My Grand Stand-to-Sew Experiment, Four Years On

You’ve seen them all over the web – those cool standing desks that promote increased productivity, alertness, and focus in the workplace. It’s been proposed as the solution for combatting the hazards of prolonged sitting, which can lead to all sorts of health concerns associated with sedentary behavior and lifestyle. Whether we’re working at a desk or (in my case) a sewing machine, the buzz about standing vs sitting has been all the rage for a number of years now. It’s why four years ago, as I was moving into my ‘new’ sewing studio…

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(formerly my daughter’s room, who was well into her 4th year of college and was unlikely to ever move home), I jumped onto the Standing Sewing Station bandwagon. 

At the time, this made complete sense to me and to many of us who’d been wearing Fit Bits or Apple watches by then. We already had daily step goals and stand goals drilling at us from our wrists, regularly reminding us that sitting was a direct portal into a sedentary spiral, and that if we weren’t meeting our 10,000-steps-a-day goal, we would surely drop dead of a self-inflicted lollygag of laziness. There was urgency to be on my feet and who was I to argue?

First things first, the fabulous Mr. Woods whipped me up the perfect cart on wheels, which he designed specifically to just the right height so that ergonomically, the bed of my sewing machine would meet my rested hands for optimal comfort while I sewed.

My Cart was big enough to support my machine on one end, with a cutting space beside.

As you can see above, my studio evolved to also include a pressing cart on wheels, which I could move around. Since I also tend to be a frequent rearranger of furniture, sometimes my pressing cart lives to my left and sometimes to my right. Regardless of where each piece lives on any given day, the fact that all of my studio furniture is on wheels allows for maximum efficiency, which I love!

Notably, this smaller pressing cart stayed around a long while, until I rearranged and Mr Woods made a new, more practical one I like better.

All the while throughout these last four years, I rearranged my space now and then (thanks to those wonderful wheels!), streamlining here and there, as I stood and sewed, pressed and cut – all in one small area, and it was JUST SO efficient! I could simply pivot from sewing to cutting to pressing and all was well in my world…

…except for one thing – no, TWO things: My back and my legs (oh wait. That’s technically three, isn’t it?).

You see, all that standing made my back ache and strained my legs in ways that are visible now, after all this time of standing. Over time, I could sew for shorter and shorter bits of time, and whenever I’d finally decide to shut down for the evening – oof. Plopping into my bed at night came with an almost-audible, all-caps refrain of ‘Dear Gawd – THANK YOU’ from my body. Especially – my legs. OH my dear legs.

Keeping it real, friends – what also came with 4 years of static standing to sew for hours on end – was these little beauties: Spider veins and varicose veins I can actually see, along with inner vessels I couldn’t (but are visible on ultrasound – but that’s for another post). No, I’m not in love with the idea of sharing the above image out into the blogosphere, but here we are – and I’m not helping anyone if I’m not telling the whole story. There’s also something important about working to be at ease with this whole general aging process we all experience, and that includes embracing visible signs we’ve lived for longer than a few years! At the end of the day, it’s an evolving process of learning to embrace our bodies at every stage, and I know I’m not alone in striving toward that.

But back to sewing and more importantly – some good news! The aforementioned former inhabitant of my studio just graduated from vet school this last spring.

Conveniently, I’ve long needed a machine with more features (not the least of which is a zig zag feature, which – though a wonderful machine – my Juki TL2010Q does not have). Our newly ordained veterinarian, on the other hand, needed a graduation gift which would serve her usually-only-straight-stitching sewing needs. Hence, the perfect graduation gift was born: My regularly-used and also well-cared-for Juki, which now inhabits her new studio, 1,134 miles from mine.

The subsequent arrival of MY new Janome Continental M8, along with a phenomenally comfortable Arrow chair, paved way for the perfect time to rearrange my studio once again.

As you can see by my new setup, I now sit to sew on one side of the room, while getting up frequently to walk to the other side of the room for cutting and pressing. Incidentally, I also get regular comments about my Cheryl Ann’s Portable Quilting Design Wall. Although I tend to just lean it against my closet wall, it does come with legs so it stands independently.

While this new setup undoubtedly makes me less efficient, it accomplishes something even more important than an efficient productivity process: It gets me up and moving, which is the real goal anyway, because, friends, JUST STANDING – isn’t.

I’m also exploring another new ally in my quest for reduced fatigue, improving circulation, and supporting overall leg wellness: Compression socks! I’m in the midst of trying lots of different brands at the moment. I’ll keep you posted with the ones I like best.

So if you’re wondering exactly what I’ve learned from 4 years of my standing to sew experiment, it’s something that I think current popular culture is missing:

Sitting while sewing doesn’t make us lazy. It also doesn’t make us sedentary, unfit or unhealthy. That’s about a regular fitness routine apart from our sewing, which is personal journey for each of us in terms of finding what works for us. Ultimately though, fitness has nothing to do with whether we sit or stand to sew. Fitness is fitness. Sewing is sewing.