Peggy Sagers: Sewing lets you express yourself through your creations.

From selecting the pattern and fabric to putting on the finishing touches, every aspect allows you to be imaginative.

What are the benefits of sewing?

To find out, I decided to phone a friend.

My friend, Dr. Paul Hamilton, is here today to help us understand the benefits of sewing for our mental health.

Dr. Hamilton is a psychiatrist specializing in neurology and child and adolescent psychiatry, today on "Fit-2-Stitch."

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Peggy: Sewing is a great part of my life.

This belief puts me in the same world as Betsy Ross, Edith Head, and Liz Claiborne.

Sewing is all mine.

That space and time I put aside for sewing is so important to me.

It allows me to detach and divert my attention from anything hard going on in my life.

I once asked my brother, "Why do you think I sew?"

He said he thought it was because I wanted to be like my mom.

We sew for many reasons, but for all of us sewing teaches us patience, problem solving, time management, attention to detail, and much more, and it teaches us in such a gentle manner.

We just keep getting better and better, and the more we sew, the better we get.

Today I want to talk about the mental health benefits of sewing.

Over the years, I've attended many parties with a gentleman I've called Paul, but I've never asked him this question about his work.

I'm so excited to hear his opinion about sewing and mental health, and I'm so excited that I finally get to talk shop with him.

Dr. Paul Hamilton has over 30-plus years in psychiatry.

He deals with children, adolescents, adults, all types of psychiatry, and I'm so grateful that you've made this trek into us today to tell us about the links between sewing and mental health.

I think today what I notice is our children.

They've taken sewing out of the schools in many places, and they're really focused on computers and the technological part of it all, but what does that do to us?

Paul Hamilton: Well, Hippocrates the ancient Greek physician put it well.

He said that which is used develops, that which is not used wastes away.

And we're all familiar with that, you know, as far as working out physically, building muscle mass and this sort of thing, but this whole other area having to do with neuropsychology, that is equally as important because it's the same principles applied.

That which is used develops, that which is not used wastes away.

Peggy: So, even in the brain.

Tell me more about that.

Paul: Well, you know, I think back on this, and thanks for having me, because it helps me go back and look at some of the research that's actually been done in this area, and there's surprisingly a lot of it, but we used to think, I know when we started our high school biology, the brain was kind of a data repository of information.

Now we know that there's much more to it.

It's a much more dynamic, interactive organism, and it's a neural network.

Parts of the brain talk to other parts of the brain.

Parts of the brain respond to what seems to be needed, and it's called neuroplasticity, it's a new term.

This is a neural net, nerves talk to each other, the brain talks to the environment, and it is influenced by what's out there as to how it develops as well as the other way around.

Peggy: That's fascinating, so we are learning more and more about the brain all the time.

Paul: Oh, absolutely, and this is all done neurochemically in nanoseconds.

It's just an amazing, miraculous system the way it works.

Peggy: What does it say about sewing?

Paul: Well, I thought about that, and if you look at being able to divert, you know, there's been studies and there's long-term follow-up studies that looked at what contributed to psychological wellbeing and psychological health, and guess what?

The number one correlate to that is the ability to recreate and to divert, to shift focus and then to truly do it, not just to kind of have your attention distracted for a bit, but to really get immersed in something else that provides some kind of recreation.

Not just play, but it's recreation, just like the word implies.

Peggy: So, that's so interesting, so when I really do leave my world and go into my sewing world, that's exactly what I'm doing.

I'm leaving one world behind and changing, diverting, to something else.

Paul: Yeah, and that helps with, you know, people have, you know, there's sports and things like that, computers, which certainly has its place in today's world, but think about it, a lot's been lost.

Just to do a simple act, the complexity of it is immense.

So, you have to have a perception, a thought, there has to be meaning to that thought, there has to be some kind of reasoning or decision making about whether that thought is gonna produce any kind of action or not.

Producing an action, starting an action, stopping an action, coordinating an action, how you feel about the action, those are all neurochemical processes that happen just like that.

