Can you sew and still be a feminist? Oh honey, I’m a feminist from way back.

My mom taught me to sew in the 70s, because every woman in the midwest needed to know how. At some point, your daughter was going to come home from Girls Choir with a mimeographed sheet instructing “Mom” to come up with a red corduroy jumper with a zipper up the front from a Simplicity pattern, and you just had to do it. Sewing was right up there with cooking as a life skill.

These were the women who had flexed their muscles as Rosie the Riveter during WWII, or were co-eds like my mom. Then the men came back, and the women were expected to go home, be quiet, and raise a passel of kids while secretly reading “The Feminine Mystique” and pounding back Excedrin. We’re talking Betty from Mad Men.

My mom wisely got out of the house as a teacher, assigning Robert Frost and Kurt Vonnegut then moving on to Marshall McLuhan and “the medium is the message.” My Dad was the director of the school, so on top of all that she had to entertain as part of his job. I remember her sewing — rather than buying — a maxi dress of washable teal doubleknit to wear at the parties she was catering and hosting, because my parents were wisely choosing to spend the family money on college for us three girls.

I knew if I wanted to wear anything the least bit fashionable up there in Northern Lower Michigan, I had to make it myself, with patterns by Betsey Johnson or Kenzo. Imbued by the overconfidence of Cold War America, I thought everything I made was great.

The Girl Scout leaders knew we had a big job ahead of us too, so we learned to hike and camp with a pack, build a campfire and cook a “one pot” meal using a #10 can for the pot. We’d eat off of a table we’d made by lashing branches with twine, while sitting on our hand-woven (from newspaper) “Sit-Upons.” After dinner we’d sing “Ragtime Cowboy Joe” with hand motions, then bury all the trash.

But since we were training to be women, another night we had to cook and serve a “dressed up” fondue dinner party for our dads. I remember sewing a maxi wrap skirt out of wool houndstooth to wear. I was 12.

Pretty soon Ms. Magazine started showing up at our house, and my mom was going to feminist “consciousness-raising” meetings. My dad, who believed in fairness and lived in a house with four females, stuck up for her, which was a highly unpopular position for a man to take back then. He started cooking, and would invent casseroles from ground beef and giant zucchini from his garden. One of them was called “How To Stuff a Wild Zucchini,” but after a couple of nights it became “Baseball Casserole” because, as he said, “three times and you’re out.”

My mom was finally freed from sewing by then because I, the youngest, knew how. I could knit and embroider, too, and one summer in the 70s, my sister, who now is the Artistic Director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, came home from Juilliard and taught me to macrame plant-hangers.

In college during the recession, I was part of the first generation of “thrifters” who lived in vintage fashion and army surplus, inspired by the book “Cheap Chic.”

Too broke for retail when I started in TV in Ohio, I sewed myself a velvet dress to wear when I got an award at the Waldorf.

Then I moved to New York, where my love life replaced my sewing machine. Power suits from Anne Klein II. Nights at the Plaza in Norma Kamali. Marriage to a guy with custody of three kids. Cooking Christmas dinner for his teens (who decided the night before to become vegan). Yards of curtains sewn. Parties for 40 with a rock band crashing at our house. Doing the rock band’s laundry because I didn’t know any better. Wearing vintage haute couture from Didier Ludot in Paris. Fifteen years of writing and producing for television. Ten years raising our boy — a much wished-for but exhausting surprise. Then menopause, which is as bad as puberty — but in reverse. By the time I was through, I had skills for days and was restless.

I took a $25 online course about French haute couture sewing, and made a Chanel-style jacket. I remembered how much fun it was to sew. It was more fun than shopping, which has been ruined by fast fashion. And lots of people were online chatting about sewing, of all shapes, sizes, hues and ages — women, men, gay, straight, trans. They were posting proud pictures of themselves in their “makes.”

It was all so much more fun than thinking about test prep for my eleven-year-old’s four-hour middle-school admission exam — an incredibly anxiety-producing thing that was meaningless in the grand scheme of things, I now realize. I started blogging about recreating vintage fashion by famous designers here at JetSetSewing.com, and it took off. Sewing kick-started my career again.

(Speaking of which, three kick pleats in this Charles James “Dorothy” skirt! And a shrug by Claire McCardell.)

Here’s the deal: feminist or not, domestic crap is a part of life. I sew for fun and cook under protest. I drive my son to stuff and try to figure out what’s on his mind. I’ve cleaned up plenty of puke and poop, and checked for pinworms (don’t google it). My husband’s put up shelves, done the dishes, and decorated the house. We’ve hauled umpteen pieces of furniture up and down stairs, swearing at each other. I’ve made up five million beds. My husband’s done a lot of varnishing. We’ve both dustbusted a major portion of the East Coast.

I’ve read young bloggers agonizing about whether “crafting” is anti-feminist, and here’s what I think, now that I’m in my 50s: go ahead and get good at sewing, cooking, woodworking, small engine repair, whatever floats your boat. You have no idea how many freaking skills you’re going to need over the next 30 years.

