Sewing machine adventures

For my 40th birthday last year I asked for a sewing machine from my parents.  I had secretly wanted one for years and thanks to them I was able to finally get my paws on one.  My dreams of being able to make my own clothes, which had been fuelled by avidly watching every episode of the Great British Sewing Bee, were one step closer.

It has not all been plain sailing though!  First of all, I had to work out how to use the machine with a little help from the manual and a whole lot of trial and error.  I happily played around with it for a while working up the courage to actually make something.  And so the next hurdle arose…buying fabric online.  With a  lack of physical shops nearby, I had to make my first fabric purchase by wading through the overwhelming and bewildering choice available on the internet.  I eventually choose a lovely white cotton with green flowers on for my first project of a cushion (I fear making my own clothes is some way off yet!).

Next issue to overcome reared its head.  In the absence of a pattern, how on earth do I measure accurately?!  I am not known for my ability to cut in straight lines – anyone who gets the wrapping paper after me is incredulous at how wonky I have cut it.  Despair was felt until my husband came up with the solution.  His mum used to sew and he remembered that she had a cutting board…with measurements!  Order placed on Saturday and arrived today.  Now there was no stopping me.  Or so I thought.  It wasn’t quite a simple as I hoped and it took several hours before I had usable pieces.

Happily I can report that the actual sewing up was fairly plain sailing (if we ignore the fact that I managed to not realise that I picked up a piece I had already done a hem on and started sewing it all over again) and here is the finished product which I am pretty chuffed with.  I no longer have any cats to model sitting on it so made do with a pretend one….

Experimentation has occurred…

I have finally had a chance to sit down and play with those lovely buttons that I took delivery of last week.  Alas I discovered that my wire work is a little rusty so some of the products I was planning to trial will have to wait a while longer.  I did though come up with some potential products that I am quite happy with and which I think variations of will probably make it onto my Etsy shop in the not too distant future.

I made the rather lovely button bracelets above – the top one I tried out different spacing on to see what effect I liked the most so the variation on gaps is intentional!  Both of these designs will certainly be making their way onto my shop.  After the success of my Christmas tags amongst my family and friends, I decided to try out some ideas for Valentine’s Day and made some tags.  Am not completely sure about all of the designs – I will definitely be making some to sell though.  Last but not least, I had a go at making double button earrings.  I used up an old pair of buttons with writing on to make them (something I wouldn’t do if selling them) and was really pleased with the end result.  Now I need a good stock of base buttons in order to make these to sell….oh dear….more button shopping!