Skills Passed Down

A potted history of my time as a knitter and sewer

I spend a great deal of my time not spent writing and reading sitting on the sofa knitting.

Needles & yarn

I learned to knit when I was about eight years old. My mother brought me to Joann’s and we bought light blue acrylic yarn and aluminum straight needles. She taught me how to do a knitted cast on and how to make knit stitches. I then embarked on every knitter’s rite of passage: the wonky square/washcloth/scarf. Along the way, I dropped stitches with wild abandoned, picked up without meaning to, and generally made every mistake under the sun. I pulled my yarn far too tight so that the stitches squeaked viciously as I used my little eight-year-old hands to strong-arm the plastic yarn through the needles.

It was terrible, but for whatever reason I persisted.

Somewhere along the way, Mum taught me how to purl and how to cast off. Then I don’t recall her ever intervening in my knitting again. She is not herself a knitter, although she was taught to knit when she was a girl.

Photo by Nynne Schrøder on Unsplash

Despite not having the guidance of a dedicated knitter at home, I somehow ended up picking up and putting down knitting throughout my childhood. Perhaps it was because I loved nothing more than at trip to Michaels with all of the possibility that the bins of Red Heart and Lion Brand yarn offered.¹ I wasn’t particularly good at knitting—I recall making a multi-colored striped scarf for Dad in high school during the Gap rainbow scarf trend of the early Naughties but unfortunately being unaware that pure purling rolls up into tight tubes no matter what you do—but I do remember loving it.

Needle & thread

Mum also taught me how to sew. When I was in elementary school, my class banded together to create a charity quilt for a cause I can no longer remember. Each child was responsible for producing one approximately 6”x6” square in a design of their choice. I chose to make a little patchwork house, and Mum helped me cut out the fabric. She then showed me how to create the stitches I would need to assemble my square. I finished and, incredibly proud, held it up to show her. Alas, I had stitched the entire thing to the fabric of my dress and had to unpick and redo the whole thing. It was—and remains—a valuable lesson in patience and double checking your work at regular intervals.

Short of re-attaching buttons, I attempted to do very little sewing until I was home one summer from college. I had become obsessed with the fashion of Mad Men, and the only way I could get my hands on the gorgeous dresses Joan wears was to try to make them for myself. My lovely, patient mother bought me a cheap sewing machine, took me to the fabric store², and taught me how to read a pattern. I attempted to make a dress and it was…fine. I attempted another dress, an one-shoulder crepe-backed satin that I botched horribly but ended up making the rounds of college parties anyway because the inevitable low light hid the shoddy construction.

Continuing to learn

I have been knitting for long enough that I am very confident that I can pick up nearly any pattern and produce a garment with relative ease. I enjoy seeking out techniques that I haven’t come across before because of the challenge they present. I have a queue of projects longer than my arm, and I am currently working to battle back the size of my yarn stash.

When it comes to sewing, however, I know enough to know that I don’t know very much. You could argue that dressmaking and sewing in particular should be in my blood. One of my grandmothers was a talented dressmaker who had her own shop in Liverpool, two of my cousins have worked as seamstresses making costumes for some of Britain’s top ballets and opera companies, and my other grandmother was a quilter of great skill. However, there is natural aptitude and then there is time spent practicing a skill. Since deciding to start learning to sew again two years ago, I have learned they are not the same thing.

I reflected on this a great deal while writing The Dressmakers of London. The book features two sisters who unexpectedly inherit their mother’s London dress shop. Izzie, who has worked in the business for years, is furious that her estranged sister Sylvia, who left the family and the dress shop behind to marry several rungs above her station, has a share in the business. However, when Izzie finds herself conscripted into the WAAF during World War 2, she’s forced to call upon Sylvia to run the shop until Izzie returns from war.

During the course of this book, I had to describe the steps and stages that went into making beautifully finished clothes for sale. I needed to understand clothing rationing and how it would have affected a dressmaker and her customers, and I also needed to understand how wartime fashion and clothing construction changed because of those restrictions. While writing the book, I was more than a little aware than I am more Sylvia than I am Izzie when it comes to sewing.

Sometimes writing a book makes you want to shove your subject away and never look at it again. However, in the case of The Dressmakers of London, I am more keen than ever to keep going with my sewing journey. I have produced a few wearable garments on my sewing journey, but wearable is about as far as I would go in describing them. When I am reunited with my sewing machine, which is currently packed away in storage, I plan to enroll in classes in order to go back to basics and learn how to do things properly.

Legacies and bonds

I have always enjoyed the fact that knitting and sewing are practices that traditionally have been passed down through families, often from woman to woman.³ I learned because Mum thought knitting and sewing were valuable skills for me to know because they made me more self-sufficient and able to take care of myself.

There is also the bond that you form with other people who enjoy your hobby. I speak to my sister nearly every day about what we are both making (the Eclipse of Moths Sweater by Klara Cecilia for her and a modified vintage Patons pattern for a half fisherman’s rib jumper for me), and we often will ring each other up for help with some obscure instructions in a knitting or sewing pattern. I am almost embarrassed to say how excited I was when I found out that a friend and fellow author was learning how to knit after crocheting for years because crafting gives you an entirely new set of conversations to talk about.

Life feels richer for having people in it who share my hobbies. I hope that, if you have ever had an interest in knitting, sewing, or other crafts, you will be a little brave and give them a try. There are a world of resources online⁴ and classes at local yarn and fabric stores are great places to start.

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My book The Dressmakers of London, a novel about two estranged sisters who are forced back together when they unexpectedly inherit their mother’s London dress shop, comes out on Tuesday, February 18. You can still place a preorder for the paperback, ebook, and audiobook editions. All the info is available on my website.

I also have a secondary Substack where I talk about all things knitting called The Writer’s Knitting Basket. If you are interested, I’d love for you to check it out. I’d recommend starting with my most recent post.

The Month in Knitting (January 2025)

1. I was what I would call an aspirational crafty kid, which is to say that I loved buying cross stitch kits, knitting needles, crocheting how to books, and one time even chocolate-making kits from Michaels. A part of me to this day would still like to try my hand at woodworking, leather tooling, and all manner of things that would expand my already expansive collection of craft supplies to an unreasonable degree, but I think my husband and I both can rest easy that I’m not willing to sacrifice my knitting time to another time-expensive craft.

2. It was likely Fabric Planet in Venice, CA, although I couldn’t swear to it.

3. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that there are long, well-documented histories of men knitting and sewing. They are worth looking into, and I am a strong believer that it is even more worth it to encourage both boys and girls to learn how to do these skills. There is the practical side (it’s wonderful to be able to repair your own clothes or making your own jumper) but there’s a pleasurable side too and all of the therapeutic reasons to make clothes. What a shame for men and boys to miss out on those aspects of crafting.

4. What I would have given for something like YouTube when I was first learning…