And with hobbies of all sorts, but particularly with this, fine motor skills, easily trained, patience, you have to have a plan.

You have to be able to know patterns, pattern recognition.

I can see all that coming into play here.

And then when you get through, you have the emotional response to your work, which is a whole other thing.

You're able to see a completed task, and task completion these days, you hear about ADHD, for example.

One of the problems with ADHD is task completion.

You start a bunch of things but you never finish any of them.

This gives you a model to where you know where the start is and you know when you're finished, and you can also kind of gauge your progress all along the way and look forward to it.

Peggy: Oh, interesting, so do you think there's a time and a place where it starts sewing?

Is there a time when sewing would be too young for the brain developing, or is there--?

Paul: Well, I don't know if that particular thing's been studied, but I would think the younger you start, the better.

It's with so many things.

If you start piano lessons with a child very early, they're better at math, they're able to think better, they're able to cogitate better, reason better, because it brings into play all the kind of things that have to do with playing that piano, and movement and the hands and hand-eye coordination is all employed with this kind of activity.

Peggy: So, it's just the-- literally, connection between our physical movement and our mental brain and what's going on between the two things.

I've heard it said just a little while ago that everyone gets Alzheimer's and everyone-- that's not true, is it?

Paul: No, it isn't true.

Everybody doesn't, and there's some really fascinating work with that.

There's actually a study, and it's almost 40 years now in the making.

It was 1986 and it started at the University of Minnesota, and what they looked at, it's called the nun study.

Peggy: Okay, that's interesting.

Paul: It is, and it's called that because the people that are participants in the study were all nuns.

Why did they pick nuns?

Well, one thing that I learned is when people enter a convent, they write an autobiography of themselves, and the study started out reading the autobiography that the nuns wrote when they were beginning the process of entering the convent, and there were a couple things that kind of floated to the surface that were important.

One was that the complexity of their communication, the ideas that they were able to impart, the language that they used, the grammar they used, the syntax, all that, and secondly, that it was presented in an overall sense that this person is a positively-thinking person.

That all correlated with a lower incidence of dementia, Alzheimer's disease, things you wouldn't think about.

Now, here's another part of that.

Those nuns agreed to have neuropsychological testing done at intervals, you know, throughout their participation in the study.

They also donated their brains for research.

And so, after these nuns passed on, they were able to actually look at the brain tissue, and microscopically we know that there are certain things that you see in a brain that's infected with Alzheimer's disease.

Those brains, so even though they might have those anatomical features, did not exhibit the signs of dementia, which implies that neuroplasticity.

There's compensatory mechanisms that the brain has found to accomplish certain tasks and to maintain their cognitive and mental acuity.

Peggy: I love all this.

I love all this, because for those times that I feel guilty when I go up and isolate myself and just want to hole out.

Paul: When I read that study I was telling you about, I thought, oh, boy, playing is good.

It's not goofing off.

Peggy: And it is, and It isn't just sewing, like you say, it's just the time, it's the diversion from task to task and putting it aside.

The nimbleness of our fingers and moving those things, the optimism that I can do something and I'm going to do something, the making of a plan.

I just love this.

Paul: And you probably look forward to it if you're doing something else.

In your mind, you kind of wait.

I used to build model airplanes when I was younger, still do occasionally.

Don't have the time I used to, but I always like to get off work and go home and kind of see where the project was and plan what I'm going to do next and see it progress and all that, and it's a similar type of mechanism, I imagine, to this.

It also involves, you know, fine motor movements to your hands and fingers.

Peggy: It is, but what's interesting is I think as I listen to you how happy I am that all of this has been a good thing and it hasn't been as selfish as I thought it was along the way.

But I think for a lot of people listening as well, it reinforces that it's good.

It's good in our lives and it's a positive.

Paul: Yep, very important, more than we ever realized.

Peggy: Yeah, I just can't say thank you enough, and if we're optimistic about what we're doing, we'll be in that nun study and we won't be as likely to-- Paul: Well, you know that study moved from several universities, from Minnesota to different places.

