Worthwhile

When Janine Vangool from Uppercase Magazine was asked to create a fabric collection for Windham fabrics, she was at a loss as to where to start. In light of world events, including climate change, that were weighing heavily on her at the time, she didn’t know what ‘another fabric collection could contribute’ and ‘certainly didn’t want to use valuable resources for no particular reason’.

After revisiting a motto that stemmed from Uppercase issue #20, released in 2014, Janine realised she wanted to employ the same sentiment within the collection she was about to design – ‘Make it Worthwhile’.

And that got us thinking.

We thought about it a little and then did what any good philosopher would do when the answer to the question they seek isn’t easily forthcoming, we did our Googles!

Firstly, we found worthwhile is most often defined as ‘sufficiently valuable or important to be worth one’s time, effort or interest’.

From there, however, we found ourselves down somewhat of an internet rabbit hole!

According to Google, some of the many things that make something worthwhile are: learning from it, serving someone with it, teaching someone it, making a living doing it, feeding our soul with it, experiencing life more fully because of it, reflecting about aspects of life in light of it or teaching us something about ourselves from it.

Whilst it would seem there’s no singular answer to our question, what it did do was cement the fact that our time spent with needle and thread can indeed be classed as worthwhile! 

Whilst we’re not telling you anything you don’t already know, in light of the time you spend with needle and thread, read the preceding list again and see just how many of them apply to your stitching and you’ll see that all those hours spent with the push and pull of needle and thread through fabric have indeed been worthwhile – and should anyone tell you, time spent with needle and thread is wasted, you can let them know that Google proves otherwise!