I used to say that some things just feel natural. You pick up an object and your hands already know how to hold it, as if you’ve been living with it your whole life. It’s rare—most things are foreign to us. Horses, for example, sit firmly on the other end of the spectrum for me. But a needle and thread? That I understood from the start. As early as I can remember.

I don’t mean I was a prodigy, just that I felt some kind of hidden comfort. And if you understand needle and thread, you eventually end up making things. Which means you face the oldest question in sewing:

Do you hold the needle still and move the thread, or hold the thread still and move the needle?

Before I’m done here, I’ll try to answer that.

I don’t have hundreds of thousands of examples of my sewing craft. Not hundreds. Barely dozens. A natural affinity doesn’t guarantee quantity—or quality—just a feeling. A confidence. The sense of I can do this while other people shake their heads.

“Replace a broken crankshaft? Yelp it.”

“New idea for hiking clothes? Let’s go to Joann’s Fabrics.”

One of my early experiments came from backpacking. Why carry shorts for hot days and long pants for cold nights? Why not sew shorts with attachable pant legs?

I explored my options:

• grommets and lacing — too slow, too fiddly, and nowhere to hide the laces

• Velcro — worked until the fabric stretched and it exploded open with a terrible rip

• zippers — specifically the large YKK kind used in sleeping bags and tents

Zippers won.

Material was the next problem. I wasn’t above using a pattern, but I ended up modifying my favorite long pants: soft, slightly worn Levi’s 501s. Not ideal when wet, but rugged, comfortable, and unremarkable—unless someone noticed the zippers.

Later I switched to a light poly/cotton blend that dried quickly and weighed almost nothing. A full decade later I finally saw a commercial version of what I’d sewn. I doubt I had anything to do with that.

I wore the zip-off pants everywhere, even to work. The only embarrassing moment came when a female faculty member painting her office yelled across the quad:

“John! I’m painting. Zip off your pants and help!”

That one echoed for years.

Another sewing episode happened right after I left the military and returned to college. My focus was scattered, and I needed a project. Fall was coming; I wanted a warm shirt-jacket hybrid. I had four or five worn-out 501s that no longer fit. I seam-ripped them into parts.

The legs tapered nicely into sleeves. The back pockets became front pockets. I drafted a shoulder yoke and front/back panels. The collar took some trial and error. The closure took even more. A pullover was either too big once on, or impossible to get on if it fit. I settled on a YKK zipper to the collarbone and used the button fly for the last six inches.

I wore it for months before I overheard someone say:

“Here comes dickhead.”

Now, I’ve been called worse, but that one felt… pointed.

Later on, parenthood brought Halloween for the children. As parents we did not go big on home decor, but we paid attention to costumes. Most store-bought choices were easy—but bad. The better choice was a needle and thread.

The benefit was longevity. Costumes had a generational life: some passed from sister to sister, some made it from mother to daughter. The difference was technical. My early attempts were hand-sewn, with the fabric unraveling over time.

I reluctantly went to machine work on long straight runs, with hand stitching at the crucial corners. Eventually I worked out even the tight corners. I still prefer hand sewing long stitches, then securing everything with machine hems—far better than pins.

I’m not saying I mastered machine work. The extra tricks—buttonholes, decorative stitching—were not for me. I stayed in a narrow lane: stitch length and tension for different fabrics.

After buying two kits for parkas from Frostline, I made both entirely with machine work on an old Singer that worked, but pretty much only went straight. Both parkas were very successful. I left mine somewhere a few years ago, but Sherry had hers until a few weeks ago. Our grandson needed a rain-resistant coat for camping, so Sherry gave him hers.

My next big project was sleeping bags for the family. I had a great bag from Sierra Designs that I’d used for years. It was a modified mummy design that could be opened flat like a quilt. I decided to use that as a model for two bags that could be zipped together.

The pre-planning forced me to gather supplies from several sources. In pre-Amazon days this meant driving some distance and waiting several weeks for UPS deliveries. Finally I had everything.

I didn’t know how long the project would take, so scattering fabric around the house seemed ill-advised. I retreated to the garage, where the pool table was better than the dining room table. I set up the machine on the pool table, fed by a large thread spool on a nearby pole. I pre-wound half a dozen bobbins to speed up assembly.

I’d bought matching yards of ripstop nylon for the shell and the liner: a soft, silky blue for the interior and a tougher black for the exterior. Everything fit the bolt width. The only challenge was sewing the seven-inch-high baffles for the down tubes. I built one bag at a time, learning on the first.

The down came from a custom shop specializing in premium goose down—lightweight, excellent loft. When all was sewn, I stuffed the tubes, but even with careful control, down escaped everywhere. The garage turned into a snow globe. I tried, and failed, to suck it up with a shop vac. Eventually I opened the garage door for several days until the birds redistributed the fluff into their nests.

With the next bags, I set up a large enclosed yard tent, placed the sewing machine and down inside, zipped myself in, and worked inside the contained snow globe. Afterwards, I could vacuum up every feather.

The bags were so successful we still have them forty years later. One has been used every night as a bed comforter. Some tears have been stitched tight, but no seams have ever burst.

A few weeks ago I researched replacing Sherry’s parka. Frostline had been closed for almost twenty years, but complete Frostline kits have popped up on Etsy. For forty-five dollars I bought the exact kit I used for hers. It arrived within a week, and I modified it with an additional wool liner. We’re not backpacking anymore, so weight wasn’t a concern—warmth was. Yesterday I finished the kit with the last hem, using the last of the thread on the bobbin and the spool. It looks good.

Today I went back on Etsy and found my own 1980s parka kit — also for forty-five dollars.

I’m waiting with pins and needles.

Oh yeah- needle still, move the thread.