It feels like we're finally coming to the end of lockdown, with restrictions starting to ease at the end of March and hope for a return to some sort of normality by June.
I started Stitch and Stash in November 2019, on a train from London to Yorkshire, with the aim of fulfilling a dream of having an online haberdashery, or well to be honest an actual haberdashery, but an online one seemed like a smaller first step. I bought some stock, set up my website and to my amazement people actually started to hear about Stitch and Stash and buy things.
Then all the craziness started in March 2020. Sewers / sewists - mainly women, but not exclusively - turned to sewing to fill their time but also to reconnect with something that their mothers or grandmothers had taught them when they were little, or that they'd learned at school. Quite frankly it kept a lot of people sane, including me. When you're sewing you can't think about anything else or you make a mistake and have to spend ages unpicking. So you concentrate. And for those minutes, hours or even days, you're in another place.
Sewing is therapy for so many people. It gives a busy mind a channel to think about something constructive. It is a connection between mind and hands. The feel of fabric slipping through a machine, or a piece of needlework in your hand, is something so tactile, basic, fundamental. Creating something, when the world is in chaos around you, is a constructive, positive response to a situation outside of ourselves and out of our control.
Through Stitch and Stash I have connected with so many like-minded people, who find solace in sewing and love what they do. I have enjoyed every interaction and seeing the joy that receiving fabrics, patterns or kits through the post can bring. When I see what someone has created out of these raw materials it is awe inspiring.
So I just wanted to say thank you to everyone in the sewing community, for being there, and being a community, and supporting yourselves and each other.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Jenny x