As the Dalai Lama noted recently in a New York Times Op-Ed, a lot of western anxiety can be traced back to the feeling of not being “needed.” I really can’t stand a lot of the housework I do, but I do feel useful.

Now for the part about “getting a man” (or whatever gender “rings your chimes,” as they used to say in the 60s), which is feminist too, because, trust me, your family ties will outlast your career. Even though the shimmering blonde hair on the next girl over may be temporarily blinding, once a guy does the math about how much it costs to touch up those roots every three weeks, an engaging, independent and industrious gal like you with a sewing machine can start to look mighty good. Because in the end, you two are going to be spending a lot more time keeping house and eating dinner together than you will fooling around.

(Just don’t show him your sewing stash closet until after the honeymoon.)

Oh hey! Remember the good ol’ days? Like, in June?

If you’re a U.S. reader, it’s entirely possible you’ve been experiencing a bit of anxiety lately. I know I have. Personally, I blame a major Italian fashion house for my slide into bad karmaland.

There I was in late July, wearing my not-terribly-tatty workout clothes and carrying a completely acceptable non-It bag, cutting through the mall to get to Star Market for groceries, when I spotted this dress in the middle of a store:

Well, of course I had to take a picture for Instagram, because I’d seen 70s Halston dresses that are just like it. Here’s one from the excellent Yves Saint Laurent + Halston exhibition  that was at the Museum at FIT a couple of years ago (on the left):

So I dashed in, and the minute I got out my phone to take a picture, the security guard streaked to the back room of the store.

Suddenly a very officious and nervous young manager came speedwalking out, insisting that I had to stop taking pictures and leave! I don’t know if my non-Bedazzled workout clothes were disturbing the shopping zen of the overdressed foreign tourists taking selfies right next to me, but clearly I had to go.

Anyway, I guess he figured I wasn’t in the market for a $1,300 cotton dress that you or I could make on a Tuesday for 50 bucks tops, with a pattern like Butterick 6446.

Next I cut through Lord and Taylor, and, because I still had blanket coats on the brain after making the The 50s “Coat Even A Beginner Can Make” (or a Capote even Truman might wear), I snapped a pic of this easy-to-hack wool jacket by St. John:

Fortunately, the nice ladies at L&T didn’t give a hoot that I was taking a picture of this $1,300 “putty melange” wrapper.

Seriously, you put it on, one of your friends does a red wine “spit take” on you and you’re on the floor crying.

Even though my sewing machine, AKA Karl, was still mad at me from making him do “le pivot” on my last make, I decided that stitching up a retro shawl-collar jacket was in the stars. They were everywhere!

I decided to make one from  Vogue 8930, as people were waxing poetic about the pattern on Pattern Review. Another blogger skillfully explained the mania you can get from thinking about this pattern, along with the naughty alternate name that it has: Vogue 8930 review with hilarious naughty name.

By then it was August, and it was so hot in my charming-yet-non-air-conditioned sewing shed that all I felt like doing was making muslins, believe it or not (in this case, a tracing-paper test version of the pattern). Even the thought of fitting actual fabric gave me a hot flash.

I knew from the get-go that this was an oversized pattern, so I went down a size to make a Medium, when I’m normally a retail L or XL. But the first version, upper left, still had a lot of volume. The dropped sleeves were oversized and a little 80s as well, so I took them in a couple of inches under the pit, shown top right. Then I chopped 4″ off around the collar and hem, shown bottom right, but it still seemed big to me.

Meanwhile, I was showing my progress via Instagram and getting a lot of good advice from sewing people all over the world. In the end, I took a total of 8″ off the collar and hem to get the silhouette I was looking for (bottom left).

There are two ways to sew this pattern in the instructions: either unlined with overlapping  unfinished seams, or completely lined. However, as I have never encountered a pattern that I can’t make more difficult if I really put my mind to it, I decided to only line half of it around the collar.

When I start cutting the wool for the exterior, once again I heard “MERDE! NOT LE PIVOT” from Karl, my Bernina. Then I told him I was doing French seams, which means you sew the seam once, then flip it and sew it again to give it a nice finish.

You know those Grumpy Cat memes? Karl was giving me that look.

I knew he could do it! Though I did find it was too bulky when I tried to cross together two French seams, so I kind of chopped that part and you’ll never see a picture of that. (The fabric is a pretty doubleknit wool that I bought from Emma One Sock.)

To line and face the collar, I used some silk crepe de chine I’d had printed up by My Fabric Designs. They’d offered me a credit to try their printing service, so I’d uploaded some original Art Deco fashion graphics from my collection. It’s good quality silk, and the printing is nice and crisp.

This one’s called “The Death of Love” (in French) and, geez, haven’t we all been there after a breakup, floating comatose down a cold river, boob hanging out, but still miraculously wearing our “kiss me” (or something) pumps?

