There are many things I adore about living in Humboldt County: the fresh air, living near the ocean and the laid-back mentality, just to name a few. But there is one thing that this city girl hates about Humboldt County with a passion: there isn’t any place to shop for clothes. Although we are only five hours away from San Francisco, a Mecca for shopping on the West Coast, it seems that for each hour we are away from the city, we are another month behind in fashion.

Thus, my best friend Mike and I started a mission to each create a totally unique and fun wardrobe. We had spent many long hours walking through the excuses for malls in Humboldt County because we couldn’t afford the outrageous prices of the local shops. We spent our free time researching the hottest fashions in Tokyo, which was our current obsession. Of course, nothing like the clothes I wanted would ever be found in Humboldt County. I needed a solution.

I started doing my shopping exclusively online. I could find the unique clothes that I wanted, but I wasn’t getting the same satisfaction of going into a store and shopping. There is something about the instant gratification of finding something in a store you want, purchasing it, and taking it home. Sometimes it would take longer than a week to get an item purchased online.

Mike's answer to the Humboldt fashion vacuum was surprisingly simple.

Mike already had a solution. One day I went over to his house and he asked me what I thought of his new pants. They were incredibly awesome. I asked if he found them on eBay, our favorite online clothing source. He said no, and that he had made them. I knew Mike sewed, but I was really impressed by this pair of pants. The stitching was perfect, and they looked like something out of a high-end store. Mike began sewing because one day he decided that he hated the clothes the stores had for men, and he wanted to design things himself. So, he got a machine and taught himself. It couldn’t be that hard...

I now had the solution to my shopping dilemma. I had a way to have unique clothes—clothes that fit me perfectly and weren’t made to fit an anorexic model. I had a way to fulfill my shopping urges, while learning how to do something new. I was going to learn how to sew.

When I was younger, my mom and grandma constantly begged my little sister and me to learn to sew. They were amazing seamstresses. We always had the most elaborate Halloween costumes, and when a group assignment required me to make a pilgrim hat for a presentation, my mom would research the time period and sew an outfit that was a replica of clothing worn during that time. Everyone who saw them, including I, was impressed with their sewing abilities.

My mom and grandma always offered to make clothes for my sister and me. They told us if we picked out material we liked, and a pattern we thought was cute, they would make it for us. Although I knew that anything they sewed would look like it came from a store, I just wouldn’t wear it. I thought it was weird to have your mom make your clothes, and I was scared of what my peers would think if they knew my outfit was made at home. I was always proud to wear my mom’s unique costumes, but I wouldn’t wear homemade clothes.

My grandma also tried to teach us to sew. She said it was a really good skill to have, and we would be happy one day when we could make our own clothes. I thought sewing was old-fashioned, fuddy-duddy, and it definitely wasn’t cool. My mom told me that someday I would regret not having learned. She was right, and I wanted to let her know. I picked up the phone and called my mom and told her the four words I hate: “You told me so.”

The trips that Mike and I took to the Eureka mall were soon replaced with trips to the fabric store. I began looking through the pattern books and was amazed by all the cute, fashionable clothes they had, not to mention the hundreds of options in fabric colors, patterns and types. I was so excited with the new world of designing my own clothes that I forgot a major component: I didn’t know how to sew and didn’t even have a machine.

	Mariko sews a pair of legwarmers with her new sewing machine.

I called my mom. She was so excited to hear I was finally discovering the world of sewing that she ordered a sewing machine online for me. I bought some patterns and material so I could get started.

Mike was my sewing teacher. He came over the day I got my machine and he showed me the tricks to cutting out the pattern, matching the patterns of the material, and getting everything ready to begin sewing. After reading my machine’s manual, I was ready to go. I put my foot on the pedal and that was it. The pieces of camouflage material were joined together by little stitches and it started to look like a skirt.

A quick lesson from a friend and I was entering a whole new world. I would never again see a girl at a party wearing the same dress I was wearing. This was a world where it took 25 minutes of my spare time and $4 to make a skirt.

Sewing just kind of happened for me. I think it’s in my blood, passed on from my grandma, to my mom, and now to me, and although it took me years to finally learn how to sew, I’m so happy I finally did. When people on the street stop to ask me where I found my outfit, they are usually surprised and can’t believe that my outfit was made at home on my kitchen table.