Covered in Threadmalaka’s adventure in sewing

Once I finished school and caught my breath, I bought a new sewing machine.   With it, I purchased an easy pajama pants pattern and set off to make my husband some “comfy” shorts.  He was excited.  He helped.

I had to rip the seams out of those shorts 15 times and by the end of it the material was so shredded that I gave up and started over again.  The second time I did it right, after only 3 tries this time.. and they even fit him.  Then he washed the shorts and go figure, I forgot to pre-shrink the material.   He now has a pair of boxer-briefs.

I told my friend Aimee that I was going to take a sewing class and she said she was also interested.  She didn’t have any prior sewing experience, though.  I found a sewing studio (Austin Stitching Studio) that looked like something I should check out.  I’m not a big fan of the sewing classes at the big fabric stores… so I wanted to stay away from that.  Turns out, the classes were perfect and I like the instructor a lot.  Aimee took the beginning series, I took the garment series.  I learned how to make pajama pants the right way.  I also learned that I hate, with a passion, sewing from patterns.

I’ve always used the excuse that I need a “sewing room” if I ever wanted to really get good at the hobby.  There’s just no way to keep a sewing space clean all the time, and it’s not productive to even think about cleaning it up and putting things away.  Most sewing projects take time, and I’m not motivated enough to get it all back out every time I want to sew.   I made the executive decision that our mostly unused gameroom upstairs would become that room.  It’s a MESS.  Everything that I need is in that room.  It’s motivating and scary and junky and I absolutely love being up there.

My mom always hated sewing.   She had a sewing machine and used it quite often to repair clothes, but I don’t think I ever saw her read from a pattern and she would complain the whole time.  I don’t blame her, though.. back in the day, sewing machines weren’t quite as user friendly as they are today.

We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, so my two sisters and I had to compromise a lot.  My mom gave us the sewing machine and told us we could make clothes for our Barbie dolls if we wanted a whole wardrobe for them, like our friends had.   We did just that.  I was sewing clothes for my dolls; I couldn’t have been more than 6 years old.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t busting out a doll clothes pattern and pinning and ironing and whatnot — I would cut out the shape of a shirt and sew two sides together.  My sewing teacher recently said that sewing doll and kid clothes are easy because there’s no shape to their bodies.  I guess that was a good place to start!

Of course, letting kids play with sewing machines could be the reason for their malfunction and my mother’s poor disposition toward sewing, but it gave me a good head start on a hobby, eh? (Let’s not mention that it’s not “safe” to let little kids play with scissors and needles these days.  Things were different in the 80’s.)

When my sisters and I were “tweens” (did they call it “tween” back then, or is that a new term? I’m guessing it’s new because the word makes me cringe) my mother put us in sewing class.  We made a drawstring bag.  I remember it clearly and I still have that bag.  I also remember the instructor teaching us how to use a serger to cut & finish edges.  A 12-year old, using a serger? I’m scared of sergers and I’m 33 years old.

I got my own machine in the late 90’s and did small projects - costumes, curtains, pillows, hems, etc.  Patterns bewildered and frustrated me.  Zippers were scary.  Material started to get expensive, and I couldn’t afford to buy a bunch just to screw it up.  My Singer, although a good machine, started having tension problems and I got fed up and shoved it in the back of the closet.

In 2006 I was finishing up my bachelor’s degree in Business (15 years late, if you’re wondering) and needed an elective.  Being so sick of business-related classes that the thought of one more made me physically ill, I signed up for Intro to Textiles.   I was taking something like 19 hours in school that semester while working full time.  I wanted so badly to pull out my sewing machine but I literally didn’t have time to even re-learn how to thread it.  The class was awesome, though — it taught me the fundamentals of weaves and knits, dyes and prints, naturals and synthetics.  I loved it.  It’s the only thing I loved about school.. now I can say that I graduated from Business School and the only thing I retained was the difference between knits and wovens.

For the next 2 years I finished school and played around with other hobbies, always knowing that I wanted to start sewing again.

I hate the word “blog” but here I am, just blogging away.  In fact, I spent a considerable amount of time the last few days to creating this *cringe* blog.  Thanks to the help of my friend Andrea (www.theandrea.com), I think I’ve finally got it working.   Funny that I’m an IT girl, yet this sort of thing completely bewilders me.

I’ve spent the last 15 years of my life writing on the internet, and I’ve settled down over at livejournal.com — but I realized that my “everyday” friends and acquaintances probably don’t want to listen to me ramble on about learning to sew.

So here it is — my sewing blog.  Hopefully I’ll get over the blog issue an just find this some place to write.  I find myself coming downstairs nearly daily, looking down at myself and realizing that I’m completely covered in thread.