First post since becoming a member, woo!
I love this place, who wouldn’t want to be a member here, lemme tell ya.
For a long time now, I wanted to learn how to sew. They didn’t teach the basic home economics thing at the schools I attended, (do they even teach that sorta thing like sewing in schools anymore?), so I never learned how to, say, put a button back on.
I asked a co-worker about it, and she informed me that a store here at the mall that sells sewing supplies and fabrics also has classes.
Classes are every Sunday for the month. After bringing it up to my mother, she even offered to pay for it, seeing as how it was a skill she said would be very useful for me to learn.
I was planning to pay for it myself, but hey, don’t find me complaining.
Not only that, I talked my cousin in on joining with me.
Whatever we make is ours to keep, and we get 10% off our supplies we buy in the store, plus no sales tax. Maybe someday I’ll be able to make a nice shirt too.
Any pointers for someone about to learn the basics?
I learned when I was 11 or 12 and it has become a life-long passion. I made my prom dress and most of my wardrobe when I was in high school. And I have found many nice people who love to sew as well on the internet. I haven’t done much sewing lately, but when I was younger I think it kept me out of trouble and gave me something constructive to do. And it was a great confidence booster when I was younger to have my peers tell me that they couldn’t tell that I made it. . . that it looked store-bought.
Oh hey, if you’re looking for inspiration, try out the many yummy crafty blogs out there! To start, I give you Sew, Mama, Sew, which is also a shop, and which has tons of tempting pictures and links to easy projects.
I second the person who wrote that the seam ripper is your friend. Another friend is your iron. If you don’t press seams flat as you go along, and I mean press one seam before you sew another one over or across it, your work will always look home-made, and not in a good way.
Have fun with it, and don’t offer to make things for friends unless they pay you a lot.
I’m pretty excited to learn these sort of things, I always found it amazing when people can sew things, anything really. It’s fascinating.
And dangermom, you can teach me intermediate stuff next time! And that site looks very interesting, maybe it’ll teach me a thing or two as well.
As for large surfaces for patterns, our big kitchen table should work. I hope.
Okay, so seam rippers are my friend, and iron seams as I go.
I don’t even know what a seam ripper is, but I’ll make sure to pick one up! Maybe I should buy a nice toolbox and use it to keep supplies in…
Well, the very most basic supplies you’ll need are:
a seam ripper (hint: you can rip out a given seam twice. The third time, the fabric will probably start to go.)
box of pins and pin cushion to keep 'em in
assorted needles
a thimble that fits
a measuring tape is handy
an iron (you press, you don’t iron!)
for the sewing machine:
supply of needles
a teeny brush to get the lint out (and canned air is good too)
a little oil
several bobbins
a teeny screwdriver to tighten/loosen bobbin tension
Anything else you can get later. Sewing rulers and rotary cutters and all.
Other thoughts:
You’ll get no points for speed. Take it as slowly as you need to.
Expect your first four or five projects to be Learning Experiences. If they turn out to be something you’ll be proud to use, too? Bonus!
Buy a good pair of sewing scissors, and make it clear that they are NOT for cutting paper, or in fact anything else but fabric. But especially not for paper.
Other people have managed to run the needle through their thumbs, too. Just don’t do it more than once :smack:
Definitely going to try and get all that stuff, thanks a bunch dangermom, and I’m surely going to remember the tips, flodnak. I do tend to get discouraged when the first few tries aren’t shining examples of wonderment.
Though…
Needle through the thumb? Through the thumb?
In one side out the other through!?
Thimble. First thing on the list, by Og and all that is holy and dear in the world, a thimble is first thing. I will sell my Playstation 2 if it means getting a thimble that could stop this from happening. shiver
I used my mom’s sewing machine for the first time when I was about 6 or 7 - that’s 47 years ago. And in all that time, I don’t think I’ve used a thimble a dozen times. I don’t even know if I have one now. But I do have 3 seam rippers.
What I would add to the shopping list is a good pair of scissors to be used only with fabric. I’ve had to yell at my husband when he comes anywhere near my good sewing shears with a mind to using them. There are crappy scissors in the drawer - stay away from my good ones!!!
Yes. The sewing machine needle entered one side of my thumb and exited through the other. It then pulled up and went back the other way, leaving me bleeding all over the pajamas I was sewing.
Yeah, that’s a good way to ruin a lot of pairs of pajamas.
What?
One thing about hand sewing is that I’ve found that while I never had much trouble avoiding stabbing my thumb, I tended to wind up with a sore middle finger from working the needle (Granted, I was sometimes working with more than two layers of fabric…more like four or five. Hand sewing that sucks.). Get a sewing machine if you can though. It’ll save you time, and if you’re going to make a mistake, might as well make it quickly so you can get to fixing it sooner.
Every one in this thread thread but me is giving you excellent advice that will serve you well. I bought a $10 sewing machine at a garage sale and threw caution to winds. I belong firmly in the learn-by doing camp. It is still fun, but occasionally the results and startling.
Well, my grandmother has a sewing machine I can use. Though it’s an old Singer brand machine from the 70’s or so. It’s big, heavy, brown, and has a giant wheel on the right side.
They must have made those sewing machines tough, because it still works just fine.
But yes, I will watch my thumb very carefully.
And tell people that if anyone touches my scissors, I will hang them upside down by their big toes.
Oops, I forgot good scissors! Good scissors are your best friend.
A thimble is for hand sewing, for shoving needles through stubborn amounts of fabric. You don’t wear one when you’re sewing by machine, which is when the needle can go through your finger. I’ve never done it except once as a kid I sewed my fingernail–it didn’t go through but I got a nice blood blister under there.
My mother taught me to use the sewing machine when I was a young girl by drawing a series of straight and curved lines on a piece of plain paper, and then having me run the unthreaded sewing machine over the lines, leaving a trail of puncture marks. It was excellent practice at learning the basic skill of coordinating what you’re manipulating under the sewing machine foot with what your foot on the control pedal is doing.
And she also yelled at me, ferociously, if I took my eyes from the paper for one second. Eyes on the work. At all times.
