History of Sewing 101

About 9 years ago I remember telling Ken I wanted a sewing machine so I could learn to sew. I did get a sewing machine. The unfortunate end to that tale is that I never really did much sewing. I made one dress for Young Women's in Excellence at church (for some reason we leaders felt that if the girls had to do a project we should to. That must have been a moment of insanity when we decided that) With the help of 3 other friends I made a simple sun dress for Daria, which she wore only once 3 years later. I also made 3 calendar birthday wall hangings for my parents and Ken's parents. That was about it until a few years ago when my good friend Jenni encouraged me to make Halloween costumes for the kids.

I will never forget her words when Daria chose a pioneer costume. Jenni said "Oh, this is easy, this will be perfect for your first sewing project". Well easy is all relative. With extreme help on Jenni's part (I told her I would need her help, I'm not sure she realized it would be almost every day), and a lot of crying on my part (I really thought my kids would not have costumes, it was traumatic) I was able to produce 2 Little House on the Prairie dresses, and one Jedi Knight costume (I finished about 5:30pm on Halloween evening).

Still a bit leery of sewing the next year I decided to jump on board with Jenni and make more Halloween costumes. This time help from Jenni as well, but it was more enjoyable than the first time. Patience paid off and I ended up with 3 Pirate costumes.

About this time my sewing machine which I was hoping to give to Daria, died, well sort of. It's always been a dinosaur of sorts when it comes to sewing and I think I spent just as much time messing with the settings as I did sewing. I brought it to church to make purses with the Young Women. It was a pretty hectic night. My sewing machine completely died.

One of Ken's talents is getting things done while I'm oblivious to any surprises. For some reason I never noticed that the sewing machine was missing. Around Christmas time he took it to be repaired. For Christmas he surprised me with a new sewing machine and Daria with my old fixed up one. Now here is where it gets funny, well embarrassing really. The technician who fixed my old machine left big notes on the work slip. Things like "Do use the correct bobbins", "Do put the needle in correctly", "use the correct tension", and the list goes on. Who would have known!! I'm assuming that with all the chaos of that night with the Young Women that maybe I shoved the needle in backwards? Who knew!!!

I'm sure the sales person was wondering why Ken was buying a new sewing machine when I obviously had no clue how to use the old one!

Well, to end the story, I LOVE my new machine. In fact it reminds me of an experience I had when I took figure skating lessons. I remember my coach telling me that I needed new skates and a good pair. I thought she was just being snobbish. But you know what, I did get a nice pair of skates and it made all the difference. So the same has been true with this new machine. It's a bit nicer than my old one, it's so quiet that I can sew and talk on the phone if I wanted to. It makes sewing such a breeze!

So back to Christmas when I opened the machine Ken said "I want you to make Easter dresses". Now he really doesn't care if we have Easter dresses, but I believe he just didn't want me to sit on a nice machine and not use it. Luckily I'm still very interested in sewing.

Jenni helped me again, but this time I could muddle through a lot of it on my own. I was able to make a dress for Daria and a matching top and skirt for myself! What fun it was to be able to create something.