Needlework

Unpicking the Myth of the Universal Seam

My earliest memory of threading a needle is when I was really young, probably before I turned ten. My friend’s mum had a hair salon, a humid, bustling place thick with the scent of ‘soul-mate’ and ‘pink oil’, and when we hung out there, we’d always volunteer to help with the small tasks like threading the needles. It was a serious, almost surgical task, eyes narrowed, tongue pressed between teeth, coaxing the limp, severed end of the cotton through the tiny, metallic eye.

Another core threading memory was in JSS3. Home Economics Junior WAEC practical. We had to showcase different stitching methods: tacking, hemming, and running stitch. I think I made a cushion cover, something lopsided but proudly executed. Since then, knowing how to thread and use a needle just became one of those quiet life skills you don’t think much about. Convenient when you need to adjust a uniform or repair a loose button.

Years later, after my first degree, I decided to learn how to sew properly.

Making a dress was a much more advanced task than hand-stitching a cushion cover. This time, I needed a machine; a formidable, heavy thing that clacked with an impatient authority. And this time, there was a lot more to learn: taking measurements, tracing and cutting fabrics, how to fold while sewing, the delicate dance of the foot pedal and the cloth.

My teacher, Uncle Kenny, taught me how to do all of these things, his hands quick and precise, his voice a low hum of very quick instructions.

But I don’t quite remember him teaching me to thread the machine’s needle. And the very first thing you’d do with a sewing machine, before the first seam is born, is to thread that needle.

Why didn’t he?

Surely, we didn’t all hang around salons growing up or have the same Home Economics practical.

Maybe because he assumed I already knew how. Perhaps because, to him, it was simply common knowledge, a skill as basic as holding a pencil or walking.

Or could it just be that when we consider something simple enough, when a thing has become viscerally obvious to us, we expect others to be familiar with it too? A hairstylist will probably not start by teaching a trainee how to hold a comb; a chef does not begin with the lesson of turning on a stove.

I made this mistake while working with someone last Tuesday. He is new to the role and doing really well, but he missed a tiny detail I thought was ‘simple’ because I assumed it was too obvious to mention.

What is simple isn’t always shared.

It is a subtle cruelty, I think, this expectation of generalised simplicity. We build our worlds on the foundations of our own small, seemingly universal truths.

Uncle Kenny, a master tailor whose entire life was a tapestry of thread and cloth, had forgotten or perhaps never even considered that the very act of coaxing a thread through a pinhole is an acquired skill. He assumed a shared starting line.

And this is the danger we carry into every conversation, every room, every country that is not our own. We forget that the simple things, the things so basic we no longer articulate them, are tethered to our background, our geography, our unique set of experiences.

When we stand before a person from a different background, we subconsciously expect them to accept our simplicity as their own. We assume the ease with which we understand social cues or expressions must be universal.

We forget that some people learned to thread needles in a salon, some in a classroom, and some—the ones Uncle Kenny might have missed—never learned it at all.