On a recent Tuesday afternoon, the offices in a Midtown Manhattan building were whirring with the sound of sewing machines. Scissors, rolls of fabric and neon lights that read “cut & sew” adorned the walls, and tomato-like pin cushions dotted the work spaces. Dozens of people of all ages — tweens and teenagers, recent college graduates and schoolteachers in the waning days of their summer breaks — had filled out the sprawling space of the New York Sewing Center, diligently learning how to make tote bags and clothing.
“I would recommend a heavier-duty elastic,” Emily Klug, a teacher at the center, said while holding up a student’s pair of unfinished, rough-hewed, army green pants. The waistband was bunched up on one side, and the culprit was a too-thin elastic band. In one corner of the space, a student was finishing up a pair of polka dot shorts. In another, a black corset top was coming to life.
The New York Sewing Center was founded 11 years ago by former fashion designer Kristine Frailing, and what once occupied a small corner in the same building has since taken over two floors. The center now offers full-day sewing boot camps, evening courses, embroidery workshops and classes on the basics of alteration.
Demand for classes had been consistent, Ms. Frailing, 42, said in her glass-walled office overlooking novices puzzling over pockets and hemlines, and “every year, I would need to get a bigger space.” She would take over office spaces next to each other and daisy-chain them together.
This year, however, the interest has been “tremendous,” Ms. Frailing said, with revenue ballooning by 75 percent compared with last year. In March, the center expanded beyond Manhattan’s garment district with a second branch in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, where DJs spin while students sew, and a sign outside the building reads “Sewing Is Back!” A third location will open in New Jersey in December. Many of the classes fill up weeks in advance, Ms. Frailing said, no matter what day or time they are offered.
“A lot of people are like, ‘I take so many things to the tailor, I just wish I knew how to do it myself,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, we have that class,’” Ms. Frailing said, noting an uptick in interest in upcycling, as well. “And there’s the social aspect to it, too — being in a room without your phone and with other people and then learning this really cool craft that you can walk away with.”
This surge in activity at the sewing center represents a small, hyperlocal slice of a wider trend in which a craving for crafts and community across all ages has driven a resurgence in interest in old-fashioned, hands-on skills like crocheting, knitting and embroidery. On Reddit, the sewing subreddit community has more than two million members, and communities around crocheting or cross-stitching are similarly popular. On TikTok, users share tips on how to create the perfect dart on a pair of pants or how to repurpose old curtains or bed linens into summer dresses.
Increased economic uncertainty might be one reason that more students are enrolling in classes than have in previous years, Ms. Frailing said, with many noting that learning how to make their own clothes or tune up their thrift store finds would help them save money. Roughly a third of clothing purchases in the United States in the past year were secondhand — an increase from previous years — in large part because consumers are looking to save money, according to a recent report by Capital One.
Chloé Desaulles, an independent creative director and artist based in New York, said the desire to do something hands-on and crafty could also be unconscious pushback against the all-encompassing presence in our lives of artificial intelligence, which is blurring the line between what is real and what is not.
As a result, she added, “the witnessing of craft and process in one-to-one time becomes a proof of reality,” and making something with your hands becomes one of the few things you can trust.
“It is definitely therapeutic,” said Alyssa Cioffi, 17, who started sewing when she was 12. “I found a sewing machine in my attic, and it’s funny because nobody in my family sews — they were planning on learning. So I picked it up and I started teaching myself how to use that machine.”
Ms. Cioffi signed up for classes at the center to sharpen her self-acquired skills. She was making herself a purple skirt as part of a costume, inspired by the “My Little Pony” character Twilight Sparkle, that she planned to wear at an anime convention in New York later in the year.
Ms. Frailing learned to sew when she was 8, picking up the skill from her great-aunt, who was a home economics teacher and had a sewing studio in her basement.
“I just fell in love with it,” Ms. Frailing said. At the time, she lived in Sheraton, Iowa, and on weekends she would visit her aunt, who lived a few towns away, to sew.
“All the way through high school and college, I was like, ‘I’m going to be a fashion designer,’” she said. She moved to New York after college in Missouri to pursue that dream, and started a brand of custom dresses and cashmere vests.
To make extra money while growing her brand, Ms. Frailing started teaching sewing on the side. “A friend of mine ran a language school where she was teaching English to Chinese-speaking students,” Ms. Frailing said, “and so she had all of these different classrooms, and she said, ‘You can borrow the classroom and pay an hourly rent and then just store your machines in a closet.’”
She did that for about two years until she could afford to rent her own space in Midtown Manhattan. Soon, demand for her classes eclipsed the growth of her brand, so she shut down the line to focus on teaching.
Last summer, Ms. Frailing introduced a designer membership program that offers start-up designers affordable office space that they can rent as they build their brands, with access to consulting and technical assistance from the teachers at the center. “We also allow people who know how to sew to come in and just use our sewing machines and cutting tables for $10 an hour, just because we love seeing people be creative here,” she added.
Two 40-something friends, Cristyn Girolami, a consultant, and Jessica Mancino, a sound healer, signed up for the all-day sewing workshop as part of their personal “summer camp” — a curated summer of crafting and activities that they were doing together. The week before, they learned how to knit.
They had never sewed or touched a machine, but “we had grandparents that did it,” Ms. Girolami said, stopping midsentence to stitch the handles onto her tote bag.
“So we figured it was in our blood,” Ms. Mancino chimed in. “And also just having clothes that I want to get altered. There’s this dress that I love and want to remove the sleeves.”
Using their hands and putting away their phones felt exciting, too, Ms. Girolami said. “I feel like we’re Renaissance women!”
Alisha Haridasani Gupta is a Times reporter covering women’s health and health inequities.
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