Identifying Your Sewing Style: Are You an Ambitious or Cautious Learner?

Podcast Transcript

Sarai
Welcome back to Seamwork Radio, everyone. So today we're talking about two types of learners and how to identify which you are. And we're going to cover what these two types are, how you can learn from the other type, and what pitfalls to look out for as you gain sewing skills. So we're going to start with our icebreaker today. Haley, has there ever been a time that your sewing stalled out?

Haley
Oh, yeah, definitely. I don't want to say all the time, but, like, you know, it's happened a fair amount of times now that I've been sewing for such a long time. Yeah, I feel like it happens kind of for two reasons. There's, like, these kind of external circumstances, like, you know, moving or having a kid or just, like, big life events that kind of, like, keep me from sewing because I'm kind of embracing whatever that is and not worrying too much with sewing. But other times, I feel like my sewing can also stall out if I'm sewing, but not really, like, challenging myself. I'm sewing to, like, get the finished product, not to, like, enjoy the practice itself. And I think that really happens when I'm not pushing myself to try new things or do things that are challenging and engaging enough. I'm just kind of like, yeah, like, going through the motions. It's a different kind of stall.

Sarai
Yeah. That's interesting, because I was. I was talking to some friends about something similar the other day, about the relationship between boredom and burnout and how a lot of times boredom and burnout feel kind of similar, and that boredom is often a sign that you need to do something more challenging and push yourself a little bit more so you stay engaged with whatever. Whatever it is. We weren't talking about sewing or craft or anything like that, but I think that's true in work, and I think that's true in other pursuits that we have outside of work, too. So I think that's really interesting. I think for me, my sewing has stalled out, you know, from time to time over the years, and often it is because of some sort of external circumstance, like you were saying. It's often because I'm, you know, like, right now I haven't. I haven't been sewing very much, and it's just because I've moved, and I had to reset up my whole sewing room and get some new equipment and get everything kind of in place. And then there's kind of this hurdle to starting up again because I put all my Projects away.

Sarai
Now I have to take everything out and organize my fabric and all that. So things like that can often cause me to stall. But it, it feels temporary. It just feels like there's some, you know, circumstance around it. But I feel other times it's also an external circumstance, but it's often stress will stop me from sewing. If I'm really feeling overwhelmed by all the things I have to do in my life, then that's a time when I might not sew. And it's interesting because I feel like that's the time when I really need creative practices as a form of, you know, a mental health break and self care. But when you're feeling overwhelmed and stressed out, often those things start to feel just like kind of another thing on your to do list instead of something that will help to restore you. So I think that's. I mean, I think we all experience this.

Haley
Yeah, well, there's like, lots of, I think things that we can do to like, fill our cups during those periods in our life. But sewing is definitely one of those things that's a bigger energy and time investment. So it can be. Even though you need it, it's a lot harder to invest yourself into that even when you know, like, logically you're going to feel so much better once you, like, sit down and take the afternoon to sew for yourself. Just a high, like a little bit, like higher energy practice. I don't, I don't know if that's quite the right, like, phrasing for it, but it does, like, require a lot of, like, mental and sometimes physical energy, depending on what you're doing.

Sarai
Yeah, I think that's true for a lot of hobbies and especially creative hobbies. They do have that mental overhead, but at the same time are very restorative because they use your brain in a different way from how you're using it in maybe your daily life. So I think that's a really important component of any creative hobby or skill or practice that you have. Yeah, I agree with you. And I think that's why having kind of rhythms around your sewing and getting kind of like this established pattern that makes it really, really easy to get back into it is really helpful, which is why things like moving are so, you know, they really interrupt that so they can kind of take you out of your rhythm and make it harder to get back into. So, yeah, I think it's really interesting.

Haley
Yeah, I mean, you have to kind of like find a whole new rhythm when you have those big life events, like when Charlie was born, like, my life will probably never be the same, and so it's still kind of like finding that new rhythm around hers.

Sarai
Yeah, yeah. It happens throughout your life, and I think it just helps to recognize that. Well, we could do a whole separate episode about this.

Haley
We could. We totally could.

Sarai
I think we just came up with ideas for about five different episodes in that conversation. But today, what we're talking about is learning styles and figuring out which one you have and how you can use that to really drive your own motivation and also kind of learn from people who have a different learning style from you. So you want to tell us about these learning styles?

Haley
Yeah. So we at seamwork and our team and Sari and I both have done, like, a lot of research around people who are learning how to sew and kind of the journey that we all go through. And something that we've noticed and something that I also noticed when I was teaching in person classes is that there's kind of this spectrum of learners. And on one end of that spectrum, there's very cautious learners, very intentional, take things very, like, one step at a time, love repetition. And then on the other end, we have the ambitious learners, and these are people who love to jump in just, like, feet first into the deep end. And I do think that this is a spectrum, but I have noticed that most people kind of lean more heavily towards one than the other. And in our observations, we've noticed that both have really awesome benefits and both have drawbacks, and each one can kind of, like, take a lesson out of the other one's book and that by recognizing your style, you can learn a lot about yourself and temper some of those tendencies to really make your learning style work for you.

