Correct sewing posture is important if you want to enjoy sewing. It's such a self engrossing activity that you tend to forget yourselves while doing it.
The way you sit with your desktop for a long period of time and get fatigued, your sewing machine can do the same to you,if you are not careful.
Simple things that create big health hazards.
You can understand your sitting posture better if you remember how you should be ideally sitting in front of your desktop.
- With your back straight. Your neck in sync and your feet on the ground. Your arms should have ample room for rest and moving around.
- Don’t keep your domestic sewing machine on the floor. Keep it on a raised platform.
- I have seen that acute postural problems arise in people, who place their sewing machines on the floor or on a small platform and bend in a half circle to thread the needle of their machines.
- This posture is bad for your health. If you are not sitting straight, your neck,arm,shoulders,spine,back, in fact, more or less the whole body will start aching after a while.
If you feel discomfort, should you stop sewing?
Stopping to do something is not the right thing.
If you continue to think of stopping everything that harms you than the world would stop working on computers and thousand other things.
Excess of everything is bad and knowing but not implementing measures on how to avoid the negative effect is worse.
So, let's find out the right way of sewing so that you do not have to worry about your health while sewing.
How to maintain correct posture while sewing
Here, it’s important to understand that we all have different height and size.
What is an ideal height for my sewing machine chair and table may not be right for you because your physical height may be different than mine.
- Therefore, adjust your table or chair height as per your requirement.
- Sit or stand comfortably while stitching, cutting or ironing.
- While measuring or adjusting your pattern on the fabric, you should not slouch but be standing on a flat ground firmly.
- If your children are fond of stitching, then you should be more careful about their posture while stitching. A poor posture may hamper their spinal growth.
- A body friendly or ergonomically designed work space is important for a strenuous work like stitching.
- While planning your stitching work area, you should give attention to your chair, sewing machine table, cutting table and ironing board height in sync with your height and size.
- There should be proper lighting in the place where you are stitching to reduce strain on your eyes.
- Your personal preference and size should determine whether a particular chair is fit for you but it should not be too comfortable to slouch.
- Your chair should be padded for comfort. It should have a soft back and hand support.
What to Do with Your Stitching Machine When You Don’t Know Stitching
- The height of a chair should be adjustable. Seat should be ideally tilted a bit.
- While buying a chair, sit and adjust it’s height to your comfort. Assume as if you are working long hours sitting on it and how your body should feel.
- When sitting, your knees should be slightly lower than your hips.
- Your seat and hips should be fully in the chair with your back against the back of the chair.
- Place your legs out in front of you at a comfortable angle with your feet touching the floor.
- If your sewing table height is not adjustable and the chair is, you may raise the chair to fit the table and put a footrest under the chair to support your legs.
- There is a difference between sewing surface or needle area height and the sewing table height particularly with free-arm machines.
- If your machine is set into a table, the sewing surface and table height are one.
- If your machine is placed on top of a table, then the sewing table height is lower than the sewing surface (needle area).
- First of all, find the proper sewing surface height; then raise or lower the table so the needle area is at that height.
- To find the proper sewing surface height, sit in your chair, hold a book in front of you and read comfortably.
- When sewing, your hands should be in a straight line with your wrists and forearms.
- Height of cutting table is as important as the sewing surface because of the many hours spent cutting, marking and pinning the fabric prior to stitching.
- If you’re bending over a cutting table, and there are adjustments that can be made to achieve perfect height for you; then, it would be better that you call a carpenter to build a cutting table, or alter your existing one to correct it’s height.
- There are many adjustable furniture available in the market for stitching professional and enthusiasts. Cabinets that accommodate a sewing machine with containers on the doors that hold supplies, threads etc.
- If these ready to use furniture pieces aren’t the right height, have someone alter them so they are the correct height for you.
- These ready made furniture are usually too low, so adding height is many times easy for a carpenter.
Whether you stitch as a hobby or as a profession, it helps if you are aware about the right way of Stitching.
Not only that, I know many elderly women around who are ignorant about the right posture while stitching.
It would be nice if more and more awareness is created to combat this underlying problem in and around our homes so we could really say – Happy Stitching:)
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