I cut the collar lining, then it was back to Instagram. Does this pattern make my headlights look like lowlights?

Sewing people are nice and polite on IG, but like true friends, they wisely advised me to re-cut it.

I had chopped so much off the hem that the pockets were going to stick out the bottom, so Karl and I added ponte binding. It’s a nice finish for knits.

I did a little hand pick-stitching to secure the edge of the newly-cut collar, as topstitching would have been “meh.”

Then it was off to the Boston Symphony to drown out the cacophony of the election.

I went to bed on election night hoping to wake to a celebration of the first American woman president. Instead I found myself sentenced to four years of my husband kvetching about politics at the breakfast table.

At that point, there was only one thing I could do with all of that agita. Go hide somewhere and make something.

I needed a long black skirt for an event, and had bought some mysterious “athe-lounge” “anti-pill” ponte type stuff at JoAnn’s that had a lot of body and magical lycra. I’d liked the retro mermaid-type cut on McCalls 7386, and since it was a “Learn To Sew For Fun” pattern, I figured it would be doable on a day when I really couldn’t be trusted with sharp objects.

Three seams and some elastic later I had a nice skirt. It’s a very easy and well-drafted pattern. The fabric was so artificial that I skipped sewing the bottom hem and gave it a smooth finish by gluing it with Lite Steam-a-Seam 2, because it just seemed like a day to throw all sense and tradition out the window.

A couple of weeks later, half the country was still driven to distraction, as was I. I decided that the only sewing I had the patience for was the “One Yard Wonder” contest on Pattern Review, where you took a yard or meter from your stash and made something creative.

I used some vintage Savile Row suiting wool to whip up a 50s Claire McCardell bolero pattern, as it’s cut on the bias to create a pretty chevron with striped fabric.

As a single woman in her early 30s, McCardell bought a drafty farmhouse a stone’s throw from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where the Algonquin Round Table crowd had decamped to escape New York’s cafe society. She thought of her designs as “solving problems” for herself and the modern woman, so she created eveningwear with jackets and shrugs like this from wool – often men’s suiting fabrics – to stay warm at dinners in cold country houses and ski resorts.

This pattern uses one unusually-shaped pattern piece that’s doubled. I cut the first side in a single layer, then flipped the cut piece, still pinned to the pattern, and lined up the stripes to cut the second piece, to make sure that the stripes would meet in the middle in a chevron.

Then I used Wonder Tape to match the stripes before I sewed.

At this point I was joking on Instagram that I was making a giant bra, and other guesses were a one-armed top or large manta ray stuffed toy.

I lined it with some silk crepe de chine that My Fabric Designs printed up with photos I’d taken in Paris. (The lining didn’t count toward the one yard/meter in the contest.)

I got in the true McCardell spirit by topstitching the edges (she pioneered putting topstitching from work clothes on womenswear in the 40s). I was so not in the mood for more hand pick-stitching.

Karl did an awesome job as usual. I was pleased with the results.

Those Pattern Review contests are tough, and even though I didn’t win, it’s always fun to be in the gallery with so many talented peeps.

For my last anxiety-relieving project, well, several million of my women friends and I kept hearing about how our president-to-be was fond of cats or something, and since he’d spent a great deal of his life in a big, gilded tower, we decided to welcome him to the People’s House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with a little parade. And to make sure that he knew we were girls, we decided to knit, crochet and sew attractive pink hats. Little did we know how popular this particular crafting project would be. Details and patterns are here: Pussy Hat Project.

I hadn’t knit for years, but decided to switch to the dark side for this project. I noticed that the patterns were similar to a pattern floating around for a version of Elsa Schiaparelli’s 30s “Madcap,” a soft hat that could be worn number of ways. Here’s that pattern: Madcap Pattern. There’s a cute sewn version of the pattern on Kate’s blog Fabrickated.

And here’s one of the original Schiaparelli Madcaps in the Metropolitan Museum‘s online collection:

How I adore the thousands of images of fashion history on metmuseum.org!

Wearing a retro in-your-face hat seemed appropriate, since during World War II the Parisiennes took to wearing bizarre hats as a way to show that someone could take their city, but not their fashionable souls.

I mixed together the 30s pattern and a Loopy Mango knitting pattern to create a dark aubergine-pinkish chenille topper, suitable for madcap parties and protest marches.

I used size six chenille super-bulky yarn, size 15 needles, and cast on 33 stitches. Stockinette stitched until I thought it was tall enough (about 8″). Folded it over and sewed the top and side (I’m wearing it purl side out). And that officially got knitting out of my system for another five years.

After the ladies’ Welcome Wagon marched through a major portion of the world, many of us in the U.S. had the hope that our new public servant would get the message, as it takes a lot to be named “Employee of the Month” around here. Time will tell, but it’s not looking good so far.

Play it, Bonnie. (Bonnie Raitt “Sugar Mama”)

Now that Karl has hidden my knitting needles, it’s time to get back to sewing! How’s your sewing going?