Sarai
Yeah. So in thinking about whether you're ambitious or more of a cautious learner, which end of the spectrum do you gravitate more towards? Haley?

Haley
I think I definitely gravitate towards ambitious, but I'm also just, like, such an avid learner and hobby collector that I've learned over the years to have a little bit of, like, more of, like, a methodology to my ambition, and that's really helped me. But I. I just, like. I love learning things and kind of, like jumping right in and setting, like, big, exciting goals.

Sarai
Yeah, I'm the same way. I would definitely put myself on the ambitious side of that spectrum, but, you know, it's interesting.

Haley
Oh, yeah. More so than.

Sarai
Yeah. I just love learning new things and I love trying things. And I'm pretty. I'd say generally I'm pretty fearless about that kind of thing. And I'm definitely a risk taker when it comes to learning new stuff and trying out new stuff in the creative realm, especially in the work realm. Other things I'm not so risk taking about. When it comes to my physical safety, I'm not a risk taker at all. Very much not. I'm a scaredy cat. But I think it does depend on what I'm learning also because we were talking about this before and when it comes to certain things, for example, I've tried to learn different languages. And right now I'm trying to. I'm trying to learn French. And that's something where I feel a lot of hesitation. Not in, in terms of like diving in and trying to learn, but I'm just kind of. I'm afraid to look stupid. I'm afraid to, you know, talk to a native French speaker and just sound like an idiot. And so that's the kind of thing, I think anything where there's a performance aspect to it, I'm a little bit more hesitant. I mean, I guess with sewing there is a little bit in terms of like you're making clothes that you're going to wear out in public, but that doesn't do it for me.

Sarai
I just kind of feel like certain things will trigger a neurosis, you know, And I think that's. I think probably a lot of people have this experience. Like if you have some kind of hang up about something, then sometimes that can get triggered and it will inhibit your learning. So I think that's, that's maybe something just to keep in mind because maybe you do gravitate towards one of these styles, but you have a particular thing that really like gets you a little bit more fearful. And if you can see what that is, then maybe you can work around it.

Haley
Yeah, I think with sewing it's like to me a little bit easier to be fearless because if it doesn't like turn out, then I don't. It's not like I have to wear it. No one's forcing me to wear one of my flops. It's just, you know, no one even needs to know about me. Like, it's my own private little disaster.

Sarai
Yeah, yeah, it's. It's a, it's a private activity, which is, which is one of the, I think, things that makes it a little bit easier to learn for a lot of people.

Haley
Yeah, for sure. Well, I think that most people probably have a good idea of which type of learner that they are, which side of the spectrum they gravitate towards. But if you're kind of having trouble placing yourself, I would say to like, think about how you've approached different skills in the past. Even if it's not sewing, maybe some more sewing adjacent things. Any kind of like creative practices or fiber arts or anything like that. Think about your first project. Did you go on the Internet and look up like all the beginner projects and gather your toolkit intentionally and read, read, read, read before you jumped in? Or did you just go to the like the fabric store and like pick a pattern and some fabric and do it? I think that by answering that question, you can have a pretty good idea of what kind of learner you are and think about where this has kind of held you back in your sewing journey and where it's really benefited you. I'm going to share some observations that Sari and I have made about like some of the good things about these two different kinds of styles, some of their pitfalls, and then some of the tips.

Haley
And these might be, you know, something you identify with, maybe they aren't. But hopefully you'll take away an idea or two on how to enhance your learning practice and how you acquire new skills. So let's kick it off with the ambitious learner. Since Sari and I identify with this, I think that we can speak pretty well, pretty well to it.

Sarai
I definitely know the pitfalls.

Haley
Uh huh. Yeah, me too. If you're an ambitious learner, you most likely are going to like pick a project or pick things that have a lot of challenges for you. They have a lot of component skills that maybe you're not familiar with, whether that's like a fabric you've never worked with or a bunch of finishes you're unfamiliar with. The good thing about this is that if you have success in those ambitious projects and kind of undertakings, you are going to get hooked to sewing or whatever. Your new thing you're learning is so much faster because it's just, I mean, I don't think that many people would argue that like finishing a line jacket is like such a more higher high.

Sarai
Oh gosh.