It's now centered in San Antonio, Texas.

Peggy: Oh, that is interesting.

Paul: And I don't know how long it's planned on going on, but it's almost 40 years now.

Peggy: And they continue to study the brain and do all of that so that we can benefit from it.

Tell me your best childhood fabric story, because I know everyone's got to have one.

Paul: Oh, yeah, and these are memories.

My mom used to make her own clothes a lot.

I remember her sitting at the sewing machine.

My grandmother had the old sewing machine with the foot pedals, I remember that, that's right.

But I remember spending many, many hours in the Simplicity pattern store as mom goes through looking for the right pattern for the dress that she's going to make.

Peggy: We've all been there with our little kids.

Paul: We have, for a little kid it'd be great if they had magazines, comic books, or some toys to play with, but I remember that to this day.

That's a long time ago.

Peggy: That's great, thank you so much for being here.

Paul: It's my pleasure.

Peggy: It was just wonderful to get out all those years of experience.

Paul: Thank you, I enjoyed being here.

Peggy: So, when we start into this world of sewing, we know it's good for us.

We don't need any excuses anymore.

Boy, we need our time away, we need those diversions, and it's a good thing.

I want you to think about what we're gonna start doing.

We're gonna start mixing fabric and pattern into project, and when we do that, I'm gonna give you some guidelines to go by.

We could call them rules, but rules feel a little bit too stiff, so I'm gonna call them guidelines.

And we're gonna remember B-C-D-F-Y, B-C-D-F-Y.

I tried to make a word out of that and couldn't come up with it, but you're gonna make your own word, B-C-D-F-Y.

And again, this will apply to home decor, it'll-- for example, if I took a fabric that was striped and tried to make a pillow that was round, some of us would say, well, it looks good to me, others would say, no, that just is not gonna work.

I want to give you some guidelines so that you'll know whether it will work or whether you'll know it's not going to work.

So, we're gonna start, B-C-D-F-Y.

We're gonna start with B, and that is a bottom weight versus a top weight.

And when you have this choice of a fabric, you're really gonna go by your pattern.

Your pattern will tell you, you know, get 4-ounce fabric, get 6-ounce fabric, which is considered a bottom weight.

This is a bottom weight fabric.

It's a little bit heavier, it's a little bit thicker, and we're not usually put that on the top part of us, except the only part that's confusing is when I'm doing jackets and pants, because jackets and pants, as we often know, are the exact same fabric.

So, if it's feeling a little heavier, a little stiffer, we know we're going to put it on the bottom or we could do a jacket.

So, bottom weight fabric, and you're going to follow the pattern when you do that.

The next is complex.

When I come to a complex fabric, and I'm gonna say that this is complex, this is complex, I'm gonna even say that this little sparkle here is complex.

There's just a lot going on.

I wanna keep my pattern simple.

So, a complex fabric is going to want a simple pattern, and the reason being is if there's no reason, it's complex enough, there's no reason to cut this all up and try to make it out of something it's not.

If it's complex, and I started this blouse with this beautiful silk, I love it just for it.

I don't need to really do anything with it to make it any better, I simply need to take it and elevate it to the place it already is, which is why we often say the fabric always comes first.

I can look, for instance, at this fabric.

I don't wanna put a lot of seams in it.

I don't wanna cut it apart.

So, what I did here is I just created a simple little jacket.

I brought the color out that I wanted to bring out out of the pattern, but you can see.

So, when I have a complex fabric, I want a very simple pattern.

So, that's opposite as to what the fabric is.

The fabric is complex, the pattern would be opposite and would be very simple to do.

When I look at something like this, I see a very simple pattern.

It has color in there, it has several colors in it, but the fact of the matter is, is it's fairly simple.

So, I went ahead in this particular case and I made the blouse a little more complex, and I did that by combining a solid with it so that I just got a little bit more complexity than the simpleness of the fabric itself.

So, I think you can get that and we'll go through after we go through all the rules and we'll give you a little chance to guess and figure out what it is.

