Recently I began watching a series on television called the Great British Sewing Bee. A contest to find the best sewer of a group of selected contestants using a process of elimination each week. Young, old, male and female compete under grueling time conditions to create garments to impress the judges. I was seduced immediately into the world of sewing. None of this was new to me, I had sewed my heart out as younger person and up until life became too busy, I suspect. Then the sewing machine gathered dust in a back cupboard only to be aired for the odd mending or hem alteration.

And so, as the series (I started by watching back series) progressed I became aware of how much I knew about sewing, seams, fabrics and patterns. My shelved skills and knowledge that had been left behind as a by product of newer interests, work and life were suddenly alive for me. I found myself offering advice to the contestants, ‘no, just trim it, you don’t have time to unpick it’ or ‘measure first, you can’t unpick lace’ and ‘you should have tacked those set in sleeves’.

And of course, you know what happened next. Yes, you guessed. I am enthused and decide to make something. Out came the machine, a little bit of oil and it was running as smoothly as ever. A visit to the fabric store, no pattern, I was determined to cut my own pattern. Not only had my enthusiasm returned but my confidence and appreciation of my abandoned skills felt empowering. Maybe I hadn’t given full credit to my original creative ventures, maybe I strived for what I thought at the time, were more valued pursuits.

How many of us leave behind interests, knowledge and creative pursuits and deem them as not important or irrelevant? The same could be said about knitting, painting, writing and even cooking. We don’t perhaps value these often female skills and we abandon them as if they mean nothing. And yet the joy of knowing how to a knit a jumper, sketch an outline for a new painting or cutting out a set of pyjamas in a fine jersey fabric is an appreciation of self and the skills that we never forget.