Haley
Grammar. Such a higher high than maybe like a tote bag or a tea towel or something like that. It's like, you know, the higher the risk, the higher the reward kind of a situation. But there's also kind of the flip side to that, the pitfall, which is that if you experience like especially right out the gate, if because of these ambitious projects, you encounter a lot of failure, you might never get to that kind of momentum stage in your Sewing?

Sarai
Yeah. I think if you don't finish these highly ambitious projects that you set out to do, if you never finish one of them, then that's really discouraging. I think another pitfall I want to throw in there is that as an ambitious learner, I've encountered this in the past, which is that you don't know what you don't know. So if you're not going through a more structured process and not relying on other people, but just trying to grab a pattern and teach yourself and learn it on the fly, you might miss things that you didn't know about, that you didn't even know were might be an issue or might be a skill you need or something that would help you or a tool. So you're kind of gathering things on the fly, whereas with a more structured process, you might have somebody to guide you through it a little bit more. So I think that's another thing that an ambitious learner can learn from a cautious learner is to embrace a more structured process and to learn from other people as well.

Haley
I think this has been. That's been my biggest lesson as an ambitious learner, is it's okay to have these, like, kind of, like, big, lofty goals. It's great, actually. But slowing down and thinking about the pieces of the puzzle and how I'm going to, like, get there in a way that's going to be practical and also, you know, keep me on track for that, like, you know, ambition. So we have our, like, top three tips for you ambitious learners. If you are ambitious. I think this is kind of true for everyone, but learn to embrace failure and kind of. And try to recognize whether the failure was maybe it was a mistake on your part or maybe it was just, you know, reaching a little bit too high for the first try and kind of break down where your missteps were and try to troubleshoot from there. Kind of reframe that failure as an opportunity to learn and then try again. And that kind of leads into. Our next tip is, like, really identifying component skills and like, slowing down, Take a deep breath, look at the thing you want to make, and write a list of the component skills.

Haley
Maybe you want to learn how to make jeans. What are the components that go into jeans? It's sewing heavyweight fabrics like denim. It's learning how to do a zipper fly. It's learning how to do a waistband with belt loops. Think about those component skills and maybe give yourself a couple primer projects to kind of work up to those. Make a bag with really heavy weight Denim or make a pair of simpler pants that have a zipper fly. Just kind of, like, work on those component skills, and you'll probably find that just practicing and getting closer to that goal is also just as satisfying as reaching it. And then that also leads perfectly into our third is learn to love those small wins. Not the big ones, not only the big ones. Even if you just slow down for an afternoon to mock up a zipper fly on some muslin, that's a big win. That's a huge skill that a lot of people struggle with. And learn to embrace that just as much as you would embrace your big wins. It's all, like, pieces of the puzzle and steps to becoming the sewer that you want to be.

Sarai
Yeah, I like that one. One of the things that I've been trying to implement in our company is the idea of having not just, like, achievement goals, but learning goals. So when we set out goals for the year, for the quarter, we don't just think about, well, what do we need to get done this quarter? What do we need to release this quarter? But also we think about, what do we need to learn this quarter? What do we want to learn about so that we have that for the future? And I think you could do this with your sewing too. Not just set goals of things that you want to make, but also things that you want to learn. And that'll help you to embrace those small wins, too.

Haley
Yeah, totally. I think that I'm, like, a big list maker, and my notes, like, app on my phone is just totally filled up with all sorts of, like, I don't know, lists of things. And I find that to be kind of, like, a really helpful tool for me to. To think through. I have, like, a million ideas all the time, to a fault. I think that, like, my husband and, like, a lot of, like, probably people I work with, too, are always like, dude, chill, chill. But I find that just, like, writing things down and kind of breaking them into steps and, like, what pieces do I have? What pieces do I need? Really helped me to conceptualize. Okay, like, is this achievable? Do I have the resources I need to do this and kind of, like, take a bigger. Like, a look at the bigger picture, not just in my work, but in my sewing, too.

Sarai
I think this is one thing where the goals on the community, because on the. On the seamwork community, you can set goals for yourself, which you can break down into smaller steps, and it will send you a weekly reminder about your goals. I think that can be really, really helpful for this, because you can take those bigger projects and really break them down into the smaller steps that you want to accomplish or set learning goals for your. So I think that that can be really helpful.

Haley
Yeah. So great. Okay, let's talk about some cautious learners. I think you guys have lots to teach us ambitious folks. And I also like, as I'm saying this, I'm like, it's not that cautious learners aren't ambitious. It's that they approach their learning with a lot more caution. They might have big, exciting goals too. They probably do. Most people do. But they approach learning more cautiously. So if you are a cautious learner, you're probably a lot more excited about those small wins. And I think this is like a really awesome trait to have. You make a pair of pajama pants and it's like totally life changing and the most exciting thing in the world, as it should be because pajama pants are great. I am wearing some right now. But it also might take you because you get excited about these small ones. It might take you a little bit longer to get to that momentum phase. Maybe you're the type of person who makes the pajama pants and then wants to make like five more pairs. And if that like brings you joy, I'm not going to stop you from doing that. You do you.

