Learn to sew resolution = check!
January 14, 2007 by karen
Yesterday I headed out to Long Island bright and early for a sewing date with my friend Lindsey. Lindsey is a home ec. type teacher and knows how to make lots of fun things like quilts and bags. Since I had gotten a sewing machine for Christmas and had yet to take it out of the box, I figured I better ask for a lesson so that I would actually use my new toy. In exchange, I was supposed to show Lindsey how to upload her pictures to Flickr or Shutterly, but we took so long on my project that we never got around to it.
It was a smart decision to embark on my learn to sew resolution with Lindsey because I don’t think I would have figured out the machine out on my own. Lin walked me through prepping the machine and offered some great debugging tips. I realized twenty minutes into our lesson, when we were still setting up the machine and not yet sewing, that when I decide I want to learn something I have no interest in how we get there, just the end result. It’s similar to how I handled grad school, “What do you mean I have to take Computanional Media? I just want to network water. Can’t we just start with that?!”
After our machines were all set to start sewing, we worked on cutting out our patterns for our bags. I was pretty impressed with Lindsey’s eyeballing of a design of a bag she had bought and how she could recreate the structure on paper and then to material. Very cool. I now feel like I have a better understanding of decontructing designs.
After all our prepping, we headed out to go find lunch (Mexican) and then grabbbed some delicious ice cream from a homemade ice cream shop, Snowflake. With full bellys, we returned and really got to work on our bags. It was actually really fun…and time consuming. I ran into quite a few issues (tangled thread, wrong stitch styles, under stitched sections, over stitched sections, etc.) and luckily had Lin’s expertise to call upon. I arrived at 1 p.m. and didn’t finish until 8 p.m., but I had a cute bag to take home with me in the end.
I tried to stuff Lindsey’s new puppy Porter House in my bag and smuggle him home for Sasha, but Lindsey wasn’t a having any of it.
Overall, I’m pleased with my new toy and I’m excited to try another bag and then maybe move onto something else. Anyone need a bag? I need some practice.
Tags: 2007goals, karen, linz s., sewing
Posted in Projects
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