Why I Sew (and why I don't)

I wish that I could show you the actual video above, because it explains so much about my obsession with sewing. However I don't have access to it right now, so I'm going to explain to the best of my memory. Up there is a screenshot of me shortly before my third birthday. I am taping thread onto fabric. "What are you doing?" my mom asks. "I'm sewing," I say. "Like Wendy in Peter Pan."

The weird thing, is that I have a very strong memory of this, but it isn't in the family room, it's up in my bedroom. So the taping thread on things--that was happening a lot. I saw Wendy Darling sewing in "Peter Pan" and I desperately wanted to do whatever it was she did. 

That compulsion has never left me.

myself and my sister wearing very early creations

 I was about five or six when I was first allowed an actual needle and thread, and a year later I had convinced my mother and grandmother to give me a few lessons on the sewing machine. I utterly refused to have anything to do with patterns ("No one is going to tell ME what to do!") and progressed with learning the hard way.