When you are trying to live a handmade life there are a few skills you should probably have under your belt. The first and most obvious is basic cooking – if you can’t boil water, chop vegetables, or prep meats you are probably going to be eating a lot of processed food. Another great one is sewing, and folks I’m ashamed to say that though I’ve had a sewing machine for months now, I can’t sew.
Sorry, I mean I couldn’t sew. See how that’s past tense? I know, I’m excited too!
You see last week I went to my first sewing class at my local Jo-Anne Fabrics. This year Mom, Dad, and HB were all on the same wave length and each signed me up for sewing classes at Jo-Anne. Pretty cool, right? So now I’m all set to learn to sew and last week I finally got started.
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| My Sewing Machine |
Before I tell you that story I feel like I need to write a little disclaimer. I do not expect to learn everything there is to know about sewing from my two three hour classes at Jo-Anne. First, I know it takes a lot of time, patience, and practice to master a new skill like sewing. Second, these classes have 8 or more students, each with a different machine, and only one instructor. You don’t get a lot of 1:1 time so it’s hard to really master the skills presented in class during the three hours that you are there. BUT, my instructor did take the time to teach me how to use my machine (how to thread the needle, what the different nobbs do, how to load a bobbin, etc.) and THAT was very important to me because even though I have my machine’s manual I couldn’t figure out from the photo in the book how to do things like thread the needle. Now that I’ve got basic knowledge of my machine I am a lot more confident that I can use a hodge podge of you tube videos, library books, phone calls to Mom Mom, and patterns to figure out the rest. So, a class at a big store like Jo-Anne is just one of the ways I’m learning to sew. But for the price and for my learning goals it was a good fit.
Here is what we did in class:
First we learned about the fabric itself. Lots of terms were thrown around here and I was completely overwhelmed after about 5 minutes (the terms portion of the lesson probably took 10 minutes). But my instructor already had typed notes prepared for our class with all of the terms she’d used defined. So no taking notes, and no worrying that I would get home, forget all the terms, and not be able to understand any instructions I read or videos I watched online to help me keep practicing.
After learning about the fabric we cut out a swatch and ironed on interfacing. I’m not sure why we did this except to teach us what interfacing is and which side gets ironed to your fabric (glue side down).
Then it was time to learn about our machines. My Kenmore was the oldest puppy in the classroom and by far the heaviest (I struggled to yank it out of my trunk and into a cart so I could push it into the store and back to the classroom). It also does not have the self-threading featured I admired on some of the newer machines. BUT my Kenmore was less than $20 and she did everything I needed her to so an A+ goes to my machine for functionality.
At least until it was time to load the bobbin. Then this happened:
See all those metal bits laying on the bottom of my machine? They are supposed to be nicely put together so that I can clip the loaded bobbin in and move on. Apparently, those little toggles on the sides were not locked into place and everything came loose during transport. Womp womp.
Luckily, my instructor had once had the same machine I did (bonus!) and was able to put everything back together, but not without some trouble and a strict warning that I was NEVER to take it apart again. Just bring it to the nice guy at the local sewing shop once a year when I need the machine cleaned and he’ll take care of it. Message received. I promise to never touch the little flap thingies again.
Moving on…I was significantly behind my classmates at this point. The entire put-Kasey’s-machine-together process took about the same amount of time as it took everyone else to learn to thread their machines and load a bobbin. So I scrambled to figure that out while our instructor moved on to the next portion of the lesson, sewing a straight line, which I missed almost entirely. Yep, this is one of the negatives to being in a large class. We were running behind schedule and my instructor literally couldn’t wait for me.
Luckily, I figured it out pretty quickly and sewed th e three lines required, only to find out I was supposed to be sewing temporary stitches (which are ruffly and tear out easily). I had not done that. I’d just sewing straight lines. Oh well. I know how the knobs on my machine work and I’m sure I can find a video online telling me which settings to use on the machine to create temporary stitches.
Next, everyone was instructed to sew our two swatches of fabric together, do some ironing, then more sewing and ironing. And finally it was time to learn out to read a pattern. Except we were behind schedule (oops…) and the store was closing. But I think we covered everything important (patterns are not new to me, I use them for crocheting) such as how to orient the templates on our fabric.
So now I’m ready to set up my machine in the craft room, find a VERY BASIC pattern, and get to work. Eeeek ! I am so excited!
