Features

Is sewing the next big thing?  

That thought was prompted last week by the sight of 11 teenagers who’d chosen to spend their spring break learning to sew at Berkeley’s Stonemountain & Daughter Fabric Store.  

They’d come from Drew School, a 95-year-old, 250 student private college preparatory school in San Francisco. Each year at this time, all regular classes at Drew stop for a week, and everyone participates in DEALL: Drew Education for Active and Lifelong Learning. Students choose from one-week classes posted by teachers in an online catalog. This year the subjects ranged from horseback riding to cartooning, and the venues from close to home to as far away as Japan.  

The sewing class was the idea of Drew teacher and Berkeley resident Shane Carter. Carter, 31, teaches history at Drew and, on Fridays, an elective cooking class. “I think anything that has to do with self-sufficiency is important,” she says. Knowing how to cook and sew help “make you a confident adult.” She added, “I don’t see a line between teaching them how to sew and teaching them how to do algebra.” Indeed, to sew well, she observed, you have to “understand spatial relationships.” Laying out a pattern involves parallel lines and other geometric concepts.  

Carter feels comfortable teaching cooking, but because she taught herself how to sew, she “never learned how to do it methodically” and needed to find somebody else to each the class.  

Last fall she asked Stonemountain owner Suzanne Steinberg to set up the course. Steinberg recruited teachers from Stonemountain’s sewing school and reserved the store’s airy upstairs classroom and its sewing machines for the week of Drew’s Spring Break. The cost was $10 an hour, which worked out to about $250 per student. Financial aid, says Carter, was factored into the price. Students provided their own fabric and notions. The class size was limited to 12.  

To Carter’s delight it filled up, and a handful of would-be students, including a few boys, even had to be turned away. The class met Monday through Friday from 10 to 4, with a lunch break. Seated at her or his—one guy’s—own machine, the students followed lead teachers Alice Elliot and Rosa Fajimi through the basics: choosing and preparing a pattern, following the directions, laying out the pattern pieces, cutting and marking the fabric, how to use a sewing machine, assembling the garment, fitting and finishing (seams, buttonholes, closures, hems).  

By the end of the week, everyone had made a drawstring skirt or pair of pants. Some students had embarked on a second project of their own choosing—pillows, a beach bag, a hoody, a dress. A few want to become fashion designers; others want to make their own clothes or fix things that they’ve bought. All were enthusiastic about the class.  

“The best thing about sewing,” said Sophia, 18, “is instant gratification. It takes awhile, but at the end, you can say: Wow! I have this piece of clothing; I can put it on and wear it. I finished my skirt yesterday, and I wore it last night out to dinner.”  

Many of the Drew students had altered garments or made bags, pillows and other small things. Few had used a machine or a pattern or had the benefit of expert instruction.  

“I’ve sewn before, but I’ve never done clothes,” said Sylvia, 15, as she worked on a dress with spaghetti straps. “It’s really cool. I’ve made quilts and bags, but I can’t really use them for anything except decoration.”  

Teacher Alice Elliot praised the Drew students. “This group is particularly great—really motivated, friendly, respectful—and excited to sew.”  

That doesn’t surprise Stone-mountain & Daughter owner Suzanne Steinberg. “We’ve seen this trend happening for the past few years. This is an incredibly technical and creative generation. They love making things, and focusing on fashion and on clothing. It skipped a generation or two. They’re combining the new technology”—recent innovations in sewing machines and tools that have make it easier to make clothes that look professional—“and the old ways of sewing.”  

For Steinberg, teaching teenagers how to sew is an investment in her business’s future. “Our industry was strong when home economics was taught in the schools. Now home economics is out of schools, but girls still want to learn how to sew.” Two weeks after Drew School called, she was contacted by another high school that wanted to do a sewing class in the same week. She dreams of creating an after-school program for students from Berkeley High which, she notes, is just three blocks away. “This is a really good example of how business and community can work together with the schools and fill a vacuum.” In any case, teenagers are welcome to take Stonemountain’s regular sewing classes.  

Asked why he chose to take the sewing class, Drew student Devon Hayden, 17, said, “I thought it would be cool to make your own clothing.” Did it turn out that way? “Yeah, it’s radical.”  

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