Copyright Richard Lappas

Who knew that an overlocker is the most prevalent piece of kit in fashion factories? Its lethal four needles race alongside a razor as it hems and seams our stretchy fabrics. Or that a run and fell is the seam that gives jeans their workaday look?

I’ve just finished a week’s sewing course. I felt that, as someone trying to grapple with sustainable fashion, I should learn how to make my own clothes. Or at least be able to hem a curtain. We start out by making a whole series of different types of seam and then put in a concealed zip. The trick is to sew it in then roll back the teeth and sew in another line of stitches. I do this ever so carefully, only to find I’ve sewn neatly down the edge of the zip without attaching it to any fabric.

By day three I am losing the will to live. I struggle with a fly zip in a pair of shorts. Three pieces of material are required to make the zip and I cannot work out how they go together, how they attach to the shorts and what must be done in what order. In fact, I think that sewing should be compulsory, a kind of craft conscription, so that we will no longer take the intricacies of our clothes for-granted, think it’s fine to pay pennies for them and may have a modicum of understanding of what it is like to spend hours hunched over a sewing machine.

As I contemplate my wonky seams and unconcealed zip I think I should know better. It’s as if the height of my culinary expertise were making beans on toast and I expect, after two days tuition, to be able to whip up a four course meal for ten. Our lovely funky Bristolian teacher, Peg Squires, agrees. She says you shouldn’t think of something like a dress you want to make and then go for it, you need to practise sewing techniques. I have a sinking feeling. I could weep when I remember all the beautifully sewn and delicately knitted garments by mother and grandmother used to make – skills that seem to have by-passed our generation.

I make a T-shirt in day-glo orange with flying penguins and start feeling better. Stretchy fabric is very forgiving. By the end of the week I’m feeling inspired and bolder. I plan tops I think I could make.

Peg shows us how to create a pattern from clothes we want to copy. But it is, as she says, not an inexpensive hobby:

In the olden days it was much cheaper to razzle something up for Friday night, but now you can shop at Tesco or Primark for a fiver. You’re only going to make your own clothes if you have a massive love of sewing.

I rush out and buy pink cotton jersey, white lace, pink sequins and flower-buttons to make a tank top for my niece’s third birthday and discover that it all cost more than buying the whole thing at Gap.

You have to look at it in a different way,” suggests Peg, I’m on a low income so I could choose to buy crap sausages for my children but I don’t. I buy them organic food.

Quite. I started out thinking I was just learning to sew – and now I think I really could hem a curtain – but come away with a couple of life lessons instead.

Things I learnt:

• Keep your old clothes – you could customise them or turn them into something completely new
• Be precise. As any carpenter will tell you, measure twice, cut once
• Pin everything first. Turn the right way round to check how it looks before starting to sew
• Practise on calico – the grain is the same in both directions and both sides are identical and it’s quite cheap. You may even want to do a trial run in calico of the garment you want to make before using expensive fabric
• Practise sewing small samples of your actual material before you start so you can gauge thread colour, stitch size and stitch tension
• Press everything before and after you’ve sewn (sounds so much better than saying iron a lot)
• Check out your local university or community centre for sewing courses
• Eco designer, Jenny Ambrose of Enamore.co.uk, is running sewing courses in Bath starting in September (jenny@enamore.co.uk or 01225 851004)