What makes home sewists start to make their own clothes? And how does this relate to their imaginative and creative style of thinking? Lauren Cox stitches together the results of her research into the motivational patterns of sewists.
During the recent Covid lockdowns many of us took up new creative hobbies, with craft activities being particularly popular. In a way, that’s not surprising, because doing craft activities has numerous positive effects on wellbeing; and the exacting, methodical and immersive nature of craft activity is argued to bring a sense of normality, control and meditative peace to many.
One of the greatest surges in crafting seen through the pandemic was that of home sewing – often to make face coverings or scrubs for the NHS. In 2020 the seventh series of the UK TV show ‘The Great British Sewing Bee’, profiling the skills of amateur garment-makers, gained over six million viewers, further boosting the popularity of the pastime. Hosts of the show suggested the viewing figures were thanks to the Covid pandemic, stating that the programme “really captures what people need. It can be soothing and inspirational”. Online communities flourished, too: for example, the Facebook group ‘Madam Sew’ has around 170,000 members, and the reddit thread ‘r/sewing’ has 520,000 contributors.
All the same, despite the popularity of the activity, we don’t really know why people take up sewing as a hobby in the first place. Only two recent studies appear to exist (both reporting interview findings, from the USA and Finland). The Finnish study suggested just three motivations: utility-based (e.g. mending and fixing); product-centred (for the enjoyment of the final garment); and process-centred (for the enjoyment of the process of sewing). On the other hand, the American research focused on personal fulfilment, Identifying three sub-themes of investment (the time, money and concentration required for the craft); control (the increased power over clothing choices) and empowerment (pride in skills and achievement). In our research we were particularly interested in checking these motivations out further with a large survey sample of sewists drawn from across the world.
So we devised a survey of 30 questions, mainly based on these earlier findings, which were intended to probe the reasons why sewists start and continue with their craft. We then asked members of the online sewing communities to take part, and 198 people (mainly female, from the UK, USA and Canada) responded. If you were one of these people, many thanks for taking part!
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Analysis of the survey results reveal six factors relating to our participants’ motivations for sewing, and these are set out in the infographic in the right hand panel.
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Broadly speaking, these factors related to aspects of:
- Aesthetic Motivations: an appreciation and enjoyment of the aesthetic aspects of a garment such as textures, colours, and patterns;
- Pride in Community: the feeling of belonging in a sewist community, and a pride in self-identifying as a sewist;
- Desire for Unique and Striking Items: a motivation to create garments that cannot be found or bought elsewhere;
- Interest in the Design Process: an enjoyment of processes such as sketching and planning a garment. The mean score on this component is relatively low, suggesting that the participants did not rate the items in this component as being very true to themselves.
- Interest in Technical Processes: an enjoyment of the process of making garments, such as measuring and fitting;
- Eco-Utility Motivations: sewing as a way to reduce consumption of unethical, ready-to-wear garments, or to reduce waste.
Our other interest in this study was whether these motivations aligned with the creative imagination styles of our participants. Work by Blazhenkova and Kozhevnikov has suggested that the world is broken down into ‘Object visualisers’ (who tend to experience mental imagery which is colourful, vivid and rich in detail) and Spatial visualisers (who can easily imagine rotating, moving or combining an object with other items). Blazhenkova and Kozhevnikov argue that object imagery is more relevant for artists, while the spatial pathway is particularly key for scientific invention. We’ve written another blog here if you’d like to find out more.
We wondered whether those sewists with more ‘artistic’ motivations for sewing would turn out to be object visualisers, whereas those with design and construction leanings would be spatial visualisers. So we included Blazhenkova and Kozhevnikov’s Object-Spatial Imagery and Verbal Questionnaire (OSIVQ) in the questionnaire.
The findings generally backed up our hunches. Significant relationships were found between Object imagery and ‘Desire for Unique and Striking Items’, ‘Aesthetic Motivations’ (both as expected) and also ‘Pride in Community’. As predicted, Spatial imagery was significantly related to ‘Interest in the Design Process’. We were, however, surprised to find no relationship between ‘Interest in the Technical Process’ and Spatial imagery, and would like to explore this further. Together with ‘Eco-Utility’, this factor showed no relationship with either Object or Spatial imagery processes.
Overall, our survey sheds light on some important individual differences of sewists. There’s a wide range of motivations, and these appear to tie in with our natural visual imagery styles, supporting the work of Blazhenkova and Kozhevnikov. However, our study suggests that the evidence for domain specialisation in mental imagery (‘object=art’ and ‘spatial=science’) is not clear-cut, and a more nuanced approach may be appropriate. In future studies of sewists and fashion designers, our research suggests that we should be looking at their ability to recall fabrics, patterns and colours in vibrant detail, as well as their ability to mentally imagine rotating, draping and combining the various materials in their designs.
In fact, many creative art-forms (such as sculpture and design) seem to rely on both spatial and aesthetic aspects of imagination, and visual-spatial abilities (such as attention to perspective, proportion, shape and the representation of spaces) have also been found to be important for drawing skills. This means that our research also has broader relevance to artistic fields outside the world of fashion.
Lauren was reporting on her research which she presented at the UK Creativity Researchers Conference in 2022. If you’d like to see a pdf of the poster, entitled ‘How do sewists visualise?’, please click on this link.
Image credits:
Infographic: produced by Lauren Cox and Kathryn Friedlander
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