Alejandra Cerda Ojensa: Sewing is practicing patience

Three years ago I started sewing clothes. We were at the very start of the pandemic, and I thought to myself I need a Corona hobby, or I will go nuts. I had no previous experience and no pattern. I actually didn’t really know how to thread the machine properly, so I had to start by watching a tutorial.

The first piece I made was a dress. I didn’t have any sewing fabric, so I simply took an old sheet. I used an Instagram photo as a reference – a girl was wearing a long white dress with puffy short sleeves and a ruffle at the bottom that I found beautiful. Step by step, I started cutting out pieces from my sheet: a front part, a sleeve, a long piece for the bottom part, and I sewed them together, looking at the photo closely. It was a hands-on problem-solving project, and I was so proud when, after a while, I realized I had put all the pieces together and that they now were wearable.

Since, I’ve sewn plenty of dresses, pants, shirts, blouses – in fact, as I type, I’m wearing one of the first dresses I made. Last summer I gave it new hems, restitched some loose seams and realized that it was probably not the most admirable technique I used back then. However, sometimes the details aren’t as important as the feeling you get when you see that you can create something when you give yourself that time.

Alejandra Cerda Ojensa is a Swedish sustainability blogger based in Copenhagen. She loves sustainable fashion, plant-based food, natural wines and music, and writes a column for Scan Magazine about sustainable lifestyle.

Instagram: @alejandracerda.co