In Short(s)

I sew for many reasons—the pleasure, the satisfaction, the skills-building, the way it scratches an OCD itch. One of the biggest ones, though, if not the biggest, is to learn how to not just accept but also embrace my changing body. A body I’ve never felt at home in. A body I’ve never put much effort into dressing in a way that reflects how I’d like to present myself to the world because doing so would require that I think about it more than absolutely necessary, look at it, and—God forbid!—endure wearing clothing that reminds me that it exists.

Until recently, I assumed that “accepting and embracing my changing body” meant sewing oversized garments that would grow with me, so to speak. This seemed logical because I didn’t want my decades-long eating disorder to take what’s meant to be a healthy practice and warp it into yet another excuse not to meet my medical goals. I didn’t question this strategy. It made perfect sense to me, thank you very much, and man do I love a baggy fit.

Indeed, I contentedly churned out tent shirt after billowy pants until I was struck by a friend’s observation that there’s power in sewing for the body you have now as a way to celebrate and get comfortable with it. As she wisely pointed out, I can remake garments when the time comes; it’s not as if I’m not a prolific sewist. This is, of course, entirely true, and yet it hadn’t occurred to me—maybe because I wasn’t ready to abandon my muumuus. Pondering her words, though, I realized that what it’d be a shame to lose wasn’t a stack of me-made clothes but rather the time I could’ve spent focusing on developing a) the technical skills necessary to make a capsule wardrobe of properly fitted me-made clothes later, when I’m where I need to be; and b) the emotional skills necessary to wear those clothes with confidence. By taking the easy way out, I’d been working on the technical-skills part to the detriment of the emotional-skills one, learning how to sew but perpetuating my ingrained belief that I have something to hide under a boxy top and pair of wide-legged pants with elasticized waistband.

Thus inspired, I sat down and wrote what I’ll call a “sewing manifesto” (fancy!) outlining the approach I want to take as a move forward with this process. In addition to the four guiding principles I included in that top-secret document, I had an additional objective: to sew a pair of shorts this summer. And wear them.

Once I set myself a somewhat arbitrary goal, I’m not one to back down. I thus got right to it, using a metre or so of fabric that was left over after I cut the material (a thrifted mint-green-with-stripes linen blend I thrifted for $7.00) for a matching set. In truth, I prepped the shorts almost impulsively, and even after the pieces were tucked in a Ziploc ready to go, I half thought I wouldn’t actually make them. It would’ve been easy to delay and delay and delay, but no! Instead of falling into the procrastination trap and prioritizing other projects, I sat down the very next afternoon and started sewing.

To make things easier for myself and harder for the voice in my head telling me that I’m not allowed to bare more than an inch of my legs, I’d chosen the shorts version of Anna Allen’s Pomona Pants. This is one of my tried-and-true patterns, and I’ve sewn it up at least four times. (I’m wearing a pair at this very moment!) It’s a very quick sew with a result that’s reliably comfortable yet doesn’t look like pajamas, so I was able churn these out by dinnertime. I’d just finished hemming when my husband called me to the table.

We ate. I pondered. After we’d cleared our plates, I bit the bullet and changed into my new shorts, and I kept them on the rest of the evening, a little self-conscious but otherwise remarkably fine and even, dare I say it, proud of myself? I planned to wear them the next day, too, but a huge glob of chocolate ice cream tragically fell from my pre-bed cone and landed right on the crotch of my shorts, so into the laundry they went.

A few days ago, I was fussy-cutting a button-down shirt from a fabric with large checks. Once done, I evaluated the remaining material—a little more than a metre—and tried to decide what to do with it. There certainly wasn’t enough for a pair of pants. A skirt, maybe? A tote bag? Three dozen scrunchies?

As if by instinct, without thinking twice, I pulled out the Pomona pieces. Shorts would be nice, I thought, but this time in a more appropriate size. Nothing to lose, so much to gain.