Dusting Off the Sewing Machine Kirsten Luce for The New York Times Kat Roberts helps Marcus Glenn make moccasins at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn. TECHNOLOGY has relieved people of many chores: scrubbing shirts on a washboard, making butter in a churn, stitching clothing by hand. But on a Saturday morning in May, seven students gathered around a workbench at 3rd Ward, a craft education work space in Brooklyn, to learn how to sew moccasins. "You have to remember: a shoe is transportation," said the instructor, Kat Roberts, as she tugged at a scrap of brown suede a student had chosen to construct a pair of shoes. You don't just want it to look good. Fabian Grateroles, 30, a freelance art director, traced a silhouette of his right foot onto a swath of oatmeal-colored muslin, the pattern based on a Florsheim design by Duckie Brown. It was his second sewing class in a year, this one spurred because he could not find Duckie Browns comfortable enough for his size 7 foot. "I'm not going to pay $400 for a shoe that doesn't fit," Mr. Grateroles said with a sniff as he stitched together the muslin mock-up with a needle and black thread. Besides, he was having fun. "I usually spend my whole day in front of a computer," he said cheerfully. Once the domain of apron-clad matrons tasked with domestic busywork, sewing, like knitting before it, is making a comeback. At 3rd Ward, the number of monthly beginner classes has doubled to four. Purl in SoHo offers popular sewing seminars. The number of members at BurdaStyle, a five-year-old social network for sewing novices, grew to 753,184 in mid-May, an increase of 47 percent from a year earlier, the company said. And sewing-machine sales are booming, with sales in the United States expected to top three million in 2012 at SVP Worldwide, the maker of Singer sewing machines, up from 1.5 million a year more than a decade ago. While some of the craze can be chalked up to the popularity of reality television shows like "Project Runway," sewing instructors say students in their 20s and 30s, particularly women, are embracing sewing also as a form of self-expression and a way to assert their independence. "What once was considered a womanly task is now a way of defining oneself," said Patti Gilstrap, an owner of Flirt, a clothing store in Brooklyn that teaches introductory classes in alteration and skirt making. Customers have inquired about sewing gloves, swimsuits, even a wedding dress, she said. "Students don't want to reproduce something from Target or Walmart," she said. They want to make something that is unique to them. ONE of Ms. Gilstrap's students, Ravi Ahmad, 34, the director of academic administration at Teachers College at Columbia University, took up sewing two years ago, she said, after watching her mother eschew needle and thread as relics of a bygone era. "My grandmother saw cooking, knitting and sewing as taking care of other people," Ms. Ahmad said. But my mother suffered through it. It was such a huge deal. As an adult, Ms. Ahmad said, she began to view sewing as an enjoyable personal necessity. Vintage styles work best for her hourglass figure, she explained, which makes shopping in mass-market stores a challenge. After taking a class with Ms. Gilstrap last summer, Ms. Ahmad attended open hours at Flirt's studio, Home Ec, where she made an outfit using Japanese fabric she found at a specialty store in Manhattan. More recently she completed a dress with a high-waisted flared skirt topped with a V-neck bodice, a flattering shape that she said she could remake in different fabrics. "I make clothes for myself," Ms. Ahmad said. It's not about taking care of other people, but taking care of myself. Like devotees of good cooking, sewing fans are learning from television shows and social-sharing Web sites (like Pinterest) devoted to do-it-yourself projects.