There’s no skirting the issue – I was sew hopeless at needlecraft I admit I cheated

With all hope of success in her school course hanging by the narrowest of threads, our writer decided on drastic action.

At 15, and a late arrival at a new high school, I chose needlecraft as an elective.

The big stitch-up began, like many enduring stories, innocuously. Given the choice between A and B, I picked B. I should have picked A.

At 15, and a late arrival at a new high school, day one entailed choosing an elective. Enrolling a year later than most meant that German and Indonesian classes were already closed and my options were restricted to the two subjects that, supposedly, could still be picked up when the rest of the year had a 12-month head start. That meant home economics or needlecraft.

As a journalist, I might have adopted the more accurate descriptors of “cooking” and “sewing”. As a food lover, I should therefore have raced towards the former. Instead, partly because I refused to wear an apron, but mostly because my frontal lobe was still a decade away from being fully formed, I ticked the latter. ­Inexplicably.

I am no sewer. No one in my family sews. I am descended from a line of keen cooks who can truss a chicken but struggle to straighten a hem. Also, I was so focused on the “craft” syllable of my new subject that I missed the memo about weekly theory classes.

It’s not easy to sit through a triple lesson on buttons, I quickly discovered. It’s slightly less tedious than three consecutive classes on the intricacies of Byzantine costumes, and about as challenging as being asked to faithfully sketch those costumes from memory for an exam.

If this was a cunning plan to encourage newcomers to embrace their inner Husqvarna, it worked.

I might not know weft from warp, and, years later, remain confused about the correct placement of a bobbin. But by the time I was seated in front of a sewing machine, free from those tedious hours of sewing theory, I was ready to stitch.

Our needlecraft teacher must have sensed my enthusiasm because she stood before our class at that first practical lesson brimming with excitement. First up, she declared dreamily, please make a dress. I would have felt more comfortable milking a goat.

Faced with a machine I did not understand and a pattern I could not fathom, the floral sunfrock I would supposedly produce suddenly seemed a lot less alluring than the apron I might otherwise have been donning at that ­moment …

Miraculously, I survived that term. With a lot of help in class, a dress was made. I was chuffed, even if my success was on the back of the handiwork of others. Who needed an apron?

The next term dawned and with it a new assignment: please make a blazer. I was still a bad sewer, but with one ugly dress up my sleeve I was now a confident sewer – in theory. Blazer? I would make a fully lined bomber jacket with concealed buttons and flapped pockets. No simple jacket for me!

I was still a bad sewer. Sadly I was also a slow sewer. With no idea still what to do with a bobbin, I failed to start my machine repeatedly. This went on for weeks. Even with the help of our enthusiastic teacher, I was continually confused by even the most basic operations of the machines that every other student seemed to have mastered. And even when I got the thing going, I never managed to produce a single straight seam.

At this high-achieving school, failure to hand in a completed garment was not an option. Somehow, with a lot of help in class yet again, the jacket was made. By then, however, the school year was almost over and I had not even started on the final task: making a skirt.

Compared to a fully-lined bomber jacket with concealed buttons and flapped pockets, creating a skirt seemed, well, pretty much straight up and down. Unfortunately, even with the bulk of a year’s practical classes behind me, I still had no idea where to begin.

More galling than my inability to sew was the possibility of ­officially failing needlecraft. So, in the dying weeks of that school year – in which the only thing I made easily was a lifelong friendship with a wonderful classmate who took pity on me – I headed to the material source I knew best: my wardrobe.

Amid a rack of school uniforms and broderie anglaise dresses, I found a rarely worn cotton skirt with an elasticised waist. That night, with more skill than I had mustered all year, I carefully removed the label. Then I prized apart some of the perfectly stitched seam, which I could have never produced, and every so sloppily hand-sewed it.

The following week I handed that skirt in as my final needlecraft assignment.

I received an A.

Turns out I am craftier than I realised.