Hi, as the blog’s title may indicate, my name is Sophie and I like to sew.

I remember my grandmother teaching me basic hand-stitching techniques with a needle and thread on an old envelope so as to keep me busy so my mom could take care of my little brother.

I remember my mom making little dresses for my barbie dolls, and me contributing “design suggestions”. Fairly ambitious for a 6-year-old.

I remember going to the dressmaker with my mom and looking at swatches and fashion magazines and patterns while she had her fittings.

I remember drawing dresses from as early as I could hold a pen. I have a binder full of them, and several notebooks with smatterings of ideas and sketches and notes for collections.

I remember being scared of the sewing machine when mom said that she’d sewn over her fingers once by accident and the needle had gone through her nail! I’m still veeery careful when I position my hands around the needle’s feed.

I remember seeing a post on ebay about a singer sewing machine being sold for £20. I remember convincing my boyfriend to let me have it, and renting the car to go get it.

I remember the excitement of ordering my first pattern (well, I’d made several skirts bags and dresses when I was younger, but as it’d been more than 10 years, it was my first pattern… in a while!) and buying my first (uber-cheap) fabric. I remember slowly tracing it, cutting it, assembling it. And having it go wrong. Undoing seams, redoing them, moving things around. And to top it off, because I was losing weight, having to take it in about 4 times. I wore it only once. It’s too embarrassing to wear in public.

I remember it all as if it were yesterday, and yet if you go back to those first seams on an old envelope, it’s been more than 25 years. And I’m still as excited as that 5-year-old who, upon discovering what can be done with a big piece of fabric, thread and scissors and some imagination, starts to dream.

This is a little blog dedicated to documenting those dreams.