A Dying Art

I have discovered something about the world we live in today.  There are certain things that used to be common place for most people to know how to do in life that are becoming extinct in our fast paced modern world.  One of these things is making my life a little more difficult right now.  There are so very very few people left in the world that actually know how to sew!

Once upon a time, almost every woman had at least a little experience with sewing.  At the very least just about everyone could sew on a button or hem a pair of pants.  Now it's pretty rare to even find someone who knows how to thread a needle, let alone what to do with it.  The lack of seamstresses has made it difficult at work recently because our main seamstress has retired and one of the other seamstresses is only able to work a few days a week.  This has made it so I have had to step and and start doing pin fittings and sewing (often after hours) on top of my other Management/Head of Alterations duties.  The major problem is it is much harder to alter something than it is to sew something from scratch so it's difficult to find qualified people.  We have so many dresses that need altering this year and I can't seem to find anyone who is able to help us out.  We used to have a solid pool of people to draw from at the local College because they had a Fashion Design program there but the have recently re-vamped their program so it mainly focuses on Fashion Merchandising and less on the sewing end of things.  So right now all I can do is try to get through the season (come on September!) and hope I don't have a major heart attack in the mean time.

On the up side, my co-workers have really stepped up and are all trying to learn whatever they can so they can help out.  I can see a light at the end of the tunnel...it's faint, but it's there so I'll hold on to it and plow ahead.