Haley
But I think that sometimes this can kind of get you burned out on sewing unintentionally. If you kind of like we were talking about earlier, if you kind of stall out right there in the very beginning. And I think this is where a lot of more cautious sewers, they get a little bit more stuck and a little bit more scared before they get to that, like momentum phase. And when we talk about the momentum phase, this is in our observations and research, is that the momentum phase of sewing is where your sewing really sticks. It's where it becomes like a part of your life and you, you can't get enough. You're sewing all the time. And if you get stuck at pajama pants, you're not. And you might have, you know, may not ever get to that momentum phase. And that's a definite pitfall of this learning style. But we got tips.

Sarai
Always with the tip.

Haley
We always got the tips. Expect failure early on. You have to embrace failure just like our ambitious pals. But it's like a different kind of failure. It's more. Don't let the fear of failure stop you from trying something new. Remember to challenge yourself sometimes and find those bigger goals that excite you. I think this is another place where the Goals feature on the community can be really helpful for you. Is that think of something that's a big, exciting goal, even if it seems really far off, and something that might take you a while to achieve. Break it down and think of those component skills that you need to get there and start working towards it. And then lastly, finding that support system. I think this is really important for probably the biggest key to our cautious learners is find a fabric store in your community that offers classes. An online sewing teacher. There's so many zoom classes and things like that. Now find a friend or family member that sews and really lean into that support system because I think that camaraderie around sewing and learning can really benefit. And just like that kind of expert to guide you.

Sarai
I think it's really motivating too. And it's. It's nice to have a place where if you get stuck, you have a. You have somewhere to turn if you're starting to feel stuck and. Or even a little bit scared. I see this on our. On the seamwork community all the time, where people feel intimidated or they don't know what decision to make, or they get stuck on a particular skill and they turn there and ask a question and get lots of encouragement. And I think that is so vital. I think that's vital for everybody when you're pursuing something like this. But I definitely see how it would benefit somebody who's a little bit more cautious and might get a little bit more intimidated about taking the next step.

Haley
Totally.

Sarai
I also wonder if this is just kind of amusing, but I wonder if, you know, perfectionism kind of plays a role for both of these types of learners. I think a lot of people struggle with perfectionism, and for the cautious learner, you could definitely see why that would be. Maybe part of it is, you know, you really want to be perfect at something before you move on to the next step. For example, for some people. And then for the ambitious learner, you know, I definitely can struggle with perfectionism sometimes. Not in terms of, you know, wanting to get everything perfect, but just wanting to be able to do everything like I want to. I just want to be able to do it all and do it all really well. And so I think it could factor into both of these learning styles. And that's a. That's a really good thing to notice in yourself because it can inhibit you in a variety of ways, I think. I think perfectionism is one of the hidden things that kind of can hurt you and hurt your learning without you really even noticing it.

Haley
Yeah, totally. I relate to that.

Sarai
Yeah. Well, I'm gonna just recap some of our tips for you today. So we talked about two types of learners. We talked about the ambitious learner, which Haley and I identify with, and we talked about the cautious learner, who, I don't know, I might want to call them, like a strategic learner in some cases, because I do envy their planning and thoughtfulness around learning new skills. So those are the two types of learners. And if you are a more ambitious learner, some of our tips for you are to embrace failure. First of all, that's true for anyone, no matter what type of learner you are, to identify the component skills that might go into some of the larger, more ambitious goals that you have and kind of start to break those down and to learn to love some of the smaller wins and not just the big wins, and maybe even, you know, set some learning goals for yourself and not just achievement goals for yourself. And if you're a cautious learner, our tips are also to expect some failures early on, but don't let those derail you. I think that's the key for if you're a more cautious learner, to challenge yourself sometimes in order to keep yourself motivated.

Sarai
So kind of what we were talking about earlier, about boredom and burnout and how those can kind of feel the same. I think if you're starting to feel that way, it might be time for a bigger challenge and then find a bigger goal that just really gets you excited, and that can help to keep you motivated and pushing forward. And last, find a support system. So that could be the seamwork community. That could be a teacher online or in person. It could be a friend or a group of friends. It could be something at your local fabric store. But find somewhere that you can turn and get support when you need it. So those are our top tips for the two different types of learners. And if you want to learn more about this, you might want to listen to our previous episode, which is about building your sewing skills intentionally. That can also help. And I think that really ties into what we're talking about today. And we also have an episode on finding your sewing why? Which I think could also really be helpful for you if you're struggling with motivation at all.