Old Town sewing shop stitches together community

Jessy Gregg has been operating the sewing and fabric shop Seams for over six years, but she just had her first grand opening.

“We were going to do a ribbon cutting for our second anniversary, so that would have been April of 2020,” she said. The pandemic lockdown shuttered the shop two weeks beforehand.

That made Seams’ “grand reopening,” commemorating its move to Old Town, a special event for Gregg. The Old Town location is also Seams’ first standalone shop. The former location was around 300 square feet of “incubator space” in East Lansing’s Woven Art Yarn Shop, but the new shop is more than double the square footage, Gregg said, allowing space for additional offerings and sewing classes.

After a soft opening May 22, Seams has been steadily building out its Old Town location. The shop, which focuses on “garment sewing using natural fibers,” has plenty of extra space for its fabrics and patterns, many of which are from independent designers, but Gregg was particularly excited to discuss the shop’s social events and classes. Seams began hosting a free “Sewcial Sew” a month ago, which runs from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesdays and allows guests to use the shop’s sewing machines to work on their projects. She said private classes will start up following the grand opening.

Those events bring in a variety of people, Gregg said.

“One of the things we really try to do is push the stereotype of who sews,” she said, adding that younger sewists sometimes feel unwelcome in the traditional quilt stores that dominate the market. In catering to those left-out sewists, Gregg said Seams brings in a perhaps unexpected clientele.

“A good percentage of the people taking our ultra-beginner class are men,” she said. “And we have a lot of non-binary and gender non-confirming folks that take classes here because they’re not content with their clothing options.”

She said that’s  “a niche we’ve really embraced,” something reflected both in staff and clientele. She said they are particularly drawn to sewing because they find trouble with off-the-rack clothing, which is made to fit “a nonexistent, imaginary body.”

Gregg said one “Sewcial” was mostly cosplayers preparing for an upcoming comic convention, but it also included a former fashion professor who had “lived a full life in the fiber arts” and another person who was “just exploring the idea of starting to sew.”

Drop-in sewing, which runs from 3 to 6 p.m. Wednesdays, has a $35 fee and includes teaching. Gregg said her regulars for drop-in sewing are “a couple of young men who are mostly modifying their jeans.”

Classes encompass all skill levels, but Seams is focused particularly on “ultra beginners” who have “never seen a sewing machine before.” Gregg said the rise of low-quality fast fashion coupled with the popularity of online crafts content has led many who did not grow up sewing, and whose family did not sew either, to take interest in the craft.

The Old Town location has brought in more foot traffic than the former location, Gregg said, which has not only helped sell more items but made more customers interested in sewing.

“A lot of people have come in on a whim and then been like, ‘Oh, do you do classes or lessons?’” said Venus Stanton, an employee who also teaches classes. “And I’m like, ‘Yes, we do,’ and they get really excited.”