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Sewing my way out of debt
My way (I hope) to beat the job hunt.
The email made things perfectly clear. For what felt like the five millionth time, my job application was being passed over because of “inexperience”. As much as the irony of the catch 22 of “you need the job to get experience and experience to get the job” I was disappointed – again. Of course I’d been a stereotypically out-of-work actor/writer for a couple of years so rejection I was used to. But I couldn’t pay the bills with irony and whim.
My mother passed her new sewing machine with a sigh. Every year she told herself that she was going to get back to sewing more and altering her own clothes again but every year she just worked more. So much so, that as the youngest child my sewing lessons had been postponed after the button and ribbon stage for so long that nearly ten years had gone by. I was earning a little cash by helping her with the annual clear out of clothes and crap that would be sent off to charity shops. We were as bad as each other. “Oh but this fabric is so nice”, “all we’d need to is take that in” or “yes the buttons are hideous but if we changed them...” and such statements were made so often that in the end we had an entirely separate bag of things we were so optimistic to throw away.
I don’t know when we came up with the idea but that was definitely when it was born. Upcycling I called it, “doing old stuff up” my mother called it but either way I was doing it. TORN Upcycling and Accessories was born. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded.
My sewing skills needed serious improvement and practise; materials are an expensive and risky investment not to mention the price of tables at weekend craft or flea markets. So far I’ve sliced my hand on a seam ripper, nearly pierced my own (due to my bad habit of holding my needles in my teeth while I’m stitching) and stabbed myself more times than my poor tortured hands can count. But here I am. A suitcase full of pre-loved clothes with added love and a few stall bookings, but most importantly I’ve got a sense that I’m still the master of my own destiny.
I think that was the worst thing for me (not using the big R word) was the sense that the economy had somehow taken my future away as a young person. I don’t know if this venture will keep me in tea and Doc Martins or maybe be a completely disaster but it’s given me and amazing feeling that we’re all going to be ok. And in the spirit of us all being ok I thought I’d share that thought. Wish me luck.
By: orla-jo
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