A few weeks ago I talked about how I wanted to learn how to use the sewing machine correctly and confidently. Well I've started the learning!
A couple weekends ago we had a completely free day. No plans and nothing pressing to get done. It was one of those dreary days where I really don't feel like doing much of anything. Instead of caving in to my lazy grey day tendencies, I thought maybe it would be a good day to start this leaning stuff.
I learn best by doing, so after a few trial runs with scrap fabric and leaning all about threading the machine, we started designing a skirt. Jason did pretty much all of this part because I didn't have a clue. Hopefully from watching this time, I can do a bit more next time.
Then it was time to use the sewing machine! I feel a lot more confident about setting up the machine and the threading process. I am also starting to feel ok with sewing straight lines, with quite a bit of wiggle room for mistakes.
I have a tendency to pull the fabric as I try to guide it. When working on the skirt, I started off pretty good following the straight line for the seam. Towards the end I got a bit nervous and started trying too hard and ended up making much bigger mistakes.
I definitely learned a lot, but there is a lot of practice in my future. I just got coordinating fabrics for the fox fabric so I can attempt another skirt. It is really fun to be able to say 'I made this, with lots of help!' I did all the main sewing of the pieces and Jason did all the finishing of the seams and hem.
What do you think of my skirt? How have your new year learning goals going?
What do you think of my skirt? How have your new year learning goals going?
Now my books of the week!
All of the books from last week are finished. I enjoyed Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, but feel it needed more of my attention than I gave it. The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp left me feeling exactly how I thought I'd feel, not knowing how I feel about it. We also finished Small Favor (The Dresden Files #10), which was fun as usual.
While we wait to get our hands on the next Dresden book we've started listening to Wizard's First Rule (Sword of Truth #1) by Terry Goodkind. I read most of this series years ago, but I never read the last 2 books. The last book I did read of the series was so boring (seriously nothing happened for hundreds of pages!) that I've had little interest in finishing the last 2. I've been told the last 2 books are better so I figured I'd give listening to them a try. So far I'm finding the book pretty annoying, guess my tastes have changed. Going to be hard to make it through them all if they don't improve and the audio book narrator is overly dramatic.
What are you reading this week?