Friday, May 11, 2012

My Very First Sewing Project! (Pt. 1)

Hello again! Thanks for stopping by. Today I'm going to tell you about my very first sewing project (ever!), which is still ongoing. It all started when I was out shopping with my mother a few months ago for some reason or another, and she agreed to buy me my first sewing machine. It's a cute story, because we are cute people.

Here's my mom (left) with her big brother, sometime around 1950. Vintage fashion alert!

Anyway, my mom is totally cool, knows all about my "eclectically-gendered" fashion choices, and even knows (if she probably doesn't quite understand it) that I identify as transgender/gender-fluid. That being said, I didn't really feel like picking out a skirt pattern for myself on that particular trip, so we decided on a cutesy little family number for me and my two roommates:

Hello there, Simplicity 2823!

For now, I'm just sewing the adult pajama bottoms, as my mom and the saleslady at Jo-Ann agreed that that was a good place to start. No buttons, no zippers, no fancy darts or doo-dads. Just cutting, stitching, and hemming (with an elastic waistband thrown in there to test my skills and patience). I picked out some deliciously tacky felt fabrics for the three of us:

Pink skulls on a minty background for me! I'm worried that I might start blinding people if I wear too much of my own handmade clothing.

Scorpions for SM! I knew he needed scorpion pajamas. He knew it too, but only after I showed him the fabric.



 And... Uh! I forgot to take a picture of PS's fabric, a funky pink/green/brown/yellow paisley on white that you can see a bit of underneath SM's scorpions. Sorry about the oversight. Pictures of the work-in-progress will be forthcoming.

(For folks who know us personally, yes, SM's abbreviation nickname on this blog is indeed the same as PS's real-world initials. It's confusing for us too, so maybe I'll figure out new nicknames for them soon.)

Anyway, despite the fact that I was in a major LARPs-and-Papers-Writing Time Crunch of Doom at the time, I quickly dove into my new hobby, gearing up my machine as quickly as possible and finding videos on the internet when I got confused and lost. I also made frequent calls to my good friend [dragonwolf](let me know if I can use your real name) because she is the bestest and knows how to solve all my silly little beginner problems.

My Adorable Workspace, AKA the Dining Room Table. Actual size.
When it came to working from the actual pattern, my first task was to copy the right size onto new paper. I followed some online advice for cheapos and just bought some sheets of decorative tissue paper from a local craft store (which turned out to also have fabric - good find!). I put my drawing pens to good use and made new patterns in the right sizes and cut them out. This took a long time, I'll tell you what! It was sometime during one of the full days I spend moving big pieces of paper around my house, ironing them repeatedly, and using them to chop up fabric that I realized how much I enjoyed losing myself in this work. When I started sewing, I frequently ran into one of my biggest headaches:

Enlarged to show Infuriating Texture
For those who've never sewn, this is what happens when your machine sucks your thread up into your seam and chews on it for a while. It's ugly, ugly, ugly. I can't count how many times I had to restart seams because I lost the loose thread at the end to this garbage. At one point, I was keeping such a tight grip on it in fear of this that my sewing needle came down bent and snapped right off against the throat plate.

I'm sorry for posting this image, [dragonwolf], but this is how I felt.

Fortunately, after dealing with this nonsense for a few weeks, I finally got my copy of the beginning sewer's bible, aka the Sew Everything Workshop:

Your hair alone tells me all I need to know about how amazing you are.
Of course, right there on page 32, it tells me to "pull the thread through any guides or pins leading down toward the needle," and lo and behold, there's a little window right above the needle to pass thread through, which keeps it in place much better. I'm not sure if that's the exact solution to the problem I was having, but I'm pretty sure it hasn't happened since. Whew!

Well, there's a lot more to tell in this story, but I think I've gone on long enough for today. So, sewing pals, what's your biggest stitching frustration? What's the little thing that keeps going wrong and screwing up all your hard work? Or maybe you know some common problems and how to fix or correct them?




3 comments:

  1. Does your machine have a manual? It should show you, step by step, how to thread the machine. If it's been lost, might be worth tracking one down online... the manual is really important in sewing. (So many times I've told Phoebe "I don't know how this works on your machine, check the manual").

    I have that bunching when I forget and put the needle in the machine the wrong direction (or Matt does) :( The Featherweight is pretty forgiving, but it will let you know when something's wrong. Even if everything is set all right, you might want to be sure you're starting with the needle in the down position, and hold the threads, as you start a seam.

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    1. Oooh, yeah. Starting with the needle down is also probably a big reason why I'm not running into that problem as much. I do have the manual to my machine, but the first time I threaded the needle it either didn't mention that step or I failed to read it. I should probably check and see if it's actually in there.

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