Sewing. It can be sew much fun and sew frustrating!

Something I realized about myself. I am a doer. I think about what I want to do, plot out some rough points, and then take off. This happens in all places in my life. It can be exciting, impulsive, and utterly disastrous.

Let's apply this to sewing. Thanks to two lovely ladies, Liz and Suzanne, I am in possession of one fine piece of equipment called a sewing machine. Well, after having the tool, what do you do? Take lessons? Start small and build up? Ask for advice? Read blogs about sewing? Don't be ridiculous! You buy some fabric, make your boyfriend figure out why the tension isn't correct and fix it, then start sewing! :)

Now Greg and I have a joke going that I like to eyeball once and cut three times. That may be true but I am learning a lot from doing. I have had terrible disappointments but also great successes. So far (let's just count the successes) I've made a couple of dresses, a bag, a top for the beach, a skirt, and a bag for some marshmallow shooters for Greg's cousin.

Here are a few of my favs:

I made this skirt out of Greg's old seersucker yacht club trousers. I was blown away that he owned a pair and immediately asked if I could cut them up. :) It was a pretty straight forward project. Cut off the legs and make it a length that is comfortable. The only problem ever is that the zipper is crazy long because they were boy's pants. I wear them for cruising around town or going to the beach.



This is a beach bag. I bought this fabric in Japan and had intended for the longest time to make a bag out of it. I found some simple designs on the internet and then just started cutting. (Don't tell anyone but I did measure some stuff). It works really well. I am particularly proud of the handles but the pockets need work. I'll know what to do for the next bag.



The first job I had when I got back to the states left me with little more than scars from poison ivy and blue t-shirts. So when you have t-shirts, make things! I cut up a couple and made this. It was a little tight. Gotta work on that next time. This might be where that measuring comes in!



This is probably the best thing I've made so far. I bought the fabric just for this dress, it wasn't taken from something else for the first time. I had even bought a pattern for it. Too bad that didn't work out. The pattern was more complicated than I had imagined and I really wanted to wear this dress to my cousin's wedding. So I scrapped the first plan and made this instead. The only problem is that you can't really wear a bra with it. I feel more comfortable with a bra but going free and easy didn't seem to make a difference.



This is my most recent dress. I took a dress that I didn't really like the top from, cut it in half and sewed it onto a top I didn't really wear that much. In the end you have this beautiful design. It is super hip. We will see how much wearing it gets.



So where does the "sew frustrating" come in? Well, there have been plenty of disasters. One thing is changing the tension of the thread for different kinds of fabric. If the tension is wrong, the whole thing could come unraveled. Also, getting shapes right is hard. And do I need to mention zippers! Ugh. Eventually, I know this will become second nature but as a novice, it can make me push my machine away and throw myself on my bed as a crumpled mess in exasperation. Always followed by some whining.

I struggle on!