The third one I wanna talk about is drape, and drape is a really important part of fabric.

Drape is the twist of the fibers and the density of the weaves.

And what we get out of drape is we get how well the fabric actually hangs on us.

And the simplest way to do that is if I take a fabric like this and I hold it up, and just hold it any which way you want, and then I take a fabric like this, you can see that this one just falls closer together than what this one does.

So, the draped part of the fabric, we wanna think about because are we trying to look thinner or do we wanna look heavier?

I know nobody wants to look heavier, but we wanna think about that drape as we're thinking about what do we wanna make with it and how much direction the pattern needs.

If a pattern has-- if a fabric has a lot of drape, then the pattern itself doesn't need a lot of direction.

So, I'm gonna use this as an example and show you that this fabric doesn't have a lot of drape.

It's a little stiffer, it's a little heavier, it's what we might call a bottom weight, but I wanted to make a jacket out of it.

But what I also decided, because it needed some more direction, I went ahead and used a pattern that had darts so that the stitching and construction of the garment itself gave the fabric direction, because it wouldn't drape that way simply on its own.

So, we're gonna review this again a little bit more, because I really wanna go over that and make sure you understand that.

This again is an example of a fabric that just doesn't have a lot of drape.

You can see if I just kind of stand the fabric up, it stands up pretty much by itself.

And so, what I did with this is I gave it princess seams.

Again, darts, direction, so the fabric wouldn't have to decide on its own what to do, how to think, or where to go.

My fabric told it what to do.

So, when we talk about drape, we say, and we look for the pattern to give the direction.

So, we said the bottom we match to the pattern, the complex we go opposite of the pattern.

Complex fabric, we do opposite and do a simple pattern.

With the drape, whenever we're trying to decide drape and how much drape a fabric has, we want to match the pattern.

And so, some cases we go opposite and some cases we match.

The next one, B-C-D-F is feminine or masculine, and fabrics are feminine and masculine.

We look here and we see a stripe, it has nothing to do with the color, it's simply the curves of the fabric or the linear straightness of the fabric.

And that is a straight linear fabric, and so I wouldn't want to come in-- I mentioned earlier we wouldn't want to do a pillow out of that, but we also wouldn't want to do a shawl collar, because a shawl collar has curves.

So, if we did a shawl collar, our lines would be going all zigzaggy and it would be like-- it would almost be hard to look at.

But many a times I've seen women who just aren't aware and men who aren't aware of the basics, that you just generally take a feminine fabric and make a feminine garment.

A feminine fabric, this is a perfect example of it.

And so, I left it go soft and flowy.

I matched a black to it to just break up the print, and that has more to do with really our last category, which is you, and you're gonna really put you into this, and this is your time to really make it about you.

So, we're gonna have a little bit of a test.

In this particular case, there's so many examples of what you would have done with a floral fabric like this.

Because I'm not such a big floral person, I decided it needed to go with a black, the black could tone it all down and it would be much more calming if it was with a black as opposed to just being this bright floral.

But I know many of you love florals, you'd put it in a T-shirt and you'd make it top to bottom and down the road you would go.

And that's where there are guidelines, but there's also a part of you that you can put with it and really make it wonderful.

All right, so we're gonna have a little bit of a test here and we're gonna see how you do.

So, we're gonna start off with a fabric that is a solid, and we're gonna go through the principles and kind of see what the best pattern to pick would be.

So, we start off and we say the first thing is, is it a bottom weight or a top weight?

And I know you can't feel it, so I'm gonna do the-- I'm gonna do the feeling for you and describe it to you.

This is very lightweight, it's very thin.

If we go like that, we see it has a lot of drape to it.

So, if you're okay with it being as thin as it is, and I'm gonna hold it up so you can see light through it, you could do a bottom.

Most of us probably wouldn't.

We'd probably say it's a top fabric.

If we go to the complexity of it, it's actually not a solid.

And I know it may look that way on camera, but it's actually linear.

There's lines all the way through it, but it's a pretty simple fabric.

It's got great drape.

It's a masculine fabric.

