I’m trying to learn to sew. I have a dinosaur sewing machine that my sister-in-law let me borrow so that I could give it a whirl before going out to buy one only to never use it.
So far, my attempts have been sucktacular at best. I did finally manage to make a camera strap cover but that was after multiple bobbin threading failures and having to draw the straight line I wanted to sew with a fabric pen. It’s not embellished with ruffles or rosettes like all the cool kids' camera straps but I made it and dad-gummit I am pretty darn proud of it.
Considering that I had to cheat in order to sew a straight line, I have no idea what possessed me to think that I could make this:
Maybe I was intoxicated by the uber-cuteness of it. Maybe it was because I wanted to say “Look, I made a Bapron!”. Or perhaps it’s because in my head I have a black-belt in sewing whereas in real life I don’t even have the belt loops.
Now, a smart person would have practiced first on a cheap “who cares if I screw it up” piece of fabric. Not this girl! I had a super cute fat quarter of fun, colorful, scribbly flowers that would be perfect so of course I had to use it.
So I cut out the super-cute-fun-scribbly flower fabric per the pattern – no problemo. Then I realized that I was supposed to also cut out my fleece at the same time, oops. Not to worry, I can cut it out on its’ own. Fleece is cut and is basically the same as the fabric – good enough for me.
Here’s where my troubles really begin: I’m using fusible fleece so I have my fleece pinned to the fabric and the iron is ready to go. For the next 20 minutes, I’m cursing the iron, the fabric, the fleece, the price of eggs in China, everything. My fleece was not fusing and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why. Funny thing about fusible fleece – one side is fleecy and the other is fusible-y. I was ironing the fusible-y aka wrong side, making a serious mess of my iron in the process it turns out. I cleaned the iron, unpinned the fleece, flipped it over, and started to pin again only to discover that when I flip it, the two pieces don’t exactly match up. Ugh!
I should have stopped here but I didn’t. I decided to start trimming so they would match up and finally I had it all pinned up and ready to sew. Remember how I said I had to draw a straight line to be able to sew one? Well, this curvy pattern was definitely not the next logical step in my sewing education! My seam randomly ranged from ¼ to ½ inch willy-nilly, I had mystery puckers in the fabric, my stitches were long in some spots and really short in others.
But I’m not giving up – it’s currently awaiting the seam ripper so I can rip it apart and start over again. Maybe someday I will be able to say “Look, I made a Bapron” chances are better for me saying “does anybody know who makes this super-cute-fun-scribbly flower fabric that I wasted while convinced I'm the Jackie Chan of sewing.
