Everybody needs a healthy hobby in their lives. It can be any activity that creates a positive effect on a person’s mental and physical health.
Sewing and quilting are two great examples. These hobbies are a great choice for people of all ages because they are very enjoyable. They produce unique and useful end results in the form of clothing or accessories. More importantly, they can help improve the quality of your life by boosting your health.
How exactly do they do that?
Well, I’ll do my best to explain to you the health benefits of sewing.
How sewing benefits your mind
Whenever I get a bit too nervous or angry, I tend to become pretty useless. I become unable to properly complete even the simplest tasks.
In these situations, pretty much the only thing I can do is sew. It puts my head back in its place quickly and I go back to my old self in about fifteen minutes or so. This isn’t just the case for me, though.
Sewing can do wonders for the mental health of anyone who is practicing it. Below are some of its mental health benefits:
- It relieves stress. As you sew, you start focusing entirely on the task in front of you. It allows you to slowly isolate yourself from the things that stress you out. This doesn’t mean that sewing doesn’t cause any stress at all. It actually can and it will frustrate you. It will give you a very small dose of irritation. However, this will help you to slowly get accustomed to such sensations and teach you how to deal with unexpected and stressful situations more easily. It’s like a flu immunization.
- It boosts your focus. Since you only think about the task in front of you during sewing, your focus will improve. From planning and designing your project to threading the needle or a sewing machine and actually sewing, each part of this hobby will make your brain work up a bit of sweat.
- It prevents dementia. Before you can even begin sewing your project, you must first decide your course of action. You must decide what you will be making. After that, you need to calculate how much materials you will need. Write a plan so that you can keep track of your progress and know which task comes next. Since this keeps your brain occupied and you also have written records of your work, dementia won’t be able to creep into your life that easily.
See Also: About Dementia: The Silent Epidemic
- It improves your self-confidence. To me, there’s no better feeling than the one I get when I’m looking at something I made from scratch. Knowing that a piece of clothing didn’t exist before I decided to make it and seeing how great it turned out makes my self-confidence levels bust through the ceiling. If you’re having a hard time believing in your capabilities, try sewing a simple beginner’s project like a pillowcase or a scrappy denim bookmark. You will find out that you don’t lack anything and that will improve your self-confidence considerably.
How sewing benefits your body
Some people act surprised when they hear that sewing and quilting can improve one’s physique and overall health. That shouldn’t be surprising, though.
When you think about it for a moment, you’ll realize that it’s actually pretty obvious. Here are some examples:
- It improves your posture. Sewing is probably the best posture-correction hobby there is. When you’re sitting behind a sewing machine at a table, you need to have the best possible overview of your work. You can’t see the needle and the fabric well if you’re hunching over. Also, if you try sewing while your posture is bad, your back will punish you with pain in no time. You’ve got no choice but to have a good posture if you want to sew.
- It improves your eye-hand coordination. Threading the needle, precisely cutting the fabric, properly moving the fabric under the sewing machine, all these tasks require great eye-hand coordination if you wish to complete them successfully.
- It improves your fine motor skills. Since we’re talking about old ladies who’ve been sewing all their lives, have you ever noticed how their hands never shake while they sew? And how the stitches they make by hand have machine-like precision? Or how they grab a needle off the table in one go? That’s because their fine motor skills have been improved day in and day out, thanks to sewing. This also makes sewing a great hobby for small children who need to develop their fine motor skills properly.
Did you enjoy reading this article? I hope you did and that it has helped you appreciate sewing and quilting even more than before.
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Author: HelloSewing
Helen is a crafter/DIYer, a seamstress and the editor of HelloSewing - a website that provides resources —from sewing machine recommendations to beginner tips — to people looking to take up sewing. It is a great resource for sewists offering extensive selection of tutorials for sewing projects, smart sewing tips and helpful tutorials on sewing machines and essentials. She is always looking for more time to sew and make beautiful things out of scratch. She l
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