And we decided, obviously, if you bought it, you liked the color, so now I decide I want something to go on the top, I want probably a simple pattern not to disrupt the lines, and I want something that will be a masculine pattern.

So, I don't wanna do a shawl collar, I wouldn't want to do a lot of twists and turns with it, I would want something that would represent a masculine pattern, a shirt, a top of a shirt, anything along those lines would be great.

When I'm dealing with solids, solids are simpler, and I think that's why you see a lot of solids in the store.

I think it's why you know, or maybe you don't know, that solids are the number one selling fabric.

As opposed to prints versus solids, designers, when they are nervous about their collection or what's gonna sell for fall, they will always go to a collection of solids, because we have a tendency to accept solids on a much higher percent than we do prints.

Prints, a lot of times we have to like them, and that's that last category again coming out, you.

It has to be about you, and for many of us, these prints, you know, they just hit and miss too often.

So, what we know about solids is solids are simpler.

So, we first start and we decide is it a bottom weight or is it a top weight?

And again, I'm gonna kinda help you on here because you can't feel it.

This is a bottom weight.

It's a really beautiful stretch woven.

It has stretch in both directions.

It's gonna be just a perfect bottom weight, and it's got great drape.

And I say that simply because it's a very densely woven fabric, and so that means that it's going to drape really beautifully all the way down the body.

So, that would be a bottom weight or a jacket, top weight.

It's not feminine or masculine, it's not complex or simple.

I could cut it all up and put it back together again in a million pieces, or I could simply leave it as one.

Either one of those is going to be okay.

So, we see that I'm gonna say and make a little rule that if we start sewing, and if we start sewing with solids, most likely our success rate will be higher.

We'll like what we sew more, and we'll have a tendency to say, oh, that was exactly what I wanted.

And we recognize that when we start to get into prints, they just get to be a little more tricky.

We just have to put a little better plan, like Dr. Hamilton said, we need that plan, so we need a little better plan to make sure that we're going in the right direction.

This is a stripe, and so it becomes a masculine fabric.

Even though it's an abstract stripe, it still falls under the line of being masculine.

So, we wanna make sure and we wanna know what they are to begin with, because I know so many times in my own personal sewing over the years, I've loved the fabric, I've turned around and I've made something out of it, and then all of a sudden it was like, but I don't like it, but I don't know why.

And often we make something and we say, now, how come when I take a back step, I just don't like the way it is?

And so, for many of those, if you stop and go through those five suggestions that I mentioned, I think you'll really be able to figure out a reason why and then we start again.

That's the goal, never give up, just start again.

So, here's a little cheat sheet for you.

B, bottom or top weight.

What does the fabric call for?

We're matching the fabric to the pattern.

C, complex or simple.

Whatever the fabric is, we're going to do opposite in the pattern.

D is drape.

Great drape is always going to be a home run, so we want to watch for that drape and see how important it is.

Feminine or masculine?

We're gonna match the pattern also.

And lastly, you, let's make it all about you.

I think probably one of my favorite parts of sewing is finding a beautiful piece of fabric, looking at it, analyzing it, figuring out what would be the best thing to do with it, making the garment, and then loving it when it's done.

That is just the best feeling in the world.

The straight stitch on the sewing machine is the simplest stitch in sewing, but there are a few tips we can learn that will forever change how we stitch and how we hold our fabric.

Next time on "Fit-2-Stitch " we talk to a new sewer, Maria King, as she shows us what she has learned to do with a straight stitch.

You can do it, too.

Be sure to join us.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ announcer: "Fit-2-Stitch" is made possible by Kai Scissors.

♪♪♪ announcer: Reliable Corporation.

♪♪♪ announcer: Plano Sewing Center.

♪♪♪ announcer: Elliott Berman Textiles.

♪♪♪ announcer: Bennos Buttons.

♪♪♪ announcer: And Clutch Nails.

♪♪♪ announcer: To order a four-DVD set of "Fit-2-Stitch Series 13," please visit our website at fit2stitch.com.

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