I had something of any epiphany the other day, brought on by my recently-finished Lace Skirt. Since I currently don't have pictures of the finished garment, I will substitute it with my favorite place in my house:







And my favorite dog doing something that makes him happy:







But I digress.






It occurred to me, as I was flouncing around in my new skirt on the 4th of July, that I could finally put into words the feeling I've always felt when I put on a garment I made myself.

It is this perfect marriage of three things-- the perceived luxury and decadence of owning and wearing custom-made clothing, the self-satisfaction that comes from being able to make something with little more than sticks and string, and the singular feeling of uniqueness in a mass-marketed world. Yes, alteast a few hundred other people have made the same skirt I did, but once you factor in yarn, color, size, and all those tiny modifications that we do to garments, my little faded pink skirt with it's white ribbon trim is like none other.

When we live in a time where everything is made cheaply and shipped from somewhere else, and until recently the idea of making things yourself or choosing handmade over store-bought was considered fringe thinking or something only available to the very wealthy, the notion that simply doing something our predeccesors did out of necessity is forward thinking and just now entering into the mainstream boggles my mind.