice is highly applicable today.

Be Willing To Learn From Good Sources

As with many historical things, don’t fall into a trap of “presentism”–assuming that our current practices and beliefs are the pinnacle and be-all, end-all of all human development forever.

One of the coolest things about sewing for living history is the chance to really experience archaeology! To try out the full systems and see how they feel. To learn to appreciate antique systems and habits. To experience, for a little while, a different world, and bring back into modern life those elements that appeal to us, that comfort us, that support us well. To share those experiences with others in the hopes it will also appeal, comfort, and support their modern lives.

Mary Picken was essentially awesome. She had good advice in her era, and much of it very directly applies to getting her same exceptional results in our current world.

Don’t diss her. Give her methods a whack. See what supports you. Test it long enough to make a habit, and enjoy the results!

If you’re naturally more chaotic, upgraded practices will let you avoid Overall Chaos, and focus on your creative chaos instead (and if you’re going to a limited-space workshop, tidy work habits will make you a class favorite with your fellow participants. Don’t be the Chaos Person who makes the whole thing awful. Contained Chaos is much nicer.) If you’re more like me, and require tidy, well-organized spaces to be at your most creative, these basics will support that as well.

Mary Picken. She’s awesome like that. Go be awesome like Herself.